NVIDIA presented the new flagship GeForce GTX 690 at the NVIDIA GeForce Festival in Shanghai. The graphics card is based on two GK104 circuits with juicy specifications, and the question is if AMD will be able to match NVIDIA’s latest monster?
Just a month after the launch of GTX 680 that claimed the performance crown from AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 with tiny margins, while also being more efficient, it is time for NVIDIA’s new flagship. NVIDIA has been having a hard time keeping up with AMD’s graphics cards with dual circuits, but this time the company believes it has succeeded even before AMD has launched Radeon HD 7990.
| Model | GeForce GTX 690 | GeForce GTX 680 |
| Circuits | 2 x GK104 | GK104 |
| CUDA cores |
2 x 1536 | 1 536 |
| SMX units |
2 x 8 | 8 |
| Clock frequency |
915 MHz | 1006 MHz |
| GPU Boost | 1019 MHz | 1058 MHz |
| Theoretic GFLOPS | 2 x 2811 | 3090 |
| Texture units |
2 x 128 | 128 |
| ROPs | 2 x 32 | 32 |
| Memory bus |
2 x 256-bit | 256-bit |
| Memory buffer |
2 x 2048 MB GDDR5 | 2048 MB GDDR5 |
| Memory frequency |
1502 MHz (6008 MHz effectively) |
1502 MHz (6008 MHz effectively) |
| Memory bandwidth |
2 x 192 GB/s | 192 GB/s |
| PCIe power connectors |
8+8-pin | 6+6-pin |
| Max TDP | 300W | 195W |
| Price | 999 dollar | 499 dollar |
The card is largely GTX 680 squared and the only real difference is the clock frequency that has been lowered on the GPU. Each graphics circuit is clocked at 915 MHz and GPU Boost at 1019 MHz, and in our review of GTX 680 we saw that it was more common than not for the card to operate above its own GPU Boost frequency.
For power supply we find two 8-pins PCI Express connectors and the graphics card is rated 300W. The TDP probably only covers the graphics circuits and not the rest of the electronics, so a qualified guess is that this will be anoter card that goes above the PCI-Express standard at 300W at full load. The graphics card supports the new PCI Express 3.0 standard.
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Each circuits gets a steam chamber cooler, and a large fan for cooling both of them. NVIDIA was criticized for meager power supply with GTX 590, something that reduced the overclocking potential. GTX 690 Comes with a 10-phase VRM design, which should hold up better. To achieve internal SLI on the card NVIDIA has used an integrated “SLI Bridge” chip from PLX Technologies.
The graphics card gets twice the recommended price in dollar and if we look at what a card costs in stores, GTX 690 should be fairly expensive when it arrives. GTX 680 is currently in relatively limited supply and with two hand-picked circuits we can’t imagine that availability will be any better with NVIDIA’s new flagship.
NVIDIA has now announced to the world that GTX 690 is very much real and the actual launch will be held on May 3rd, when the card will also be available for purchase in stores. GTX 680 turned out to be an energy efficient graphics card at launch, and the question is if AMD can achieve the same level of performance and energy efficiency with the coming Radeon HD 7990 with two Tahiti circuits?
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