The GTX 690 Arrives – Exotic Industrial Design takes the Performance Crown!

Performance summary charts & graphs

Here are the summary charts of 18 games and 3 synthetic tests. The highest settings are always chosen and it is DX11 when there is a choice; DX10 is picked above DX9, and the settings are ultra or maxed. Specific settings are listed on the Main Performance chart at the end of this page. The benches are run at 1920×1200 and 2560×1600 with separate charts devoted to overclocking, PhysX, 3D Vision, 5760×1080 Surround (including 3D Vision Surround), as well as dividing games up into easy to read charts by their DX pathway and by resolution.

All results, except for Vantage and 3DMark11, show average framerates and higher is always better. In-game settings are fully maxed out and they are identically high or ultra across all platforms.  As usual, we begin with the synthetics.

Futuremark & Heaven synthetic tests

3DMark11 is Futuremark’s latest DX11-only benchmark and Vantage is DX10.  Unfortunately, scores are completely meaningless when they are presented in this way but they do offer supporting data to accompany our game benches. Here is the chart with Vantage and 3D Mark11:

The GTX 690 simply pulls way ahead of any competing card and overclocked +150/+550MHz, it is a beast!  Heaven 3.0 is a very demanding benchmark and here it is expressed in a chart.

 

Again, synthetic tests are interesting but they are not necessarily indicative of real world gaming performance. In all three cases, the GTX 690 “wins” over everything else by a large margin. Next up, let’s look at DX9 games.

DX9 Games

We test the popular Source Engine represented by Left 4 Dead 2 and also a demanding DX9 game, Serious Sam 3, BFE with both at completely maxed out settings.  First up is 2560×1600:

Now we see 1920×1200

Both Left 4 Dead 2 and Serious Sam 3 BFE are faster on the GTX 690 than any of the other previously fastest cards in the world.   Let’s check out DX10 games

DX10 Games

We test four DX10 games – Just Cause 3, Far Cry 2, Crysis and World in Conflict, Soviet Assault. Here is 2560×1600 resolution.

Now at 1920×1200:

Out of these four DX10 games, the GTX 690 simply stands out from the rest.

DX11 Games

Most of our testing emphasizes DX11 games and we bench 12. Since the charts get too long, we break them up into charts of 6 games each.

First up are the older DX11 games at 2560×1600

Now those same games at 1920×1200:

Now the newer DX11 games at 2560×1600:

[Typo Alert! – The GTX 590 results are wrong for Civ V.  Instead of 43.6 at 2560×1600 and 69.2 at 1920×1200, it should read 81.4 at 2560×1600 and 95.5 at 1920×1200]

Now the same DX11 games at 1920×1200:

There is simply no contest – the GTX 690 is the fastest video card anywhere.

Super-Widescreen 5760 x1080, Surround, 3D Vision Surround, and PhysX

Here is the main chart that gives the details for the tests:

Let’s look at 3D Vision at 120Hz versus the same settings with 3D Vision at the popular 1920×1080 resolution:

Only Metro 2033 with completely maxed out details gives the GTX 690 a workout.  Now the GTX 690 benchmarked in 3-panel Surround with slightly lesser settings (see the main chart above).

A couple of games would need to have their settings reduced.  Just remember that you are playing across three screens and rendering each scene twice for 3D Vision!!

One thing that we found really strange and it may be a driver bug with Kepler – the frame rates are no longer locked to 60Hz in the 3D Vision drivers as we previously tested.  Previously, frame rates would be capped at 60 fps if possible.  However, now it is very convenient to see exactly what performance penalty 3D Vision takes – sometimes it is more than 50 percent; other times less.

Next up, let’s look at PhysX

PhysX

We test PhysX in two games.  Batman: Arkham City makes great use of PhyxX and it is a shame to play the game without it.  In both cases, turning on PhysX, although affecting the frame rate, it is enough to play the game with fully maxed out details and AA with our GTX 690.

Let’s check out Overclocking:

Overclocking

We overclocked our GTX 690 +150MHz on the core and +550MHz on the memory.  This is a fantastic overclock on stock voltage and stock fan profile and it falls only a tiny bit short of the overclock on our GTX 680 of +175/+575MHz !!

Here are all of our games compared at 2560×1600 – stock versus overclocked:

Here is 1920×1200

As you can see the GTX 680 scales extremely well at 2560×1600 but not as well at 1920×1200.  Our CPU at 4.6GHz simply needs to be clocked higher as our CPU scaling chart shows.

CPU Scaling.  Is Ivy Bridge Core-i7 3770K at 4.6GHz fast enough for the GTX 690?  Not really (!)

In looking at the above charts we notice that the GTX 680 scales really well with an overclock at 2560×1600 but not as good as 1920×1200.  So it brings us to CPU Scaling – Is Ivy Bridge fast enough at 4.60GHz for a GTX 690 at 1920×1200? – The surprising answer, is ‘No’, not for every game.  Two games that do not scale well at 1920×1200 are Civiliation V and the original Crysis.  Let’s check out a stock-clocked and overclocked GTX 690 and the only difference in third position on this chart is that we overclocked our Core i7-3770K another +200MHz, from 4.6GHz to 4.8GHz.

That small +200MHz overclock on the CPU now lets the GTX 690 noticeably perform better instead of waiting on the CPU at a lower clock.  It appears that 5.0GHz might ba a very good overclock for the GTX 690 to really show it strengths in gaming at lower resolutions.

Main Overall Summary chart

In the first three columns of the main performance summary chart, the GTX 690 is tested at stock and overclocked; next is a single GTX 680 and then the GTX 590 is sandwiched between the 3GB HD 7970 and the HD 6990. This is the master chart and it has not been made into a graph as there is too much information to put onto a single graph.

[Typo Alert! – The GTX 590 results are wrong for Civ V.  Instead of 43.6/69.2, it should read 81.4/95.5]

 

No matter how you add it up, the GTX 690 is generally faster than any other video card. It also overclocks very well with the stock voltage and fan profile. AMD would have to significantly increase the clocks of the HD 7990 to catch the GTX 690 and we expect that it would use a lot more power and be relatively noisy and difficult to cool.  We are eager to see what AMD actually brings with their own upcoming dual-GPU flagship card.

 

Let’s head for our conclusion.

«1. Introduction2. Architecture recap & specifications3. A Look at the GTX 6904. Test Configuration5. Overclocking, Power Draw & Temperatures6. Performance Summary Charts7. The Conclusion8. View All»