Another page was added to the book regarding the battle for computer graphics supremacy a few days ago with the unveiling of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 690. While this graphics card is probably out of the price range for most people, for those that are serious about creating gaming rigs, this card will probably cause a lot of excitement.
Real Power
The GeForce GTX 690 is powered by 3,072 NVIDIA CUDA cores, which puts out awesome visuals and framerates for those that are looking to build the ultimate gaming rigs.
How much power? According the NVIDIA’s testing the GeForce GTX 690 can deliver close to double the number of frames compares to the closest single GPU graphics card – the GeForce GTX 680. To attain such performance, the GeForce GTX 690 is powered by dual Kepler architecture-based GeForce GPUs.
The testing performed for NVIDIA’s announcement was performed at a resolution of 2500×1600 with version 301.10 of the drivers. The summary of the tests comparing the GTX 690 with the GTX 680 were as follows:
| Game | GTX 690 FPS | GTX 680 FPS |
|---|---|---|
| Heaven – 4xAA/16xAF settings | 58.9 | 31.1 |
| Crysis 2 Ultra | 57.8 | 32.3 |
| Dirt 3 – 8xAA/16xAF | 111.2 | 62.3 |
With as much improvement with one card, I am wondering how two cards in a SLI configuration will perform, and whether there is a desktop computer that can keep up with two cards.
The GTX 690 will allow gamers to easily display high-resolution games on multiple screens at the highest possible quality with any game that is available on the market. Not only will the games look good, but new look will also provide some eye-candy to what is installed on their systems.
The GeForce GTX 690 also sports a new look. The exterior frame of the graphics card is made from trivalent chromium-plated aluminum, which gives the card a nice sleek look.
Availability and Pricing
The GeForce GTX 690 will be available starting May 3, 2012 in limited quantities and on May 7, 2012 with a wider availability with NVIDIA’s partners. The partners include ASUS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, Palit and Zotac.
For those with deep-pockets, the MSRP for the GeForce GTX 690 is $999 USD.