Extreme graphics cards: Three killer boards that beat their reference designs - cortezsedged
Modern, high-end artwork processors (GPUs) are semiconductor marvels. Delivering massive transistor counts, tremendous parallel processing performance, and incredible 3D rendering speeds, they inspire intense technolust in serious PC gamers.
Merely world does not live by GPU solely. If you need a squeaking-end GPU, you must seek IT on a high-end graphics card that may advantageously be plethoric with separate interesting upgrade features. So, graphics card game themselves are feats of distant engineering, marrying dodgy circle-board design to canny cooling strategies.
Now we take three single-GPU graphics cards, each a unique wonder of engineering. Two card game are reinforced round Nvidia's latest GTX 680 GPU, and the early incorporates AMD's latest Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. The GTX 680 focuses on delivering tremendous gaming performance, while the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition is strong at games but also provides first-class GPU carrying into action for nongaming applications that can benefit from using a GPU for computational tasks.
Typically, Nvidia and AMD habitus reference point boards with fairly conservative GPU and storage clock speeds. Identity card makers then take these reference designs, relabel them without ever-changing much of anything, and offer them purchasable. Recently, however, graphics card manufacturers possess reliable to specialise themselves in a highly competitive commercialize past creating their personal board designs. These designs offer custom cooling, improved voltage rule, and significantly higher CORE clock speeds than the reference designs bash. Out of the box, they're faster than reference designs, but they besides tend to be a little pricier.
The contenders
Let's take a look at a spec chart for these high-end graphics card game. Then we'll discuss each card individually in greater depth.
| FEATURE | EVGA GTX 680 Classified | Asus GTX 680 DCII Whirligig | Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 Dual X OC |
| GPU | Nvidia GTX 680 | Nvidia GTX 680 | AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Variant |
| Core group clock | 1111MHz | 1137MHz | 950MHz |
| Boost time | 1176MHz | 1201MHz | 1000MHz |
| Video memory | 4GB (6008MHz) | 2GB (6008MHz) | 3GB (5800MHz) |
| Power connectors | Two 8-pin | One 8-pin, one 6-pin | One 8-pin, one 6-pin |
| Show connectors | 1 DP 1.2, unrivalled HDMI 1.4a, two DVI-Dual Link | One Stateless person 1.2, one HDMI 1.4a, two DVI-Dual Link | Cardinal DP 1.2, one HDMI 1.4a, one DVI Dual Link, matchless DVI Single Link |
| Physical size of it (length/height/design style) | 10.5 inches/5.94 inches/double slot | 11.8 inches/5.1 inches/three-base hit slot | 11.0 inches /4.72 inches/double time slot |
| Price | $650 | $550 | $475 |
The GTX 680 is a newer GPU than the AMD Radeon HD 7970, and card makers seem to be able to push its core clock speeds retributory a bit higher than the AMD's. However, differences in nontextual matter chips' core clock speed don't always directly translate into performance differences.
Now Lashkar-e-Toiba's take a closer look at all card. Afterward, we'll diving into the performance quiz results.
EVGA GTX 680 Classified
The Classified series comprises the highest-performance air-cooled cards that EVGA offers.
The Confidential card differs from its rivals in several ways. First, the EVGA GTX 680 Classified includes a staggering 4GB of draw up buffer memory. Second, it uses two 8-pin connectors, as opposed to the one 6-immobilize/one 8-pin power configuration that nigh other GTX 680 cards use. The EVGA card also relies connected a single temperature reduction fan, rather than usual two or more fans. Finally, the identity card is unusually tall, at 5.94 inches, so you'll need to make sure that your case has comfortable summit clearance to accept the card. The standard height for a PCI Express slot is 4.2 inches.
Asus GTX 680 DCII Crown
The "DCII" in the name stands for "DirectCU 2." Asus uses a direct-impinging copper heat sink to assist in cooling the card.
This is a massive card. Though not not quite arsenic tall as the EVGA posting, it occupies three PCI Express slot spaces inside a PC. It's too longer, at 11.8 inches, so you'll need a fairly deep case to hold the card. Your choice of motherboards is an important factor, as some vertically mounted SATA ports whitethorn be inaccessible to the GTX 680 DCII TOP.
In return you'll get one of the most aggressively factory-overclocked card game on the market. Despite the exceptional 1137MHz heart and soul clock (which exceeds 1.2GHz in encouragement mode), the card is exceptionally quiet. You arse hear the threefold temperature reduction fans spin up under load, only the Asus card is noticeably quieter than the EVGA card. Though idle power is slightly take down, the higher boost clock leads to more-demanding power draw under load. So when the card is lengthways low a heavy 3D-rendering lading, information technology consumes about 30W more than the EVGA card does when similarly filled.
Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 Dual X OC
The Sapphire Dual X is the only card of the three reviewed here that is supported AMD's Radeon HD 7970 Gigahertz Edition—eventually it doesn't quite time at 1GHz, demur under boost conditions.
The Dual X isn't Sapphire's highest-end card, however, and then the hidebound setting isn't terribly surprising. The card has a more conventional size than the other two cards, too. Information technology's a full 11 inches long simply only 4.7 inches tall, and it takes up two slot spaces. The dual-fan cooling system shroud is shaped to lessen the likelihood of problems involving motherboard ports, though the card's length could be an issue in telling to some motherboards and few relatively shallow PC cases.
As we'll see shortly, the Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition tends to consume Thomas More powerfulness under load than the GTX 680.
Carrying out
We ran all of our performance and power tests on our standard graphics test system, which has the following components and features:
- 3.3GHz Intel Core i7 3960X CPU
- Asus P9X79 Deluxe motherboard
- Intel RT2011 sealed liquid C.P.U. cooler
- 16GB Barbary pirate DDR-1600 memory (quad-channel)
- Corsair AX1200 might append
- 1TB Seagate 7200.12 hard-record driveway
- Asus Blu-ray reader/DVD writer
- Corsair Graphite 600T case
We did not overclock the system. We used a Watts Up Pro USB power meter to owed system power data. All of our game test results are reportable at a resolution of 2560 by 1600 pixels, with 4x multisampling antialiasing enabled.
Our examination regimen includes two synthetic 3D benchmarks and six game benchmarks for evaluating performance:
- 3DMark 2011, which simulates game interpretation and GPU compute tasks.
- Unigine Heaven, which can hammer a GPU's hardware tessellation engine.
- Crysis 2, rill with hardware tessellation disabled, since the mettlesome's use of tessellation is poorly implemented.
- Total War: Shogun 2. Dialing improving every last of Shogun 2's features makes the game a serious memory hog when handling video.
- DiRT Showdown. The latest version of the DiRT racing franchise implements worldwide miniature using GPU compute.
- Stain 3. The older DiRT 3 test is more conventional in how information technology handles DirectX 11 rendering.
- Metro 2033. This older first-person shooter can still stress nontextual matter card game.
- Batman: Arkham Metropolis. The sequel to the sleeper pip Arkham Asylum offers a series of aviate-throughs at different levels to test graphics performance.
Performance results: Power
Few people use their PC alone for gaming, so it makes sense to test some idle carrying out and performance subordinate 3D load. Idle performance is close to what you'll see from these cards when you race rule desktop applications on your system.
Of the three cards we tested, the Sky-blue model consumed the least office when idling, merely it also drew the most power nether lode. The unwarranted power difference between the HD 7970 and the Asus GTX 680 is minimal, however. Load power using up differences are to a greater extent strong, but eventide the 18W difference there North Korean won't greatly affect your power bill.
The Sapphire card was a bit louder than the Asus card, merely a trifle quieter than the EVGA GTX 680 Classified. Every last 3 cards were considerably less clanging than the previous generation's high-end cards, however. This is partly imputable their improved power efficiency: These cards just put on't get as hot as their predecessors did. In addition, the manufacturers have worked to tune their cooling systems to minimize Thomas More-noticeable, high-oftenness noise.
3DMark 2011 and Unigine Paradise
These two synthetic benchmarks make somewhat harsher demands on GPUs than most games coiffe, though the type of consignment doesn't always reflect what modern games are doing. Think of these benchmarks arsenic tests of possible, rather than real, performance.
The Asus GTX 680 DCII Pinnacle South Korean won out in 3DMark 2011 by a wide edge. The differences in the Unigine Heaven test became less broad once we rotated on antialiasing. Still, the results for the two GTX 680 card game were pretty close whether antialiasing was wrong-side-out happening or off, and both of them eked out wins over the Sapphire notice.
Game operation
When we look at the results of effective game testing, we see that performance differences tended to vary from game to game, depending on the rather game load presented. Each game in our psychometric test suite approaches 3D rendering chores in its own way.
The Radeon HD 7970 did fairly well along Crysis 2. Notably, enabling hardware tessellation in Crysis 2 flipped the result, with the Nvidia GPUs outperforming the AMD. But Crysis 2's tessellation isn't very smart, which prevent it from existence a very representative example of how about games employment tessellation.
The Asus TOP card pretty much cleaned astir connected Shogun 2. Shogun 2's heavy use of graphics shaders position the Asus card's high burden clock race to good use.
Scandal Showdown uses GPU compute for its advanced lighting engine, particularly when handling global illumination. The differences in GPU reckon performance were especially noticeable in this game test. We terminate't predict how many future games wish habit the techniques that DiRT Showdown employs, just it is an unputdownable model. The Radeon HD 7970 demonstrated a clear and unambiguous performance advantage in this game.
The older DiRT 3 uses more-traditional DirectX 11 rendering techniques. At our test resolution, it besides seems to be Central processing unit-bound, and the result was a out heat.
Metro 2033 is a heavy system hog, as the low gross underframe rates on this test indicate. AMD earned a technical knockout here, but the differences general weren't that large.
Batman: Arkham City is a more more conventional gamy, and our test card game were understandably up to the task of running it well. Once again, the Sapphire captured first place (by a margin of 3 frames per second), but wholly of the cards turned in frame rates healthy over 60 fps, indeed the practical differene in results is borderline.
Bottom line
All three cards performed well on most games, and the differences between them were generally small. The outlier here up to your neck DiRT Encounter—but elsewhere the results were beautiful flat.
The EVGA GTX 680 Eyes-only is an intriguing but ultimately blemished card. It includes 4GB of video memory, so if you plan on running three 1080p monitors using Nivida's 3D Vision stereoscopic expose technology, this card might be a skilled choice. On the past hand, the extra height makes information technology problematic to establis in many cases—and it's a trifle noisier than the Asus card, excessively. The dual 8-pin world power connectors mightiness mean that you can manually overclock it more, particularly with EVGA's superior Preciseness X overclocking software; only many an users May feel skittish or so overclocking a GPU that's already pushed pretty hard.
At $475, the Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 Dual X OC wins the crown for best Mary Leontyne Pric/performance ratio. However, it consumes a little more superpowe and makes a little noise than the Asus GTX 680 DCII TOP. I would atomic number 4 fond to extend to with the Asus card supported noise levels alone. The massive Asus GTX 680 DCII TOP is about as quiet a high-finish card equally I've ever heard. And at $550, it costs well to a lesser degree EVGA's Categorized card. If you want the performance, only not the noise, of a high-end GPU, the Asus GTX 680 DCII TOP is a great choice.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/461449/extreme-graphics-cards-three-killer-boards-that-beat-their-reference-designs.html
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