The 690 cooler is pretty much all metal. No cheap plastic (except for the fan). This card is serious business. HardOCP seems ready to bust a nut over it.
So I got a Geforce 550ti to tie my over till an affordable solution came through, and I think the 660 might be the answer.. when they decide to launch the dam thing. Any speculation on a street date for the damn thing yet?
I've been hearing not until Q3, but I can't believe that's true. The ~$200 cards are where they do most of their business.
Well the 660Ti is a cut down GK104 (same chip as 680), and since they can't keep those in stock for more than an hour, releasing a $250 card using the same chip (ok, semi-defective ones) would be even worse. It's crazy here now, even the cheapest 680's cost $100 more than OC 7970's with custom coolers... totally not worth it, especially since the auto overclocking isn't as good as the cherry picked review cards were. Retail 680's perform about dead on par with 7970's across the board. The 660 non Ti I'm not sure about, it will likely be GK106 so that's probably the Q3 one you're talking about.
Not surprisingly, HardOCP busted a nut over the GTX 690. But they're kind of notorious for their love affair with nvidia and also for extremely expensive hardware that no normal person could afford.
Early benchmarks show the GTX670 about 5% slower than the GTX680 and faster than the 7970. In some benchmarks it's just as fast as the GTX680. I'm guessing there were a lot chips that didn't make the cut as a GTX680 and got turned into a GTX670.
AMD has taken the gloves off and called the Kepler cards a paper launch. It's hard to argue with that. Newegg hasn't had any GTX680s in stock for 6 weeks. I'm not sure if they ever had any GTX690s. http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2012/5/9/amd-counter-attacks-geforce-gtx-6702c-questions-nvidias-kepler-availability.aspx
Looks like i'll be picking up the EVGA 670 at the end of the month looks perfect for the games which are coming up...
Re: Re: nVidia Kepler Architecture (Geforce GTX 6xx Series) Overclockers.co.uk has some stock of both in different brands. Guess people over here can't afford this fancy gear.
I was blown away by how much you guys pay for computer hardware. It's twice what we pay in the US in most cases. I can see why almost none of you game on PC. Britain has nothing equivalent to NewEgg. For instance: GTX 670 in the US: $399 GTX 670 in the UK: $677 Holy fuck do you guys overpay. Basically all of the price dropping on PCs that happened in the US over the last 15 years never happened in the UK. You guys still pay $2000-3000 for a decent desktop. It would probably be cheaper just to buy everything on NewEgg and import it than deal with your crappy stores.
It wouldn't because you could end up paying import tax on it. Normal desktops and laptops are dirt cheap, it is only when you go for bits like these that things get silly. Prices has dropped massively in the 12 years I have been in IT. A work desktop from Dell would cost £1200+ when I started now I get them for £500-£550. Remember we have 20% tax on all our online purchases, if we didn't pay tax like you guys things would be closer.
Yeah, but a bargain basement Dell in the US costs $300. You're still paying twice or three times as much. Why do your computer stores suck so badly? I'm surprised NewEgg hasn't come into the UK and made a killing.
I am not talking bargain basement. I am talking work based optiplex models with core i5 cpu's and 3 year warranties etc. You can get cheap models for sub £300 easily. http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/vostro-260/fs
Optiplex is maybe $350-400. Still massively overpaying. You guys should petition NewEgg or something to come into your country and liberate you from your sucky computer stores.
Optiplex models come in 3 varieties last time I checked, 3xx, 5xx and 7xx the lower the series the cheaper they are. Also I probably didn't mention as I work for a tax exempt company if I order stuff through work I don't neex to pay the 20% tax.
Price aside, even the selection was really bad on the British computer stores when I was trying to find something for arma. It was like I was transported back to the 1990s when computers were an expensive luxury item, and most people bought prebuilts from Dell and Gateway.
We have all the same high end brands, I used to spend a lot of money on it before I got tied down. If it is out of stock I think some sites like ebuyer don't list it. The 680s are a good example at the minute, only 4 brands listed whereas overclockers has a huge list just with pre-order next to most of them.
It is all to do with economy right? The national minimum wage is the US is around $7.25-8 right? The minimum wage here is just a tiny spec under $10.00 I do get your point though, as shit as apple are; their prices are far better in the UK than any of the hardware manufacturers, it closely matches the dollar. In PC computing though the prices are a bit outrageous.. Grim, are you a member of ocuk? whats your handle??