Meet Nvidia’s New Flagship Card, The $999 GeForce GTX 690

12 years ago

April 30, 2012 at 11:30 am

Capping off Nvidia’s tease from earlier in the week, the company has taken the wraps off the GeForce GTX 690, which will be out on May 3. Price? Oh, a mere $US999.

Calling it their new “flagship” card, Nvidia reckons performance from the dual-Kepler GPU -packing card equals that of two GTX 680s slung together in SLI.

It also looks pretty badass, with an exterior made from cast aluminium. Specs are as follows:

CUDA Cores: 3072
Base Clock: 915 MHz
Boost Clock: 1019 MHz
Memory Configuration: 4GB / 512-bit GDDR5
Memory Speed : 6.0 Gbps
Power Connectors: 8-pin + 8-pin
TDP: 300W
Outputs: 3x DL-DVI
Mini-DisplayPort: 1.2
Bus Interface: PCI Express 3.0
While an in-house performance chart looks like this:

I’ll take two and a bag of chips, thanks.

Performance Perfected: Introducing the GeForce GTX 690 [Nvidia]

Comments

41 responses to “Meet Nvidia’s New Flagship Card, The $999 GeForce GTX 690”

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Grandmaster B-Funk

April 30, 2012 at 11:41 am

60 FPS ON WITCHER 2 MAX SETTINGS?!?!?!? MY 3GB GRAPHICS CARD HAS TROUBLE WITH THAT GAME ON MAX SETTINGS HOLY SHIT!!!!
Unless something is just wrong with my witcher 2 or pc…

Reply
1. Thom
  
  April 30, 2012 at 12:34 pm
  
  That game is an absolute beast. I have a sandy bridge and mid-range graphics card. I play on low. Low. It still looks fantastic, but jesus.
  
  Reply
  1. Thom
    
    April 30, 2012 at 12:35 pm
    
    On a side note, I updated PC’s this year, and I noticed absolutely no improvement on performance on that game. My new machine is way better than my old, and I still have occasional texture pop-in.
    
    Reply
    1. liam
      
      April 30, 2012 at 12:57 pm
      
      I get about that with two overclocked 570s, you could probably get two 580s and get better performance than a 690.
      
      Reply
      1. Daniel
        
        April 30, 2012 at 5:30 pm
        
        Uuuuuummmmmmmmm…..no. The 690 runs the new Kepler architecture. Two 580s with Fermi will still not quite match a single 690, with less power consumption to boot.
      2. Ben Jones
        
        May 2, 2012 at 10:43 am
        
        What about 2 x 690s? Will that be better than a 690? >.>
  2. SamHIll
    
    April 30, 2012 at 1:07 pm
    
    Really? At what Res? I play The Witcher 2 on ultra (minus ubersampling) at 1440X900 with a HD 6770, a budget card. I avg about 40 frames, my lowest is 27.
    
    Reply
    1. Thom
      
      April 30, 2012 at 2:02 pm
      
      The frame rate is fine. It’s the texture pop-in. I’ve run it with three machines, and I don’t seem to be able to resolve the issue, other than busting it down to low.
      
      Reply
      1. Thom
        
        April 30, 2012 at 2:02 pm
        
        I should add that I really like the game nonetheless.
      2. dainbramage
        
        April 30, 2012 at 3:44 pm
        
        Wouldn’t texture pop-in be more likely due to HDD speed than your graphics card?
      3. Thom
        
        April 30, 2012 at 4:11 pm
        
        The thought has crossed my mind. However, I do have to ask if we’re at the stage where a SSD is a requirement, or if its just mediocre programming. It certainly wasn’t written as a requirement on the box>
        
        Man I feel dirty complaining about this because I love that game so much.
      4. dainbramage
        
        April 30, 2012 at 4:21 pm
        
        Also one pitfall of playing on low is that it by default uses less RAM to store textures. You might want to bump that setting up if.
        
        I have an ageing system that runs it on 1920×1200 on medium at about 30fps usually. There’s occasionally some texture pop, but not too bad. Usually only in flotsam, the other towns didn’t seem to really be affected by it. And after all it’s a result of there not being a load screen.
      5. dainbramage
        
        April 30, 2012 at 4:22 pm
        
        End of first paragraph should say “if you can”
2. Korwin
  
  April 30, 2012 at 2:47 pm
  
  Those results would be with uber sampling disabled, not enabled. I can tell you without a doubt that no card on the market is capable of running that game at 2560×1600 with that option enabled at 60 frames per second. I can’t do It and I’ve got SLI’d GTX 680’s.
  
  Reply
Chuloopa

April 30, 2012 at 11:50 am

Sweet holy crap… wtf… this is more than the budget i have for an entire PC later this year 😛 lol

Reply
Cap’n Crunch

April 30, 2012 at 11:51 am

What I love most, all the metal, no cheap plastic ‘ere

Reply
noko

April 30, 2012 at 11:53 am

I wonder how heavy that monstrosity is.

Reply
Dean

April 30, 2012 at 11:56 am

It’s things like this that make me want to switch back from a laptop to a desktop. Hot damn.

Reply
JLeu

April 30, 2012 at 11:58 am

Will this still be available a few months later? Or is the manufcaturing too limited?

Reply
1. Cap’n Crunch
  
  April 30, 2012 at 12:39 pm
  
  Probably will be very limited, TSMC yields haven’t been the best for 28nm chips lately, 680s are pretty much out of stuck everywhere and quite pricey I can imagine these 690s being in very few numbers for a while and fetching for over 1k in Australia, its good that the 7970 has dropped considerably however.
  
  Reply
2. Korwin
  
  April 30, 2012 at 2:37 pm
  
  Nvidia have gone on record stating that this will be available for the full run on the Geforce 600 series line, so expect at least 12months.
  
  Reply
TheGuru

April 30, 2012 at 11:59 am

I love excess.
What do you reckon GTX680 SLI or one of the shiny GTX690?

Reply
1. JLeu
  
  April 30, 2012 at 12:01 pm
  
  I reckon GTX690; Much less power requirement & consumption at almost same speed as SLI.
  
  Reply
2. Jordaan Mylonas
  
  April 30, 2012 at 12:46 pm
  
  Come on man,don’t be a cheapo.
  GTX690 SLI 😛
  
  Reply
3. Cam
  
  May 1, 2012 at 12:22 am
  
  Get 2 690s. While I haven’t seen the specs on the card I can tell you that the clock speeds of the cores on each of the individual GPUs in the 590 were lower than the 580 despite nVidia marketing the 590 as 2 580s in SLI running in a single configuration. Also on a 690 the memory bandwidth will be shared between each memory module in both GPUs as opposed to each 680 being able to utilize their full bandwidth for each card. The only probably your likely to run into with an SLI set up is if a game you own has issues with SLI, like Crysis 2 did before it was fixed
  
  Reply
  1. Cam
    
    May 1, 2012 at 12:23 am
    
    Sorry I meant get 2 680s, it was a typo :s
    
    Reply
MrBS

April 30, 2012 at 12:02 pm

Looks at system with two GTX590’s.

It was nice having the shiniest tech for a year but I’ll sit this round out 😉

Reply
Mike

April 30, 2012 at 12:04 pm

Well seeing as a single GTX 680 is $499 RRP… unless there is some significant gains on running 2 separate 680s in SLI, I would just go the 690 based off the information here if it really is comparable to having 2 680s bolted together into a single card.

Reply
1. Croot
  
  April 30, 2012 at 4:53 pm
  
  Save a crap load of electricity too.
  
  Reply
Nic

April 30, 2012 at 12:11 pm

Hopeful this pushes 680 prices down a bit… or at least lowers the demand.

Reply
1. Cap’n Crunch
  
  April 30, 2012 at 12:44 pm
  
  Agreed, I’d love a 680, but 650-699 is just too much 🙁 especially now that the 7970 has dropped so much to around 530.
  
  Reply
Badmiyamotofinger

April 30, 2012 at 12:32 pm

I remember GeForce 3 selling for the same price back in the day……

Reply
BlipittyBlopitty

April 30, 2012 at 12:50 pm

LOL A chip shortage with the GTX 680’s so lets bring out a graphics card that requires 2 of them.

Reply
brent3000

April 30, 2012 at 1:03 pm

All i have to say,

http://troll.me/images/shut-up-and-take-my-money/nvidia-shut-up-and-take-my-money.jpg

Reply
McGarnical

April 30, 2012 at 1:45 pm

Best part is it should make the more financially realistic cards (ie <$300) even cheaper.

Reply
Boomzzilla

April 30, 2012 at 2:01 pm

With the rip-off prices and scarce availilbility of the 680 I hate to find how much this will cost in Oz, well over a grand methinks.

Reply
Korwin

April 30, 2012 at 2:32 pm

The build quality on these things is no joke. Than fan housing is made from a molded magnesium alloy, it’s fucking pure GPU porn. I wish my GTX 680’s had the same treatment.

Reply
Trex

April 30, 2012 at 6:54 pm

I’ll take two please

Reply
shutupandtakemymoney

April 30, 2012 at 9:07 pm

There goes my tax return, long before I even got it..

Reply
Kerosine

May 1, 2012 at 8:38 am

Too bad i just bought a 590 a couple of weeks ago,

does anyone have a comparison from the 590 to the 690?

Reply
Joshy T

May 1, 2012 at 1:56 pm

i have had both the 9800GX2 and am now running a HD 5970 and both cards, being duel processor cards, suffer from micro stutter, i actually force disable one of the cores on my 5970 to make games playable… that card cost me 900 bucks and i have to make it worst to work properly. i bet this will be the same.

Reply

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Meet Nvidia’s New Flagship Card, The $999 GeForce GTX 690

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41 responses to “Meet Nvidia’s New Flagship Card, The $999 GeForce GTX 690”

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