GTX680 review

[RicoFrost]

I just installed a GTX680 upgrading from GTX580. I did multiple tests this morning with different setting in the control panel. My computer spec’s are in my signature.

 

Using GeForce 301.24 Beta Drivers.

 

Here is my client_settings.ini file

 

[Renderer]

AntiAliasingLevel = 8

AtlasQuality = 0

Buckets = 3

D3DFullScreen = true

DynamicLightsLimit = 4

GraphicsDeviceId = 4480

Height = 1080

MeshLODQuality = 1

NativeHeight = 1080

NativeWidth = 1920

PerformanceLevelChanged = false

RefreshRate = 120

TextureAnisotropy = 16

Width = 1920

WindowX = 0

WindowY = 0

doShadows = true

doBlobShadows = true

EnableBloom = true

AllowDepthOfField = true

TextureQuality = 0

ShaderSet = 9

PlantDensity = 100

VerticalSyncState = true

FarClipScale = 1.

 

 

[Game]

MoviesFolder = ..\..\Movies

SwtorRegKey = SOFTWARE\BioWare\Star Wars - The Old Republic

 

Here are my results.

I did warzones as a test because single player runs very well. I would watch my FPS when doing different things in the game. Some tests have more info then others. On ave most wz where sitting around 55-70fps this is with shadows and bloom on

 

Test 1 The Civil war - During combat when a number of people around me FPS dropped to 45 at times and ave FPS was about 70.

 

Test 2 VoidStar- The overall game did seem smoother then normal however i did notice at the door when everyone was aoeing that the FPS did drop to 25FPS for a short time.

 

Test 3- Sorry didn't having anything written down for this test, from what i remember it feel the same as AAx4, i dont recall noticing any difference.

 

Test 4 Nova coast - 75-85FPS standing in the starting area, when capping the east tower inside i was getting 49FPS. In heavy combat it dropped down to 45FPS.

 

Test 4 Huttball - Standing in the starting area 70-80FPS and the lowest FPS i saw was 45FPS in combat.

Test 1

 

Antaliasing = 4

Antaliasing Transparency = Mulitsample

Texture filtering quality = Quality

Triple buffering = off

Vertical sync = adaptive

Treaded optimization = on

TextureAnisotropy = 16

 

 

Test 2

 

Antaliasing = 4

Antaliasing Transparency = Mulitsample

Texture filtering quality = High Quality

Triple buffering = off

Vertical sync = adaptive

Treaded optimization = on

TextureAnisotropy = 16

 

 

Test 3

 

Antaliasing = 2

Antaliasing Transparency = Mulitsample

Texture filtering quality = Quality

Triple buffering = on

Vertical sync = adaptive

Treaded optimization = on

TextureAnisotropy = 16

 

 

Test 4

 

Antaliasing = 8

Antaliasing Transparency = Supersample

Texture filtering quality = Quality

Triple buffering = on

Vertical sync = adaptive

Treaded optimization = on

TextureAnisotropy = 16

 

 

Load times - I did notice a difference in load times.

Loading Tatooine took 40 seconds.

Loading to my ship from the character screen 8 seconds.

Loading Voidstar 12 seconds.

 

Space combat

Nez - 111FPS pretty much the whole mission, it did drop down to 92FPS when there was a lot happening on the screen but that was only really one part of the mission.

Sarapin Assault - Most of the time i was getting 80-111fps but it did drop to 50FPS when the 2 medium ship cross in front of you and you need to blast them.

 

I would have to say that I didn't notice much of a performance difference between AAx2 AAx4 AAx8 or multisample or supersample. Visually I did notice a difference AAx8 supersample looking the best. I did do about 8 different setting tests but they all seem to be pretty much the same so I didn't add them all. I didn't do any tests with AAx0 however. I did try FXAA but I really didn't like how it looked, it just looked blurred to me.

 

Was there a difference from the GTX570? Overall the game did run smoother in pvping it did seem better and I don't recall any major slowdowns. Single play runs awesome, however it ran rather well on the 570 also.

 

The upgrade didn’t seem big compared to BF3. On BF3 I did notice a massive difference but on SWTOR not so much.

 

I do remember wow having the same problems in BGs with lag and FPS issues many years ago, even when I upgraded my video card and CPU.

Edited April 24, 2012 by RicoFrost

[lordvoldy]

Wow... even with a the best card on the market, you still get low fps like that....

[Xeox]

I have the same card, well the CS edition, make sure to run MSI afterburner, they just updated it, and card runs cooler than using any other program. BTW i have an EVGA CS 680GTX and use MSi overclocking software

 

My FPS in WZ are 100+, 40-80 on fleet, all settings max, everything to the limit, and dont break 58 degrees

[RicoFrost]

MSI afterburner doesn't seem to work with my card and I downloaded the latest. What version are you running?

 

I have overclocked it or done anything other then the nvidia control panel settings which didn't seem to do much.

Edited April 24, 2012 by RicoFrost

[lordvoldy]

The only thing in my price range is a 580. Could I get good FPS with that? All my other specs are really solid.

[Xeox]

The only thing in my price range is a 580. Could I get good FPS with that? All my other specs are really solid.

 

Until the 680 is fully optimized the 580GTX is a solid card, if you get the twin frozen edition and or FTW card it smokes the 680 GTX atm

[RicoFrost]

The only thing in my price range is a 580. Could I get good FPS with that? All my other specs are really solid.

 

The 570 did run well, sure there were dips in FPS in wz but single player was solid.

[RicoFrost]

Until the 680 is fully optimized the 580GTX is a solid card, if you get the twin frozen edition and or FTW card it smokes the 680 GTX atm

 

Yes i think there are still lots of driver tweaks needed still, i have yet to see any nvidia enhancements with swtor in any driver version.

[cashogy]

just wanted to point out that load times have very little to do with your graphics card. that is mainly a hdd thing.

 

im running gtx570s in SLI config, and i get similar performance to what you posted. because swtor is running on dx9, you are really not going to get as large of a performance bonus as youd expect with the newest gen gfx cards. which is really frustrating, because the graphics of this game are not intensive at all, and any high end gaming gfx card should breeze through this game, and that is not the case.

[Xeox]

MSI afterburner doesn't seem to work with my card and I downloaded the latest. What version are you running?

 

I have overclocked it or done anything other then the nvidia control panel settings which didn't seem to do much.

 

Nvidia panel does nothing, the MSI Afterburner i use is the latest beta, the full version from teh beta is out, but bugged atm, make sure you uninstall the other overclocker you use.

 

MSI Afterburner

 

On the setting where you can enable user defined fan control, leave the settings the same, and just click the enable, card runs alot cooler.

 

What manufacture of the card did you buy?

 

SWTOR is way to card intensive than it should be, hell on my sons computer i built im running 2 Twin Frozen 580GTX 3g cards in SLI and not much better than single card.

 

Stupid question maybe but do you have Windows Aero turned off, makes big difference

[Xeox]

just wanted to point out that load times have very little to do with your graphics card. that is mainly a hdd thing.

 

im running gtx570s in SLI config, and i get similar performance to what you posted. because swtor is running on dx9, you are really not going to get as large of a performance bonus as youd expect with the newest gen gfx cards. which is really frustrating, because the graphics of this game are not intensive at all, and any high end gaming gfx card should breeze through this game, and that is not the case.

 

If you looked in his sig he stats he has a sata 3 SSD

[RicoFrost]

just wanted to point out that load times have very little to do with your graphics card. that is mainly a hdd thing.

 

im running gtx570s in SLI config, and i get similar performance to what you posted. because swtor is running on dx9, you are really not going to get as large of a performance bonus as youd expect with the newest gen gfx cards. which is really frustrating, because the graphics of this game are not intensive at all, and any high end gaming gfx card should breeze through this game, and that is not the case.

 

I thought that also with load times however I did notice faster load times with the video card over the 570 not much but a little.

 

Sad but true, the difference i notice in BF3 was awesome however the difference in SWTOR was not great.

[Anosa]

I just installed a GTX680 upgrading from GTX580. I did multiple tests this morning with different setting in the control panel. My computer spec’s are in my signature.

 

Using GeForce 301.24 Beta Drivers.

 

Here is my client_settings.ini file

 

[Renderer]

AntiAliasingLevel = 8

AtlasQuality = 0

Buckets = 3

D3DFullScreen = true

DynamicLightsLimit = 4

GraphicsDeviceId = 4480

Height = 1080

MeshLODQuality = 1

NativeHeight = 1080

NativeWidth = 1920

PerformanceLevelChanged = false

RefreshRate = 120

TextureAnisotropy = 16

Width = 1920

WindowX = 0

WindowY = 0

doShadows = true

doBlobShadows = true

EnableBloom = true

AllowDepthOfField = true

TextureQuality = 0

ShaderSet = 9

PlantDensity = 100

VerticalSyncState = true

FarClipScale = 1.

 

 

[Game]

MoviesFolder = ..\..\Movies

SwtorRegKey = SOFTWARE\BioWare\Star Wars - The Old Republic

 

Here are my results.

I did warzones as a test because single player runs very well. I would watch my FPS when doing different things in the game. Some tests have more info then others. On ave most wz where sitting around 55-70fps this is with shadows and bloom on

 

Test 1 The Civil war - During combat when a number of people around me FPS dropped to 45 at times and ave FPS was about 70.

 

Test 2 VoidStar- The overall game did seem smoother then normal however i did notice at the door when everyone was aoeing that the FPS did drop to 25FPS for a short time.

 

Test 3- Sorry didn't having anything written down for this test, from what i remember it feel the same as AAx4, i dont recall noticing any difference.

 

Test 4 Nova coast - 75-85FPS standing in the starting area, when capping the east tower inside i was getting 49FPS. In heavy combat it dropped down to 45FPS.

 

Test 4 Huttball - Standing in the starting area 70-80FPS and the lowest FPS i saw was 45FPS in combat.

Test 1

 

Antaliasing = 4

Antaliasing Transparency = Mulitsample

Texture filtering quality = Quality

Triple buffering = off

Vertical sync = adaptive

Treaded optimization = on

TextureAnisotropy = 16

 

 

Test 2

 

Antaliasing = 4

Antaliasing Transparency = Mulitsample

Texture filtering quality = High Quality

Triple buffering = off

Vertical sync = adaptive

Treaded optimization = on

TextureAnisotropy = 16

 

 

Test 3

 

Antaliasing = 2

Antaliasing Transparency = Mulitsample

Texture filtering quality = Quality

Triple buffering = on

Vertical sync = adaptive

Treaded optimization = on

TextureAnisotropy = 16

 

 

Test 4

 

Antaliasing = 8

Antaliasing Transparency = Supersample

Texture filtering quality = Quality

Triple buffering = on

Vertical sync = adaptive

Treaded optimization = on

TextureAnisotropy = 16

 

 

Load times - I did notice a difference in load times.

Loading Tatooine took 40 seconds.

Loading to my ship from the character screen 8 seconds.

Loading Voidstar 12 seconds.

 

Space combat

Nez - 111FPS pretty much the whole mission, it did drop down to 92FPS when there was a lot happening on the screen but that was only really one part of the mission.

Sarapin Assault - Most of the time i was getting 80-111fps but it did drop to 50FPS when the 2 medium ship cross in front of you and you need to blast them.

 

I would have to say that I didn't notice much of a performance difference between AAx2 AAx4 AAx8 or multisample or supersample. Visually I did notice a difference AAx8 supersample looking the best. I did do about 8 different setting tests but they all seem to be pretty much the same so I didn't add them all. I didn't do any tests with AAx0 however. I did try FXAA but I really didn't like how it looked, it just looked blurred to me.

 

Was there a difference from the GTX570? Overall the game did run smoother in pvping it did seem better and I don't recall any major slowdowns. Single play runs awesome, however it ran rather well on the 570 also.

 

The upgrade didn’t seem big compared to BF3. On BF3 I did notice a massive difference but on SWTOR not so much.

 

I do remember wow having the same problems in BGs with lag and FPS issues many years ago, even when I upgraded my video card and CPU.

 

load times are due to your HD speed not the graphics card

[ezradominic]

for me your GTX 680 partly bottleneck with your processor which is an old cpu (i5-750). unless your processor was an i7-2600k or the i5-2500k plus if you overclock it would have been faster than the fps you experienced. swtor is cpu hungry so it matters most if you have a faster processor not only video card. that is why you and the people arent still impress with the performance.

I myself is waiting for the availability of GTX 680 as nowadays its out of stock anywhere and if there is a site selling its $100 more expensive and its overpiced. until someone give a review using GTX 680 with a recent processor like an i7-2600k which I have or the newer ivy bridge then we will know there would be a big difference...

[RicoFrost]

Nvidia panel does nothing, the MSI Afterburner i use is the latest beta, the full version from teh beta is out, but bugged atm, make sure you uninstall the other overclocker you use.

 

MSI Afterburner

 

On the setting where you can enable user defined fan control, leave the settings the same, and just click the enable, card runs alot cooler.

 

What manufacture of the card did you buy?

 

SWTOR is way to card intensive than it should be, hell on my sons computer i built im running 2 Twin Frozen 580GTX 3g cards in SLI and not much better than single card.

 

Stupid question maybe but do you have Windows Aero turned off, makes big difference

 

Ah thanks for that i will give that one a try when i get home, I would always use the one for guru3d and i was using the final not the beta.

I have the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 2GB Overclocked.

 

I don't have Aero turned off, i will give that a try tonight also.

[StrykerOne]

Wow... even with a the best card on the market, you still get low fps like that....

 

Low? 45 FPS is smooth as silk in an MMO... most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 45 and 60 without an FPS meter (I certainly can't). About the only time you'll ever notice any problems in a game at 35+ or so FPS is during really fast action or maybe really precise actions like sniping a moving target and we don't have that sort of thing in TOR. Someone who is used to a 120 Hz monitor might notice a slight difference if they have very good eyes, but if you are used to playing on a 60 HZ monitor then a drop to 45 FPS is pretty hard to notice unless you specifically are looking for it.

 

I'm sure a few people can tell a difference, but really... what do we ever do in TOR that looks even vaguely choppy at 45 FPS? Maybe panning rapidly in PvP, but even there if you pan fast enough to need over 45 FPS then things are going to look blurry anyway just from the motion. (Again, not counting the few people with exceptionally good eyes and an ultra high end monitor that can display that sort of thing clearly.)

[RicoFrost]

load times are due to your HD speed not the graphics card

 

I do know that but I found it strange that there was a difference after I installed the card.

[cashogy]

I thought that also with load times however I did notice faster load times with the video card over the 570 not much but a little.

 

Sad but true, the difference i notice in BF3 was awesome however the difference in SWTOR was not great.

 

yeah i have 110+ fps in BF3 constant, it will occasionally dip to 70-80 when the fighting is super intense. this game will dip me down to 20 fps sometimes. not sure why bioware developed this game with technology that is 2 generations behind

[Xeox]

for me your GTX 680 partly bottleneck with your processor which is an old cpu (i5-750). unless your processor was an i7-2600k or the i5-2500k plus if you overclock it would have been faster than the fps you experienced. swtor is cpu hungry so it matters most if you have a faster processor not only video card. that is why you and the people arent still impress with the performance.

I myself is waiting for the availability of GTX 680 as nowadays its out of stock anywhere and if there is a site selling its $100 more expensive and its overpiced. until someone give a review using GTX 680 with a recent processor like an i7-2600k which I have or the newer ivy bridge then we will know there would be a big difference...

 

Im running a Maximus Extreme Z Republic of Gamers MB 17-2600k OC to 4.3 stable at 62 degrees, 16 gig 2200 RAM, 2 320 gig Cosair SATA 3 SSD's in raid. And a EVGA 680GTX SC edition and i run wz, and world at 90-111 FPS, fleets drops me to about 40-70 FPS.

 

Game is very much not optimized, as nothing even benchmarking makes my system go over 65 degrees but farming on Hoth will increases my card temp and core temp by 5+ degrees

 

So card is great, not quite as good as the EVGA FTW version of the 580 but this 680 has yet to be optimized for all applications as of yet as drivers are coming out ever week or so

[RicoFrost]

for me your GTX 680 partly bottleneck with your processor which is an old cpu (i5-750). unless your processor was an i7-2600k or the i5-2500k plus if you overclock it would have been faster than the fps you experienced. swtor is cpu hungry so it matters most if you have a faster processor not only video card. that is why you and the people arent still impress with the performance.

I myself is waiting for the availability of GTX 680 as nowadays its out of stock anywhere and if there is a site selling its $100 more expensive and its overpiced. until someone give a review using GTX 680 with a recent processor like an i7-2600k which I have or the newer ivy bridge then we will know there would be a big difference...

 

I was thinking of upgrading the CPU but from a lot of reviews i have seen, there isn't much of a difference. Keep in mind that its a quad core running at 4ghz.

[cashogy]

I was thinking of upgrading the CPU but from a lot of reviews i have seen, there isn't much of a difference. Keep in mind that its a quad core running at 4ghz.

 

if you can afford it, the i7 2600k is killer. ive got mine oc'd to 4.3, and it just demolishes everything. plus the hyperthreading on the i7 basically gives it 8 cores

[Xeox]

Low? 45 FPS is smooth as silk in an MMO... most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 45 and 60 without an FPS meter (I certainly can't). About the only time you'll ever notice any problems in a game at 35+ or so FPS is during really fast action or maybe really precise actions like sniping a moving target and we don't have that sort of thing in TOR. Someone who is used to a 120 Hz monitor might notice a slight difference if they have very good eyes, but if you are used to playing on a 60 HZ monitor then a drop to 45 FPS is pretty hard to notice unless you specifically are looking for it.

 

I'm sure a few people can tell a difference, but really... what do we ever do in TOR that looks even vaguely choppy at 45 FPS? Maybe panning rapidly in PvP, but even there if you pan fast enough to need over 45 FPS then things are going to look blurry anyway just from the motion. (Again, not counting the few people with exceptionally good eyes and an ultra high end monitor that can display that sort of thing clearly.)

 

 

let me know how it goes, send me a pm i can push you in the right direction if more help is needed for your set up.

 

And BTW i was given the card by local retailer to Test it out, so im going to be overclocking it like hell next week and thru GW2 Beta weekend Event to see if i can light it on fire, or not.

[RicoFrost]

if you can afford it, the i7 2600k is killer. ive got mine oc'd to 4.3, and it just demolishes everything. plus the hyperthreading on the i7 basically gives it 8 cores

 

Most reviews i have seen regarding hyperthreading have been negative for gaming. I also remember reading people on the forums having to turn off hyperthreading to stop stuttering.

[Xeox]

if you can afford it, the i7 2600k is killer. ive got mine oc'd to 4.3, and it just demolishes everything. plus the hyperthreading on the i7 basically gives it 8 cores

 

This game does not use hyperthreading at all, but yes the 2600k is a massive upgrade even though the OP has his OC to 4.0, the bottle neck in the bridge is causing a problem.

 

Also make sure in BIOS in the i5 the rails are set to 16x not 8x some of the versions of boards defaulted to 8x and have to manually changed, same as the i7 defaults ram from 1600 down to 1333 for efficiency and has to be manually increased. Had to do this with my 2200 RAM as well as it defaulted to 1800

[cashogy]

Most reviews i have seen regarding hyperthreading have been negative for gaming. I also remember reading people on the forums having to turn off hyperthreading to stop stuttering.

 

most games dont use hyperthreading, i was just refering to overall computer usage.