So, I added exactly this forum to my site, it can be found under the “pages” button above in the navigation bar. If you should happen to have anything you would like to discuss, why not start a thread there.

And then the run of exactly the same thing on my own rig:

The Ivy Bridge is slightly faster, but not much, but it is WAY hotter!

I don’t think I ever have to contemplate Ivy Bridge as an upgrade, rather a sidegrade or even thermal downgrade. Haswell will be the next interesting cpu, in 2013, until then I will be perfectly happy with using yesterdays news

(IB-E could be interesting if it arrives at all)

And then my own personal run:

I decided to test it first with an awesome modern progressive rock band, Magic Pie:

Of course it only works for those who have Spotify installed, if on a handheld or a PC doesn’t matter, very cool!

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 video card 3DMark Vantage benchmark test score

Name

Description

Processor

Processor

Intel Core i7-2600K Processor

---

Processor clock

4789 MHz

---

Physical / logical processors

1 / 8

---

# of cores

4

Graphics Card

Graphics Card

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680

---

Vendor

NVidia Corporation

---

# of cards

1

---

SLI / CrossFire

Off

---

Memory

2048 MB

---

Core clock

705 MHz

---

Memory clock

3004 MHz

---

Driver name

---

Driver version

8.17.13.110

---

Driver status

FM Approved

 

General

Operating system

64-bit Windows 7 (6.1.7601)

---

Motherboard

MSI Z68A-GD55 (G3) (MS-7681)

---

Memory

16384 MB

---

Module 1

4096 MB Kingston 9 @ 667 MHz

Module 2

4096 MB Kingston 9 @ 667 MHz

Module 3

4096 MB Kingston 9 @ 667 MHz

Module 4

4096 MB Kingston 9 @ 667 MHz

---

Hard drive model

120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD

Detailed scores

3DMark Score

34560 3DMarks

---

Graphics Score

35430

---

CPU Score

32189

---

Jane Nash

108.27 FPS

---

New Calico

99.14 FPS

---

AI Test

4488 operations/s

---

Physics Test

41 operations/s

Settings

Default settings used

Yes

---

Preset

Performance

---

Width

1280

---

Height

1024

---

MSAA

1

---

Texture Filtering

Optimal

---

Anisotropy

1

---

Texture Quality

Performance

---

Shader Quality

Performance

---

Shadow Shader Quality

Performance

---

Shadow Resolution Quality

Performance

---

Post Processing Scale

1:2

---

PPU Disabled

true

---

PPU Used

false

---

Disable Bloom

false

---

Disable Streaks

false

---

Disable Anamorphic Flare

false

---

Disable Lens Flare

false

---

Disable Lenticular Halo

false

---

Disable Motion Blur

false

---

Disable DOF

false

---

Disable Fog

false

---

Disable Color Noise

false

---

Flush On Low FPS

false

---

Fixed Framerate

false

---

GPU Count

1

 

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 video card 3DMark 11 benchmark test score

Name

Description

Processor

Processor

Intel Core i7-2600K Processor

---

Processor clock

1596 MHz

---

Physical / logical processors

1 / 8

---

# of cores

4

Graphics Card

Graphics Card

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680

---

Vendor

NVidia Corporation

---

# of cards

1

---

SLI / CrossFire

Off

---

Memory

2048 MB

---

Core clock

705 MHz

---

Memory clock

3004 MHz

---

Driver name

---

Driver version

8.17.13.110

---

Driver status

FM Approved

 

General

Operating system

64-bit Windows 7 (6.1.7601)

---

Motherboard

MSI Z68A-GD55 (G3) (MS-7681)

---

Memory

16384 MB

---

Module 1

4096 MB Kingston 9 @ 667 MHz

Module 2

4096 MB Kingston 9 @ 667 MHz

Module 3

4096 MB Kingston 9 @ 667 MHz

Module 4

4096 MB Kingston 9 @ 667 MHz

---

Hard drive model

120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD

Detailed scores

3DMark Score

P9709

---

Graphics Score

9847

---

Physics Score

10815

---

Combined Score

7720

---

GraphicsTest1

45.8 FPS

---

GraphicsTest2

45.98 FPS

---

GraphicsTest3

60.95 FPS

---

GraphicsTest4

29.91 FPS

---

PhysicsTest

34.33 FPS

---

CombinedTest

35.91 FPS

Settings

Default settings used

Yes

---

Edition

Basic

---

Dxgi Adapter Luid

0

---

Screen Width

1280

---

Screen Height

720

---

Msaa Sample Count

1

---

Texture Filtering Mode

Trilinear

---

Max Af Anisotropy

1

---

Tessellation Detail

5

---

Max Tessellation Factor

10

---

ShadowMapSize

5

---

Shadow Cascade Count

4

---

Surface Shadow Sample Count

16

---

Volumetric Illumination Quality

5

---

Ambient Occlusion Quality

5

---

Depth Of Field Quality

5

---

Enable Window Mode

Off

---

Enable Vertical Sync

Off

---

Enable Triple Buffering

Off

---

Enable Wireframe

Off

---

Color Saturation

100%

---

System Info Guid

D42FDD6E-A380-4BD8-9DD5-424566C937E9

 

So AMD and Nvidia has released new high-end videocards, HD7970 and GTX680, I’m sure you all know about them. They may be fine and awesome and all for multiscreen gaming in extreme resolutions like 5760x, but at the end of the day if one isn’t going to game at any higher setting than 1080P(1920×1080) most games won’t see any other benefit with these new cards than lower power draw and possibly lower noise. It’s doubtful if that is worth 500€ if one already posseses a highend end card from the last two years. If not, then it may be, even if expensive.

Take myself as an example, owning a 2 year old GTX470 and running my current favorite game Skyrim at it’s aboslute highest settings in 1080P and with the official high-resolution texture pack installed and running. Granted, I have to overclock the card a bit, but that ain’t to hard usings MSI:s Afterburner program. What I end up with is a constant steady 60fps during various gameplay, indoors and outdoors, and with multiple enemies. No dips in framerate at all, none, zero, nill! The only thing I would benefit from buying a newer card is lower power draw, but nothing would run any better because it’s already running at it’s maximum and doing it in an optimal way.

A screenshot below from various sensor readings during my testrun, this was for about half an hour but I have been playing Skyrim for 250+ hours at these settings without any problems. I have highlighted the constant fps in red at the bottom of the screenshot, see for yourself!

The card was running at 797MHz core, 1596MHz shaders and 3800MHz memory using an i7 2600K @ 4.8GHz. It’s of some interest that the cards framebuffer is almost full, slightly below 1280MB is the max reading, so a plain 1GB card would have suffered fps-dips.

http://www.sweclockers.com/forum/125-geforce/1098840-vilka-kommer-att-kopa-gtx-680-a-post12090450/

Compared to my old GTX470, moderately OC:ed at 738/3800, using a 2600K @ 4.8GHz:

The system with GTX680 has almost twice as fast graphics, but almost twice as slow physics. It’s not like my old card can’t run these tests so I guess I’m in no panic to upgrade, despite the obvious age of GTX470(I bought the absolutely first revision that came out). Real games aren’t as taxing on the system as 3DMark11.

If anything, I better wait for “Big Kepler” aka GTX685/695/780 to be able to see an even more dramatic difference in performance, even though upcoming GTX680 cards with custom board designs, custom coolers , better OC headroom and 4GB of RAM will be though to resist. It will even be though to resist a large pricecut on the AMD HD7970 when it occurs, but the same thing applies there about custom boards. Heck, my old GTX470 is definetely a reference design as I was a very early adopter back then. I will try not to repeat that, if nothing else, custom coolers are more quiet! 

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PrecisePangolin/TechnicalOverview/Beta1