nVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 Pro Reviews

Numbers aside, no doubt the GeForce GTX 690 is an impressive piece of hardware. In most of our tests, its performance remained close to AMD’s Radeon HD 7990, without sacrificing refinements for raw performance. It uses less power than AMD’s competing card, while being an inch shorter and shrouded in metal, versus the Radeon HD 7990’s plastic exterior, foot-long length, and trio of fans. The GeForce GTX 690’s metal exterior likely helps in cooling and keeping vibration (and the attendant noise) under control, as well. In our testing, with the side of the case off, the GTX 690 seemed to be a bit quieter than the Radeon HD 7990 under load. It should be noted, though, that both cards were very quiet while idling at the desktop. We think the GeForce GeForce GTX 690 is the better piece of pure hardware, even though the Radeon HD 7990 performed a bit better in our benchmarks. But it’s the Radeon HD 7990’s eight free games that really make the GeForce GTX 690 hard to recommend over AMD’s competing card.

We've spent the past week playing games on an quad-GPU PC hooked up to three full-HD monitors, but the £4,500 configuration has somehow left us with mixed feelings. It's easy to be blown away by the sheer spectacle of it all and there's no denying the wow factor, but dig deeper into benchmark results and you'll find that the dual-card, quad-GPU configuration doesn't always provide a significant boost in performance. In a perfect world, adding a second GeForce GTX 690 to a high-end rig would result in a 100 per cent in-game performance increase. But in reality, the bump in frames per second typically ranges from 10 to 50 per cent. Running two GeForce GTX 690s is still jaw-droppingly quick, but the vagaries of four-way SLI scaling can lead to diminishing returns in some of today's latest games, and it's worth noting that certain games provide a better NVIDIA Surround experience than others. DiRT Showdown would be our pick of the bunch; it looks and feels immersive at a 5,760x1,080 resolution, and more importantly, it scales well too.

To put it simply, the GeForce GTX 690 is the fastest single graphics card we have tested to date--by far. In every game or benchmark, regardless of resolution or image quality settings, the GeForce GTX 690 was able to outpace every other graphics card we've ever tested. Of course, with a $1000 price tag and two of the most powerful GPUs on-board, the GeForce GTX 690 should best every other graphics card currently available. When compared to other multi-GPU configurations, the GeForce GTX 690’s performance is still impressive, but not nearly as dominant. The GeForce GTX 690 ends up coming in just a hair behind the similarly priced dual GeForce GTX 680 SLI configuration across the board, due to GTX 690’s slightly lower base / boost GPU frequencies. Versus a Radeon HD 7970 CrossFire setup, the GeForce GTX 690 ends up being somewhat faster more often than not, but the Radeons pulled ahead in a few tests.

Let's cut right to the chase, the GeForce GTX 690 4GB graphics card is aimed at a small band of computer users identified as ultra-enthusiasts. These people care about having the shiniest of technology and possess the inclination and ability to pay for it. GTX 690 is the world's fastest graphics card... by some distance. It manhandles the previous-generation GTX 590 and benchmarks at a level that's consistent with two premium GeForce GTX 680s running in SLI. Such is its visceral power that one really needs to pair it with either a 30in, 2,560x1,600-resolution monitor or three screens driven by NVIDIA's (3D) Vision Surround technology. Best of all, it can do all this from the card's trio of DVI outputs. Oftentimes the search for ultimate GPU power is manifested in a card that's hot and noisy. GeForce GTX 690 is neither; it's relatively quiet and cool at all times. Even when pushed with a healthy dollop of overclocking the GTX 690's cooling does an admirable job of keeping noise, temperatures and power in check, and you can't ask for much more than that when talking about the world's fastest gaming card.

Traditionally dual-GPU cards have been a mixed bag. More often than not they have to sacrifice a significant amount of single-GPU performance in order to put two GPUs on a single card, and in the rare occasions where that tradeoff doesn’t happen there’s some other tradeoff such as a loud cooler or immense power consumption. NVIDIA told us that they could break this tradition and put two full GTX 680s on a single card, and that they could do that while making it quieter and less power consuming than a dual video card SLI setup. After going through our benchmarking process we can safely say that NVIDIA has met their goals. From a gaming performance perspective we haven’t seen a dual-GPU card reach the performance of a pair of high-end cards in SLI/CF since the Radeon HD 4870X2 in 2008, so it’s quite refreshing to see someone get so close again 4 years later. The GTX 690 doesn’t quite reach the performance of the GTX 680 SLI, but it’s very, very close. Based on our benchmarks we’re looking at 95% of the performance of the GTX 680 SLI at 5760x1200 and 96% of the performance at 2560x1600. These are measurable differences, but only just. For all practical purposes the GTX 690 is a single card GTX 680 SLI – a single card GTX 680 SLI that consumes noticeably less power under load and is at least marginally quieter too.

Astonishing levels of power for crazy amounts of cash, this is a card reserved for the privileged few

If I could just summarize this entire GTX 690 launch with one word that word would be simply WOW! Everything about the new NVIDIA GTX 690 just speaks volumes of how much research and development went into this card design, as it will change things on the playing field. Form the outstanding looks to the stellar performance one can only surmise that NVIDIA has been for once actually holding back the bit so to speak as this card is what change is all about. With the launch of the new GTX690, NVDIA kicks sand in the face of AMD and retakes the crown as the King of the Ring once again having the fastest video card solution you can get on planet Earth, a solid Editor’s Choice product for 2012.

Benchmarking Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 690 almost wasn’t even necessary. The company gave us a great idea of what to expect when it told us that its new Death Star would be fully operational, featuring two uncut GK104s. A slightly lower base clock suggested average performance just a smidge below two GeForce GTX 680s—but certainly not enough to be noticeable while you’re gaming.

A very silly graphics card for a niche market, but there's no arguing with its astonishing performance

NVIDIA’s goal for the GTX 690 was to make the fastest graphics card of all time and they’ve succeeded beyond most people’s expectations. After the experience with Fermi and G80 before it, many predicted this round of GeForce products would be more of the same: hot running, power hungry cards sporting huge, inefficient cores. What we got instead was Kepler; an architecture which marks a huge turn around for the company’s direction and exemplifies how the missteps of one generation can be rectified in its successor. The result is a product that follows in the GTX 590’s footsteps by moving the dual GPU market further away from the noisy, lackluster cards of previous generations.

Holding NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 690 is the first hint that NVIDIA created something special. The new card feels great thanks to the dominant use of metal, both with shiny and rough surfaces. Thanks to the used magnesium alloy it is still much lighter than other dual GPU cards. Highlights like the metal screws, the Plexiglas "windows" and the glowing rubber GeForce logo add to the experience. In terms of performance we see stunning numbers, that almost exactly match the performance of a dual card GTX 680 SLI setup, despite the lower clocks on the GTX 690. NVIDIA's new dynamic overclocking algorithm is hard at work to provide these great performance results and it works well, without any glitches. We also found that additional manual overclocking is possible, which provided an extra 14% performance boost in real gaming. Normally we see reduced overclocking potential from dual GPU cards, due to power and heat concerns, not so with the GTX 690.

When it comes to the performance results, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 easily becomes the fastest gaming graphics card that we have ever tested. It is also one of the better looking cards that we have ever used as well. You can tell that NVIDIA left no stone unturned and has tried to make this product the best video card the company has ever released. The GeForce GTX 690 is a revolutionary product as it raises the bar for what one will expect to get from a flagship video card. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 has a suggested retail price of $999, so the use of exotic materials actually helps reduce the sticker shock a little bit. No one wants to drop a thousand dollars and get a cheap looking product that also feels cheap in your hands. NVIDIA made sure that customers will not experience that with the GeForce GTX 690.

Nvidia calls its newest dual-GPU video card, the GeForce GTX 690, the fastest ever, and we can't disagree. Just know that's also one of the one most expensive.

The GTX 680 was the fastest single GPU card when it was launched a few weeks ago. We were quite impressed with what NVIDIA achieved with the card’s power consumption, heat output, and the performance. With the GTX 690, NVIDIA has raised the performance bar even higher. With the GTX 690, NVIDIA is essentially able to cram two of the fastest GPU into a single card and the result is rather impressive. The GTX 690 delivers about 90-95% of the performance of two GTX 680's in SLI, while consuming 80 fewer watts of power. Not only is the card much more power efficient, it is also quiet thanks to the vapor chamber heatsink. While the card may not be exactly as fast as two GTX 680, the trade off is definitely worth it. And lets not forget about all the key advantages of the Kepler architecture, like the dedicated H.264 video encoder called NVENC, and GPU Boost. While FXAA, TXAA, and Adaptive vsync will be avilable on Fermi as well, it is also a nice feature on the Kepler architecture. The one point that may dissuade some is the $1000 retail price. While we do like the card a lot, the asking price can be hard to swallow. The pricing of the card leaves a very difficult decision for a potential buyer when shopping for the fastest card. Should one buy two GTX 680s and have slightly better performance but higher power consumption, or a single GTX 690 for its power efficiency? It is a quite tough decision to make. Also it is important to note that only ASUS and EVGA will be selling GTX 690s in North America.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 has dramatically surpassed all graphics cards on the market and could be the top contender for much longer than we expect. AMD has been forced to show their hand, and I expect the Radeon HD 7990 to surface sometime soon. Yet, even if AMD manages to double the performance of a single Radeon HD 7970, it still won't surpass GTX 690 frame rates and will still lack the thermal performance, quiet acoustics, and FXAA/TXAA post-processing.

To say that I was impressed with what the GTX 690 has to offer would be an understatement. In the past NVIDIA has delivered excellent gaming performance when they dropped a dual GPU card on the market such as the 9800GX2, GTX 295, and the GTX 590. Each offered significant gains in the all important FPS arena but suffered from the same challenges of running two GPUs on one card with increased power consumption and compromises made to cooling the card down that resulted in lower clock speeds than single GPU cards. The GTX 690 for the most part is almost immune to these challenges with a robust 10 phase power circuit and 10 layer, 2oz copper PCB to manage the power needed to maximize performance and stay within the 300 watt TDP of the card; in most games running near a quoted 276 watts. Ironically this is the consumption delta between the idle and load results I saw in my testing at stock speeds.