Over thinking?

The 690 will dump half of its heat into the case due to a radial fan mounted in between the twp gpus with half going out the back and half going inward.    Something to ponder while news of a sale hangs out there.      Performance wise, they're almost the same, with sli 680 a bit better but not hy much.

Edited by bprat22 - 29 Jun 2012 at 1:48pm

Originally posted by bprat22 The 690 will dump half of its heat into the case due to a radial fan mounted in between the twp gpus with half going out the back and half going inward.    Something to ponder while news of a sale hangs out there.      Performance wise, they're almost the same, with sli 680 a bit better but not hy much.

If the cards are liquid cooled, no they will not. There will be no extra heat build up.

Also, the configuration said 680 SLI or 690 SLI. A 690 by itself has the performance of the 680 SLI, so the 690 SLI (2 cards) would have 4 times the performance of the 680 SLI.

EDIT: By 690 SLI, did you mean one card? I saw the 4GB upon rereading the post after I posted. Whenever I see SLI I just automatically assume it's two cards, despite the 690 being basically 2 680s. I just don't consider a 690 by itself SLI, even though technically it is.

Edited by Err0xx - 29 Jun 2012 at 2:00pm

Originally posted by Err0xx Originally posted by bprat22 The 690 will dump half of its heat into the case due to a radial fan mounted in between the twp gpus with half going out the back and half going inward.    Something to ponder while news of a sale hangs out there.      Performance wise, they're almost the same, with sli 680 a bit better but not hy much. If the cards are liquid cooled, no they will not. There will be no extra heat build up. Also, the configuration said 680 SLI or 690 SLI. A 690 by itself has the performance of the 680 SLI, so the 690 SLI (2 cards) would have 4 times the performance of the 680 SLI. EDIT: By 690 SLI, did you mean one card? I saw the 4GB upon rereading the post after I posted. Whenever I see SLI I just automatically assume it's two cards, despite the 690 being basically 2 680s. I just don't consider a 690 by itself SLI, even though technically it is.

Edited by shot - 29 Jun 2012 at 2:06pm

My configuration has 2 GTX690's that are watercooled. Overkill? Not based on how fast tech is growing.

I'm now using 3 monitors in a 5850 x 1080 resoultion in 3D. I'll use every bit of my 690's for that. If you ever decide to try something like that out in the future, the 690's are going to future proof you.

I'd drop the sound card in your configuration and save up some extra cash and go with the 690's and watercool them to ensure heat buildup isn't an issue. That being said, I'd still pick the dual 690's air cooled over the 680's. You would have to get Digital Storms advice as to whether or not your case could handle the air cooled heat from them.

That's a pic of my monitor setup and the 3D is amazing. For pushing games at max settings on 3D with this much screen real estate, you need horsepower like the 690's, especially for future games. If you save up and try a monitor setup like this, you won't regret getting the 690's now.

Quad sli, 2x 690 is definitely more powerful than sli680.   No contest. The sli 680s will not max out all games on the 30" monitor and stay 60fps plus.    The 2x 690 would smoke that monitor with room to grow.

Originally posted by bprat22 Quad sli, 2x 690 is definitely more powerful than sli680.   No contest. The sli 680s will not max out all games on the 30" monitor and stay 60fps plus.    The 2x 690 would smoke that monitor with room to grow.

I use integrated sound, on the mobo, and it soundd good to me.     My rig is over a year old with the p8p67 mobo and gtx 560 card.       You guys make my mouth water.

Originally posted by shot Originally posted by bprat22 Quad sli, 2x 690 is definitely more powerful than sli680.   No contest. The sli 680s will not max out all games on the 30" monitor and stay 60fps plus.    The 2x 690 would smoke that monitor with room to grow.   That's what I like to hear and that's what I don't need to hear, lol.   I need to get with DS and see if the case can handle the heat.  I guess I need to also check to see if they even have the 6904GB cards.   If DS doesn't post soon about a sale or not for the 4th, I'll be buying an Aventum by then.  This is getting rediculous, lol.   bprat22, do you use a dedicated sound card? If not what motherboard do you have?

My vote? Go with the Aventum but bro, be prepared for a wait.

I ordered mine 49 days ago this Wednesday and it hasn't shipped yet. Just a FYI depending on how soon you want it by.

Originally posted by FrankW I will say this about all of your configurations. I gave up on you a while back. Frank

Edited by shot - 29 Jun 2012 at 3:08pm

Rock and roll brotha. You won't regret the 690's. Promise. :D

Both the GTX 690 and GTX 680 are great cards. In terms of thermals and such being dumped into the system, I wouldn't worry too much, it wouldn't be a whole lot anyways. If heat being dumped into a system was a major issue, nor NVIDIA or us would offer or market the configuration with the PCs.

so even though the GTX 690 in the configurator shows 4GB Vram the reality is you are limited to 2GB

From Anandtech:

"Final Words

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.

With that said, this would typically be the part of the review where we would inject a well-placed recap of the potential downsides of multi-GPU technology; but in this case there’s really no need. Unlike the GTX 590 and unlike the GTX 295 NVIDIA is not making a performance tradeoff here compared to their single-GPU flagship card. When SLI works the GTX 690 is the fastest card out there, and when SLI doesn’t work the GTX 690 is still the fastest card out there. For the first time in a long time using a dual-GPU card doesn’t mean sacrificing single-GPU performance, and that’s a game changer."

The "performance tradeoff" referenced includes the utilization of VRAM, look at the tests they did in the link I posted a few posts back and see for yourself.

That's another point as well, not all games support or even play well with SLI. With the 690GTX's, even if your game doesn't support SLI, you still have the fastest card available.

Edited by Err0xx - 30 Jun 2012 at 7:33pm

Originally posted by Err0xx Originally posted by tju76 From what i understand in regards to Vram on sli cards for instance SLI 690's or 680's you will only beable to use the vram of a single proocessor, so for instance i have a pair of GTX 680's 2GB which adds up to 4GB vram but this is not true i can only use the 2GB of the first card http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1679618 so the better cards for what the OP was asking would be Sli GTX 680 4gb more vram for higher resolutions. That is 100% untrue with Kepler-based dual GPU cards. I'll have to find the link somewhere in my browser history, but the Keplar architecture allows for 2gb per GPU processor to be used, in the case of the 690GTX, that's 4GB. Thats one of the main reasons why the GTX690 is the closest card ever to equaling the 2 cards that are combined to make it. The performance difference is within 5% compared to SLI 680's, being able to use all the vram is what makes it possible. The Kepler architecture is what enables this. Also, if VRAM runs out, Kepler can pull ram from the system that isn't being used to help with graphics processing; since each of the 690's has 2 GPUs, it would process this "borrowed" ram twice as fast. I've never seen a single benchmark that didn't show: 1) A single GTX 690 being within 5% of SLI'd GTX680's 2) 2 GTX690's being within 5 - 8% of quad GTX 680's. Now that's not additive across cards, which is what your forum link talks about. In other words 2 GTX690's in SLI are utilizing 4GB of VRAM, not 4GB each. So 2 4GB GTX680's would use 4GB VRAM but not have as many GPU processors crunching it. 2 GTX 690's in SLI = 4GB VRAM and 4 GPU Processors 2 GTX 680's 4GB in SLI = 4GB VRAM and 2 GPU processors (That is if the bigger GB GTX was used, and not 2 2GB GTX 680's, then it'd be limited to 2GB total) Hands down, the GTX690 is the best choice here.

the 690 is in sli, the gpu's are still linked in sli just because it is not on two seperate cards does not negate the fact that it is sli, so it is decieving to compare what you call 2 GTX 690's in a quad sli setup to 2x GTX 680 in a dual sli setup, no matter how many 690's you string together you will be limited by the 2gb of vram.

Ultimately, what the Senior moderator said at Overclocker.net:

"I agree that there's not YET any shred of proof that 4GB cards are faster at any resolution, but it makes sense that there will be SOME resolution at which the 4GB cards will enjoy a performance lead.

However, you'll need at LEAST two of them (if not 3 or 4) before the 4GB is going to show any actual practical value, I'm quite sure of that. Buying a single 4GB card w/no intent to SLI it and use them extreme resolutions (like at LEAST 5760x1200) is almost certainly going to be a bad investment.

So, to once again answer the OP's question ... the 690 (which is actually 2 x 680 2GB cards in SLI, basically) will DESTROY a single 4GB 680 in 99% of all gaming scenarios, and when it DOESN'T ... it's going to be like a case where it's 12fps for the 680 4GB and 5FPS for the 690 ... IOW unplayably slow in either case.

The thing that you should take away from this discussion Orc is that vram capacity is a generally a poor indicator of actual gfx card performance. It gets a lot of 'marketing' hype, and people unfortunately end up buying cards because of memory amounts ... but it's really one of MANY specs that need to be considered, and it's actually typically not all that important of a spec is the truth.

When deciding between different GPU's you might buy, you should look up reviews and check out benchmarks on the cards.

IOW, don't try to reckon performance just by looking at 'specs' like clocks or vram amounts ... if you do, you're very likely to end up making rather egregious mistakes in your purchasing. Look up benchmarks, always ... or ask people around here "

http://www.overclock.net/t/1270947/gtx-690-vs-gtx-680-4gb-version-which-one-does-better/20

Originally posted by tju76 Don't get hostile that i provided facts to back up my claims about the GTX 690 only being able to support 2GB of vram per GPU, As for your request i would be more than happy to

I'm not hostile. I want to see benchmarks that show a noticeable fps gain in 4gb over 2gb. (noticeable, as in not 1-4fps, etc)

In the end the 256 bit bus is gonna be the ultimate limiting factor. Yes, the 4gb card has the same 256 bit bus.