I have a tradition of making an irresponsible impulse purchase after passing some sort of major milestone. Getting through this accursed licensing process, including a 4.25-hour exam, might be just the excuse I need to buy an EVGA GTX 680 FTW card.
I'm not done with the 4 h, 15 min. monster of an exam yet. I'm saying I'm going to reward myself with a GTX 680 after I'm finished. I'm still suffering through the licensing/certification process currently. I have the licensing part done but still need the HSPP certification to officially call myself a neuropsychologist.
I don't think EVGA's FTW model has even been released yet. I'm talking about down the road a few months more than likely. But I am impressed with the technology, especially the adaptive vsync and power efficiency. I've also read they are fairly quiet, which will be a welcome improvement over that stock AMD fan in that XFX card, which sounded awful.
Makes sense. The $500 super cards are great for getting people excited, but it's the $200 mainstream card that everyone buys. I'm very curious to see what the GTX 660 brings to the table. If it's another price/performance king like the 8800GT or GTX 460, nVidia will be in a really good position.
The latest rumor is the GTX 660 will compete against the AMD HD7770/HD7850. The card replaces the GTX 560Ti/560Ti 448 Cores and would be priced similar to those around $220 Price Range. If this is true the 660 will just be another card in the flooded mid range segment. A quick check shows a 7850 can be had for about $240 right now. I expect the prices will be lower by Q3 which is when the GTX 660 will come out. The GTX 670Ti will replace NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580, and take on the HD 7950 3GB. The GTX 670 on the other hand, replaces the GTX 570 and should be slightly faster, too. These are set to release in a few weeks. I'm very curious to see the price on these. Nvidia is also rumored to have an even faster 680 waiting in reserve in case AMDs new 8970 takes the crown back. The 8970 is expected to release in Q4 and guessed to be about 20% faster than the current 7970 flagship.
The faster card is GK110, which is a revision of the planned GK100 (what should have been GTX 680). GTX 680 as we know it is really a mid range card taking the 680 name because GK100 didn't work out (I would have likely ended up like GF100/GTX480 only worse) and because GK104 performed very well compared to the competition. This is why GTX 680 isn't a proper compute card, as it is not made for double precision FP. Taking the extra time to get their high end part right seems to have worked out for NV, but the "new" midrange taking so long might not be so good. The 78xx series has really good performance/watt and performance/mm^2, better than GTX680, so it may take some tweaking of the part they had planned to properly compete with it. Either that or they will undercut it on price and release a cut down GK104 (GTX 665? 660Ti *shader count*) to compete on performance. The problem is as I said, the 78xx series is more efficient than the GK104, so they will likely have to sell a larger chip to outperform it. That hasn't stopped them from still having higher margins than AMD/ATI in the past.
@bfun The midrange segment is pretty boring. It hasn't really improved significantly since I bought my 1GB/256-bit 460 two years ago.
Hasn't it? http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/548?vs=542 It hadn't improved much until now because we'd been stuck on 40nm so long. Since you don't seem to look at AMD products and NV haven't released midrange 28nm products yet, it makes sense that you would still hold that opinion.
I'm not sure how AMD classifies the 7870 but at a price of $350 I'd put it in the high end bracket. At $250 the 7850 is more mid-range. The AMD mid-range got confusing when the 6850 was slower than the 5850 and the 6870 was only slightly faster than the 5870. The 6970 made a large performance jump but then the 7850 performs about the same and is the same price. Following that trend the 7950 is only slightly faster than the 6970. Because of their marketing it never felt like AMD made a big jump between generations and to make things more confusing you can still find 5800, 6800, and 7800 all on the market even though the first two have been end of life. So anyway I have a 5850 and when I look past the 6850 to the 6950 I only see a 15% increase in performance. I have to go all the way to the 7850 to get a performance increase of 20% to25%.
By midrange I meant around $200 USD, give or take $50. The 7850 and 7870 I would consider high-end given the price. Above $250 I would consider high-end. 7870 is definitely high-end, and 7850 is on the lower end of the high-end. The 7770 is the current AMD midrange card, and it doesn't really shake things up much in terms of performance. The 1GB GTX 460 was the last card that really changed the game in the midrange market. 560Ti is just a refreshed 460, and AMD has been doing what it can to offer the same level of performance for around the same price with cards like the 6850 and 7770. What we need now is another $200 game changer similar to the 8800GT, Radeon 4850, and GTX 460. A card that offers the same level of performance as the expensive cards, but at a price normal people are willing to pay.
I consider anything with a free game high end. Monkey doesn't ignore AMD he just only considers anything Anandtech suggests.
You and monkey are right, the pricing has been creeping up for some time as they blur the line between mid range and high end. The GTX 460 OC editions lead to the splitting of AMD's high end into high end and high-mid end with the introduction of the 6900 series denoting the x800 series the the second tier for single GPU cards. Anyhow the 7870 (and all AMD 7 series) prices are dropping, so the 7870 is now actually approaching the 560Ti, which was the upper end of the mid range cards last gen. Last gen we got some good pricing mid-way through because of the 460 and later 6800 series. Your comments on the 6800 series are a bit out of context. Yes they were marginal improvement at best compared to the 5800 series, but they were a hell of a lot cheaper. Yes the 5800 prices went down at EOL but after that the 6800's continued to really fill the sweet spot of $200 or less. I think as the 7850 makes its way down to that level (when/if NV deliver in the midrange) then that's a fairly solid performance bump from 2 years ago. In other words, the products are there, but with lack of competition and low'ish yields and high manufacturing prices due to the still fairly new 28nm process, the prices just aren't where they should be yet. Hopefully by the time the GTX 460 turns 2 years old the prices will be approaching similar levels for these current and upcoming true replacement mid-range cards.
I extracted my wonky XFX 6950 (again), and I'm finding zero problems with gaming or other functions. It's staying out for good this time; I'll never buy an XFX product again. I think I need to place a larger proportion of the issues I've had with Crossfire on XFX's shoddy workmanship than AMD's drivers, although AMD is still often late as hell with their support. I'm excited about this new line from Nvidia and do plan to purchase one of these cards, although I have no idea when I'll actually be able to get my hands on one. I've heard that the GTX 685 or whatever it's called will be on the way before long. I don't want to buy a $500 card right before a better version is released, but I guess in many ways that's the very essence of the experience of purchasing high end graphics cards.