Gainward GeForce GTX 690 Pro Reviews

Nvidia did a great job and Kepler has proven its dominance over Fermi generation, both in power consumption and thermals. These two advantages in particular are what made it possible to build a dual-GPU card that’s quieter than all the earlier dual-GPU cards, while being faster at the same time. Gainward could have perhaps personalized the cooler, but we won’t pick hairs and besides – if it ain’t broken, it don’t need fixing. The reference cooling is, dare we say it, sexy and offers good performance at decent noise levels. In fact, considering that this is a dual GPU card, the thermals-to-noise ratio is quite nice. Additionally, the GTX 690 is quieter than two GTX 680 cards in SLI mode. As far as performance goes, the GTX 690 is slightly behind two GTX 680 in SLI, mostly due to lower GPU clocks. In fact, the GTX 690’s GPUs run 9 percent slower that the ones on GTX 680 cards, which is practically the only difference between these GPUs. Overclocking potential isn’t as good as the GTX 680’s, but we managed to squeeze out up to 16 percent better performance with very little effort. When it comes to consumption, the GTX 690 beats a GTX 680 SLI system by almost 90W.

The GTX 690 is a very high-end product and supplies of this bounteous Gainward version should be thin on the ground. It costs over twice as much as two separate GTX 680 cards, but only offers around three-quarters more speed than a single card. At the same time, though, the power consumption and noise levels should be significantly lower than when running two separate 680s together. The lucky few who can afford such an item will find that it offers pulsating performance. Whether this dual-GPU version is preferable to two 680s comes down to whether or not you prize power and noise improvements over maximum speed.