Nvidia GTX 680 Kepler
- Details
- Category: Video Cards
- Published: Thursday, 22 March 2012 13:01
You have all seen and heard the rumors for months now about Nvidia’s upcoming GPU code named Kepler. When we got the call that Nvidia was inviting editors out to San Francisco to show us what they have been working on we jumped at the chance to finally put the rumors to rest and see what they really had up their sleeve. Today we can finally tell you all the gory details and dig into the performance of Nvidia’s latest flagship video card. Will it be the fastest single GPU card in the world? We finally find out!
Yesterday we took a look at the XFX R7870 Black Edition OC and really liked it. It seemed to fall into a nice sweet spot between price and performance. Today we are going to take a look at what looks to be the same card but bring the R7850 not the R7870, there are a few key differences. There are major differences in both power usage and compute performance between the two cards. I am really curious how this will translate to the performance and ultimately the price/performance that make the R7870 an idea card to pick up. Will the R7850 be an even better deal or a card to pass on?
AMD’s 7970 launch was very exciting but when it came to the lower priced HD 7700 series cards the reception was lackluster, mostly because of pricing issues. We still haven’t found the card that falls right into the sweet spot for performance vs. value while still being able to play anything you throw at it. These cards are rare, like the 8800 GTS G92 edition or the HD 6950 with the ability to reflash to unlock more performance. With the HD 7900 series cards being pricy and HD 7700’s series cards not having the power behind them. I am really hopping the HD 7800 series cards step up to the plate. Today we finally have the chance to take a look at an HD 7800 series card, the XFX R7870 Black Edition Overclocked. With XFX’s amazing cooler and overclock I’m hoping this will be the one.
Haven already taken a look at a 
You guys have seen the results from our testing of both the XFX R7770 Black Edition OC and the Sapphire HD 7770 OC. I'm sure it was fairly expected but here are our Crossfire testing results using the press drivers. As you will see their are still a few crossfire bugs to be worked out just like we saw with our HD 7970 crossfire testing. But when the drivers work right these two cards paired up make for a cheaper sollution to get Performance similar to the HD 7950 and the GTX 580. Not bad for two cards that would cost you around $350 to pick up. Thats $100 less than what it would cost you to get a GTX 580 and close to the same for the HD 7950!
Sapphire is always known for the wide variety of cards they product for each card series. The HD 7770 is no exception. This time around we are taking a look at their HD 7770 Overclocked edition. Apparently the 1 GHz stock clock wasn’t enough for them, so they gave it up bump up to 1150 MHz. With the HD 7770 priced similar to the HD 6770 and HD5770 cards at their launch I am excited to see what this card has to offer. The HD 5770 was a staple in our small form factor builds around the office for a long time. Now it’s time to give them an upgrade!
Not everyone can afford to go with the most expensive video cards on the market; most gamers have a more limited budget. This is mostly due to the fact that there are more gamers from the 13-30 age groups than anything else. Between being too young to work, poor college students, and then young budding family’s money is always tight. When your budget has you building a $600 dollar gaming rig there is no way you will be dedicating all or even half of that towards the video card. It’s important for gaming, but without the rest of your components you’re not going anywhere. That’s where AMD’s new HD 7770 comes in, at a price point that still leaves room in your budget. Of course we need to see how it performs, for that we are taking a look at XFX’s R7770 Black Edition Double D overclocked edition.
With AMD’s new HD 7970’s rocking the boat slightly with both price and performance it’s about time we started to see the slow trickle of GPU’s that will fill in the rest of the HD 7000 series video cards. First on the list is the HD 7950, a card that a lot of people have been waiting for because of the high price of the HD 7970. There is no doubt that it’s not going to outperform the HD 7970, but how will this new card compare to the GTX 580? Today I’m not taking a look at a reference card, we have skipped directly to the XFX Double Dissipation Black Edition Overclocked version, similar in design to what we saw with their R7970.
I recently posted up our HD 7970 crossfire results. AMD released their 8.921.2 RC11 driver update the same day as our last post. Here are updated graphs showing the crossfire performance with the new drivers. I still experienced flashing and artifacts when in game water was in view and our test bench would have odd lockups when left sitting idle for a while. The performance increases with the new drivers are impressive, I hope they work out the rest of the bugs. Two HD 7970's is the best performance you can get currently (short of adding even more cards, lol) but without the driver support its going to be a tough sell. 
Now that we have had a chance to take a look at a reference design HD 7970 and see how dominating one can be I am excited to take a look at XFX’s new Black Edition Overclocked R7970. Unlike most of the other manufactures their version is both overclocked and equipped with their Double Dissipation cooling solution, a heatsink that has to be one of the sexiest coolers on the market. We know how the stock card performs, but how will it perform with a 1000Mhz clock speed and a badass cooler? Let’s find out!
All of the holidays, New Years, and CES cause a chaos this time a year. Last year we had the Sandy Bridge launch in the mix. This year AMD's new GPU series launch is packed in as well. Around the holidays we saw a few reviews using AMD's reference design. Sampling was very limited; today all of the manufactures can finally release all of their reviews. Today we are covering Sapphires first card of many, the HD 7970. This card uses the reference design and cooler and should be a great way to judge the series’ performance without any overclocking or aftermarket cooling. AMD advertises the HD 7970 as the world’s fastest single GPU, let’s find out!
When looking at video cards it’s not always just the price and performance that are things to consider. Depending on your situation, noise, power usage, height and width of the card all have to be taken into consideration. A good example of this would be a low profile HTPC case, you of course will want the best performance but if it requires extra power connectors it may not work. In some cases you don’t have room for a dual PCI slot card or you need a low profile card. Those are all examples of where Sapphires newest card the HD 6670 Low Profile would come in handy. As a single width, low profile capable card it can fit in almost any situation, even better it doesn’t require any extra power connections. The question is how will it perform, lets find out. 
Nvidia’s GTX580 launched close to a year ago yet is still one of the top performing video cards on the market. When you are a manufacture like EVGA, where do you go after you have introduced a full product line around the GTX580? Apparently if left alone, EVGA’s engineers in collaboration with overclockers “k|ngp|n” and “TiN”) will turn the GTX580 a monster just begging to be overclocked. With a revamped VRM circuitry with solid-state chokes, dual BIOS’s, and power coming from two 8 pin’s AND a 6pin this could very well be the fastest GTX580 on the market when overclocked. Of course the only way to find out is to read farther into our review.
With a black and orange design on their non-reference video cards, it’s no surprise that we jumped on the chance to take a look at one of Zotac's AMP! Cards. The card they sent was their Nvidia GTX 550 Ti AMP!, an overclocked version of the card we 
At the end of May AMD announced that select video cards would include Dirt 3 Steam codes. To celebrate Sapphire recently introduced their HD6950 Dirt 3 Edition. We know it’s going to include a copy of the game Dirt 3, but what else do we have in store? If it’s anything like what we have seen in the past from Sapphire we can expect a good performing card with a cooler design unique to Sapphire. Let’s find out!
We recently explored Sapphire's FleX edition of the new HD 6770, a black sheep in the new Northern Islands family still running on a Juniper-based core. Though it has a great value, the true entry-level cards for the 6xxx series are the 6450, 6570, and the 6670. Today we'll be sitting down with the latter of the three, to see if Sapphire adds a little extra value to the package.
When a new series of video cards is launched it’s easy to get distracted by the new flashy cards and their amazing performance. The problem is when it comes to mid-range and lower cards sometimes last generations cards perform as well or better at similar price points. This can mean a simple decision on a video card for a budget build could have tens or hundreds of options to choose from. To give you another option Sapphire has brought back their HD5800 series cards with new Xtreme Edition series. They introduced today both the HD5830 and HD5850, of which we will be taking a look at the HD5850. Let’s take a look at what is different with this reintroduction and how it affects the budget gamer.
The proverbial ink has hardly dried on our review of Sapphires HD6870 Flex and we are already introducing another member of the Flex family. That’s because Sapphire is hoping to give everyone the option to go Flex no matter the budget or performance requirements. This also happens to be the first HD6950 to come through our office, finally giving us a chance to check out the performance of AMD’s third in command. Talk about killing two birds with one stone, let’s take a look at the Sapphire FleX HD 6950 2Gb.