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So GTX 680 for 2560x1600?

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:10 am
by gbcrush
Behold the glory that is 2560x1600, enough megla-pixlers to still make you question "I wonder if this video card can handle it" in an age when single cards are regularly handling the 1920x1200 with all the extra cheese set to ON. :)

And since I blame you gerbils handily for encouraging me to grab a Dell U3011 while the going was good, I'm going to put the graphics question back to you:

Do you think the GTX 680 is good at the "1600p" resolution?


I'm looking for your opinions, please (but not flame wars), based on the TR review, any other reviews you've seen, and your experience with cards and monitors and such. This is where my thinking is right now with this:

    - In the TR review and other places, I've seen the 680 trade blows with 7970 a little. This tended to happen more at x1600, where the performance delta was small between the two.

    - Additionally, it seems that in cases where the green team is superior, it seems as though their lead opens up much wider at lower resolutions, which lead me to think that the 2GB VRAM/smaller memory bus is handicapping it a bit at x1600

    - This makes me think of the reviews/system guides where TR is saying "At 4 megapixels, you want to have at least 2GB of VRAM" noting that the size does make a difference. Do you think the 3GB cards show there's still room for this to apply, or am I starting to fall for "more is better" mentality?


Me, personally personally? I've got a bit of pro ATI (ok, ok AMD) bias *right now*, but I feel like its on the way out. I only say that because I'm not sure how much its affecting my judgement, not because I'm interested in which company is superior. I've bought both, I've been pro green and pro red--I'm a mercenary when it comes to this sort of thing and tend to pick which one suits my needs more. Certainly, nVidia has impressed me with their power draw under load and noise of reference design, + overall performance of what we generally suspect was developed to be a "mid tier class" product (i.e. price class aside).

But does that matter as much if its performance is starting to thin at 2560x1600? Especially if AMD goes into price cutting mode*


* to be perfectly fair, I was originally speccing out to buy a 7950 on the TR recommendation that it handled 1600p just fine for cheaper than the 7970. :D

Re: So GTX 680 for 2560x1600?

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:22 am
by thecoldanddarkone
Hardocp did some tri monitors, which is 5760x1200, Which is a little under 7 megapixels and found little difference between the two in bf3, ma3, arkham (the 680 kills the 7970 in skyrim even at 5760x1200). It doesn't seem that ram is the limiting factor at 2560x1600. Otherwise the games would have tanked at that resolution. That being said it might be difficult to find a gtx 680 in stock, they were grabbed fast, very fast.

Re: So GTX 680 for 2560x1600?

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:27 am
by Arclight
gbcrush wrote:
Behold the glory that is 2560x1600, enough megla-pixlers to still make you question "I wonder if this video card can handle it" in an age when single cards are regularly handling the 1920x1200 with all the extra cheese set to ON. :)

And since I blame you gerbils handily for encouraging me to grab a Dell U3011 while the going was good, I'm going to put the graphics question back to you:

Do you think the GTX 680 is good at the "1600p" resolution?[...]


GTX 680 does indeed seem capable at 1600p despite having 1 Gb of RAM less......but if i were you i'd wait for GK110. But i'm not you and if your tired of waiting go for it, but i would still recommend buying one with a custom cooler, just so you have that extra head room.

Re: So GTX 680 for 2560x1600?

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:28 am
by gbcrush
thecoldanddarkone wrote:
Hardocp did some tri monitors, which is 5760x1200, Which is a little under 7 megapixels and found little difference between the two in bf3, ma3, arkham (the 680 kills the 7970 in skyrim even at 5760x1200). It doesn't seem that ram is the limiting factor at 2560x1600. Otherwise the games would have tanked at that resolution. That being said it might be difficult to find a gtx 680 in stock, they were grabbed fast, very fast.


Thanks, I don't touch the [h] anymore, except for their epic "New Silverstone Ft02" forum thread :)

So what you're saying is a lot of it may just have to do with the age old game of "which games code works better with our architecture" + the other age old game of "drive improvements will yield better results", and you think the GTX has the better of it.

Enough that it's good for 2560x1600.

Re: So GTX 680 for 2560x1600?

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:32 am
by gbcrush
Arclight wrote:
GTX 680 does indeed seem capable at 1600p despite having 1 Gb of RAM less......but if i were you i'd wait for GK110. But i'm not you and if your tired of waiting go for it, but i would still recommend buying one with a custom cooler, just so you have that extra head room.



I'm trying not to shift this too much to a "what should I buy for my personal build" thread, but its funny you should say that. I've liked the nVidia stock blower-shroud designs better than the AMD stock blower-shroud designs for a few releases now. The red team ones are noisier, but that's mitigated by the fact that almost everyone does a custom cooler, some of them much quieter than stock.

Of course, since I'm still looking at an FT02, "blower+fins+exhaust shroud" is a preferable combination to "heatpipes plus fans that spill hot air into the case". Twice as good if its quiet to boot :)

Re: So GTX 680 for 2560x1600?

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:58 am
by Arclight
gbcrush wrote:
Arclight wrote:
[...]Of course, since I'm still looking at an FT02, "blower+fins+exhaust shroud" is a preferable combination to "heatpipes plus fans that spill hot air into the case". Twice as good if its quiet to boot :)


Not sure if i understood right. You're saying a card that dumps hot air inside the case is worse than a card that doesn't? And yet the custom cooled card will always sport the better thermals while producing less noise.....So what exactly are you trying to save your "insides" for?

The Fortress 02 is actually between the best cases, i doubt it won't be able to handle a 680 "dumping" heat inside.....the hot air won't be recicled by the card either since the FT02 keeps pumping the air from the bottom. I'd be worried more about room temperature rather than where the heat is dumped in the FT02....just saying.

Re: So GTX 680 for 2560x1600?

Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 10:58 pm
by Jason181
If a video card truly runs out of vram, it will drop precipitously in speed. I'm pretty sure what you're seeing is nvidia's more tuned drivers at work. Since the framerate is higher on the lower resolutions, much more of the time is spent doing things that are driver-constrained rather than rendering/memory constrained.

One of the questions you should be asking yourself is "how fast is acceptable" to you? Responses will vary greatly. Also, do you plan to overclock (the 7970 seems to be ahead on this front, probably due to the limits on power draw imposed by the two 6-pin power connectors, which only theoretically supply 225W when the tdp is 195W). I think the 7970 allows a +20% wattage, which would result in considerably more power to play with since it's an 8-pin plus 6-pin design. Also, will you be doing any gp-gpu work? That would definitely lead you to the red team at the moment.

I would be a bit torn if I were you, but I think the best choice is probably the 680 because it's cheaper than the 7970, it's as fast or faster in almost every game, it runs quieter and with less power, and I would guess that the price will be better on the 680 in the coming months if you decide to go with a second card. The reason I think this is because the green team obviously has room for a much larger, more powerful card and I suspect they will attempt to crush red team's 7970, resulting in a lower price point for the 680.

Like you, I kinda pick best bang for the buck. Had both; currently have 2 6970s in crossfire because $750 was a lot more palatable than $1,000 for 2 580s at the time.

If you're going to buy the 7970, I would personally wait for a little while (2-4 weeks at least) to see if team red decides to answer the 680 with price reductions on the 7970 (I think they've skimmed the cream off the top, so to speak, and can afford to lower prices and still make a tidy profit).

Re: So GTX 680 for 2560x1600?

Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:42 am
by gbcrush
Yeah. As much as I pretty much have availability on all the items I could want now (well save for actual availability for the 680s) I'm going to wait another month and change personally.

a. I want to see if Ivy Bridge changes my mind about mobo/processors, and just want to see how they do (and what prices drop :D)

b. I'd like to see some price cutting on the GPU front :)

...


That being said, it seems like the concensus is that 2560x1600 is just fine for a 680, yes?

Is there a reason Crysis 2 was test at 1920x1200? Does it not scale higher? I dont remember an explanation for that (though I do understand the over tessalation issue)