Reviews - Articles

[Updated] BELKIN Pro HD4000 2m: Expensive HDMI Cables Really DO Improve Your Picture

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:15:12 +0000

I recently put up a forum post about the alleged scam of expensive HDMI cables giving a better picture than cheap ones, but now I've completely changed my mind.

It's a well known "fact" that because the signal is digital that as long as the signal can be read by the TV the picture will be the same, regardless of cable. There have even been many articles written about this by respected technology writers using expensive test equipment, "proving" this fact too, which I linked to in my thread.

Now, being the hardcore techie that I am and having a pretty skeptical nature I wanted to see this for myself. I've been using cheap HDMI cables ever since HDMI came out, but this time I splashed out on a premium BELKIN Pro HD4000 HDMI Cable - 2m for £89.99 at Currys - and wow was I surprised!

While the colours and definition looked ok on my regular Tesco £2.99 3 metre cable, the expensive one really made a difference. Colours came to life, looking more vivid and realistic, especially with skin tones and clarity in those dark movie scenes improved too.

Other things were also improved, such as motion. Somehow, that annoying LCD motion blur was much reduced and there was less motion judder or strobing when watching films. This is significant, because movies are recorded at just 24 frames per second, rather than the 50fps normally required for smooth motion. Surprisingly, the sound was improved too, making for better bass and treble definition and clearer dialog.

This was no illusion either, because when I plugged my old Tesco cable back in, all those improvements instantly vanished. The difference is that obvious.

Testing This Scientifically

To remove any potential for bias since I know which cable I'm using, I did a double-blind test with a couple of unwitting volunteers who didn't know which cable was plugged in. I switched cables back and forth a few times and once again the improvement was immediate and obvious to them every single time. This is absolute proof that the expensive cable improves picture quality!

Conclusion

I have to confess that I don't quite know how this amazing Belkin HDMI cable achieves this incredible feat, but whether it's by magic, technical excellence or just the fact it's a meter shorter, it somehow does and that's all that matters. I've been extremely skeptical of these claims before, but having seen this right before my eyes, I'm now convinced that these claims are true. I'm keeping it!

techngaming official verdict: get an expensive HDMI cable, the more expensive the better. It lives up to the hype and you won't regret it!

Click on the Show button for the latest update!

Spoiler

Awesome New NVIDIA GTX TITAN Gets Previewed Around the Web

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 21:55:44 +0000

NVIDIA have finally revealed their monster new GeForce GTX TITAN graphics card in a press release today, coming one day after the expected date. Unsurprisingly, NVIDIA are claiming that this is the fastest single GPU graphics card bar none and I very much doubt that they're making this claim up, especially given the performance leaks we brought you yesterday.

Unfortunately, official benchmark reviews are still under NDA until the 21st, so official hard performance numbers remain tantalisingly out of reach for now, leaving us all on tenterhooks for another two days. However, that hasn't stopped several websites from posting previews of this hot new card, which are allowed. While we unfortunately don't have a GTX Titan to review for ourselves (please, NVIDIA...?) rest assured that we will bring you a roundup of all the best reviews of this fantastic card. The various previews around the web do reveal some hard data about the new card though, proving right the latest leaks that we brought you.

First off the price: you guessed it, it's going to cost precisely one arm and one leg. NVIDIA has officially priced it at $999 in their press release, making it around £770-£850 in the UK. Interestingly, looking at the websites of various online retailers, I can see that the GTX 690 has already dropped to around £740 for the cheapest models, which doesn't really surprise me. This leaves the Titan as the graphics card to forever lust after by hardcore enthusiasts without deep pockets to satisfy their cravings. That'll be me then... just check out its hot looks!

Next up, we have some specifications to go, courtesy of NVIDIA's official slide:

What's not shown here is the size of the card, which is 10.5 inches long and dual slot, which is shorter than a GTX 690 and only half an inch longer than the GTX 680, so fitting it won't be a problem in any half decent PC chassis. The relatively frugal TDP of 250W is impressive too for a GPU containing 7.1 bilion transistors and built by TSMC on a 28nm process.

Looking at the full specs on NVIDIA's website confirms that the version of the GK110 GPU fitted to the Titan has 2688 CUDA Cores, meaning that one SMX unit is disabled, making for a total of 14, as previously reported. The K20 HPC card has a GK110 GPU with all 15 SMX units enabled giving 2880 CUDA Cores. However, it costs around $3,500 and can't be used as a graphics card unfortunately, so cannot be used for gaming, regardless of how rich and enthusiastic the gamer. Hopefully in time, NVIDIA will release a version of the Titan will all SMX units enabled as manufacturing yields improve.

The Titan has a neat bling feature which allows the brightness of the green GEFORCE GTX logo to be controlled, as explained by Legit Reviews:

The GeForce GTX logo on the edge of the TITAN board is also LED backlit just like the one on the GeForce GTX 690! This LED acts as a power indicator, lighting up when the board is in use. The intensity of this LED can be manually adjusted using tools provided by select NVIDIA add-in card partners; you can even adjust the intensity based on GPU utilization, so the LED will shine brighter as GPU utilization increases.

Very nice!

Next, the exact connectivity available is finally revealed. Display outputs consist of two dual-link DVI ports, one HDMI port and one DisplayPort 1.2 port. Unsurprisingly, the card supports 4K resolution (4096 x 2160) which might hopefully begin to justify that enormous 6GB of onboard RAM.

I've previously stated that shear graphics horsepower (sorry) while driving you batty with the noise is nothing and if the noise comparison chart from NVIDIA below is to be believed, it performs very well here in a three way SLI setup, especially when compared to similar setups with GTX 680 and AMD's HD 7970 graphics cards.

Interestingly, while NVIDIA won't release framerate benchmarks at the moment, they're fine with giving us "hard" numbers for noise, showing the AMD setup to assault our ears with around 62dBA of noise which would indeed be enough to drive many enthusiasts batty or replace those noisy stock coolers. The GTX 680 rig is somewhat better at around 53dBA, but the Titan does really well with just 48dBA's worth of annoyance with three of them running. Note that every 3dB reduction halves the perceived noise level, since this is a logarithmic scale. This makes the Titan setup waay quieter than the AMD one, a very important factor when choosing a graphics card, in my book. In fact, NVIDIA describe it as "whisper quiet" on their Titan promo page.

Note that I said "hard" numbers: noise measurement has a large subjective factor to it, especially given the quality of that noise, such as fan whine and any other noises that stand out, so I'll wait for the reviews before proclaiming a solid NVIDIA win here, although I don't really doubt it judging from my experience of their cards. My GTX 285 and GTX 580 are pretty reasonable noise performers for the framerate performance they offered for their time. The controversial GTX 480 was a bit of a disappointment in this area apparently, but I never had one, so can't say from personal experience.

Actually, NVIDIA have released some hard rendering performance numbers using 3DMark Vantage (Performance Preset) as can be seen below. The card was tested on an unspecified Intel i7 3.3GHz CPU, with 8GB system RAM, unspecified X79 motherboard and PhysX enabled.

This comparison gives us a good idea that it's damn fast (obviously) and beats a GTX 690 by a small margin. Interestingly, this comparison shows it to be only about twice as fast as a GTX 285 and GTX 480, which oddly both score almost the same here. Again, we'll wait for the final reviews before passing judgement.

Next up, we have GPU Boost 2.0, which I talked about previously. We won't go into the details here about this surprisingly complex feature, but will instead let PC Per explain it all, in great detail. The bar charts below give us an easy to understand idea of how much GPU Boost 2.0 improves performance, while the graph below looks suitably complex and confusing unless one has read PC Per's preview. There's lots more graphs like that on there, too...

Here's an interesting caveat with GPU Boost 2.0, as PC Per explains:

This new version of GPU Boost definitely seems more in line with the original goals of the technology but there are some interesting caveats. First, you'll quickly find that the clock speeds of TITAN will start out higher on a "cold" GPU and then ramp down as the temperature of the die increases. This means that doing quick performance checks of the GPU using 3DMark or even quick game launches will result in performance measurements that are higher than they would be after 5-10 minutes of gaming. As a result. our testing of TITAN required us to "warm up" the GPU for a few minutes before every benchmark run.

Oh. Somehow, one's graphics card slowing down as you use it doesn't sound so appealing, even if the technology in fact squeezes the utmost performance from it. I can just see cryocooling becoming popular to prevent that performance drop...

Finally, we come to that odd-sounding "80Hz" adaptive vsync that I discussed yesterday. From the limited information available then, it just didn't make sense. However, now that we have the official explanation, it makes perfect sense, if surprising reading: what this feature amounts to is dynamic control of the refresh rate of the monitor! NVIDIA calls this "display overclocking" and describes it thus:

With GPU Boost 2.0, we’ve added a new feature that makes this possible: display overclocking. Using tools provided by our add-in card partners, you may be able to overclock the pixel clock of your display, allowing you to hit higher refresh rates.

Wow! What this amounts to is a variable temporal sampling rate (framerate) the same idea that's been used for MP3 sound recordings for years, but has never been applied to displays, until now. By keeping the display refresh rate to just under what the system can render, while maintaining vsync lock, smooth judder-free gameply is maintained. How effective this is and whether it will lead to odd dynamic visual artefacts remains to be seen.

Note that it will require a monitor that supports this feature to work, but it appears that current monitors not designed with this in mind may yet be able to make use of it. The official reviews will clear up this point soon.

This is a feature that will be enabled through third party utilities rather than the driver control panel and EVGA's popular Precision X utility will be updated to make use of it. Judging by the looks of it though, it won't "overclock" to 120Hz refresh and beyond, so those with 120Hz capable displays (or even 144Hz for the Asus VG278HE that I have) won't be any better off.

There's another crucially important point to consider too which is that it very likely won't work with LightBoost on. As I recently discovered, using 2D mode and LightBoost in my games leads to perfect motion blur-free gaming, something which has never been seen on an LCD monitor before and is frankly awesome. It makes an LCD monitor as good as the previous gold standard, the CRT and then some, since it delivers high resolution and perfect clarity, along with 120Hz refresh. Something that CRTs couldn't manage. In short it delivers a superlative gaming experience and is a feature that I can't stress the benefits of enough.

There is no word yet on what video driver it will use. Namely, will there be a new main release in a couple of days, like we had yesterday, or will it have its own special driver for now. We'll find out very soon.

All the raw data, photos and graphics have come from the websites below which previewed the card.

PC Per

Legit Reviews

Article picture courtesy of Egypthardware.

Official NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan promo page, product page and full specifications.

GK110 block diagram:

Click to enlarge

And finally the naked GPU porno shot you've been waiting for throughout this whole preview:

Click to enlarge

First Impressions of My New NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 Glasses

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 17:32:04 +0000

This is a first impressions review of my new NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 wireless glasses kit that I bought from Amazon that I tried out today. It's not an in-depth technical review, but at the end of it, you will come away with a good idea of whether the new glasses are worth your money. Overall, they are very good indeed, but I was a bit underwhelmed when I compared them to the first version I've already got, which are good.

3D Vision 2 glasses

I thought that they would let more light in for a brighter picture, but that's not the case. The extra brightness comes solely from my Asus VG278HE monitor which supports Lightboost and 144Hz refresh rate - and 3D Vision of course. They slightly tint the picture like the first version do, but seem to allow for an overall slightly richer picture. The brightness is ok though with Lightboost and if it's still a bit too dark, then adjusting the brightness or gamma in the game's settings will help. Ghosting/crosstalk is the same as with the previous version and any reduction is due to the way Lightboost works. Apparently, it turns off the backlight between frames, which helps to reduce this effect. Ultimately though, ghosting exists because the shutter isn't err, completely shut (opaque) so the LCD used in the glasses needs to be improved.

They're a little bit heavier at 57g versus the 50g of the original version, but that's balanced out by the 20% bigger lenses and thicker frames. These cut out more ambient light, plus hide your surroundings better, allowing the monitor to be seen more easily which makes for a more immersive experience. Also, they're more comfortable. Softer plastics, various nose pieces and rubber pads at the end of the arms make for a more comfortable fit, whereas the original version could sometimes chafe a bit on the nose and sides, particularly after a long gaming session. This is especially so, as I have to wear them over my prescription glasses. The arms are spring loaded whereas the previous ones are not, so they sit straighter on the face and fit more snugly than the old ones. I prefer the styling a bit more too and like their slightly goggly, more modern look.

3D Vision glasses

I was hoping for a bit better 3D performance and brightness, but they're identical in this respect. "Why didn't you read the reviews first!" you're all shouting at me now. Actually, I did, a while ago, but frankly, I just wanted to try them out for myself!

So, should you upgrade to these if you have the first versions? That mostly depends on how much of a hardcore PC gaming enthusiast you are and how uncomfortable you find the old ones. Personally, I think the improvement in comfort (including the spring-loaded arms) and the bigger lenses are worth it, especially as I wear prescription glasses. I paid £107 and in the end I've decided to keep them, despite the overall improvement not being huge. I just checked their price now on Amazon and they've dropped to £102.97 in less than a week. Oh well, such is life.

The above price is for the kit comprising of the glasses and the emitter, which I wanted. They work fine with my original infra red emitter, but I want to have two in case I need to lend them out to a friend, share the 3D experience with, or sell the old glasses. The 3D Vision 2 glasses on their own currently cost £77.50 from Amazon.

My overall conclusion for NVIDIA's 3D Vision technology is that it gives a convincing 3D picture that you soon lose yourself in and enjoy, significantly enhancing your games. The amount of 3D can even be adjusted in real time with the little wheel on the back of the emitter.

One fantastic and underrated benefit that I never see mentioned in other reviews, is that it totally and completely removes motion blur from LCD monitors! This combines the sharpness of LCD with the motion clarity of the sadly departed CRT, giving the gamer the best of both worlds and a totally sharp moving picture. I would like to see NVIDIA introduce a 2D mode in their drivers for those times when one doesn't want the 3D effect, but wants to enjoy totally smooth, blur-free gaming. I'd be using them for every gaming session, end of story!

With this Asus monitor, one should be able to game at 144Hz while using 3D Vision, which would give a 72Hz per eye refresh rate, rather than the usual 60Hz. This would almost eliminate flicker and make for more fluid motion. However, due to some glitch, even with the latest 306.97 drivers, they are still stuck at 120Hz and I have yet to get to the bottom of it. When I do, I'll update this article. If anyone has the answer to this problem, please post it in the comments.

You need a high end graphics card to keep the framerate up with 3D Vision. My previous generation GTX 580 works very well with this and the latest GTX 680 will be even better. Basic specs for the PC used for this mini review: Intel i7-2700K overclocked to 4.7GHz, connected to 16GB system RAM and running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

Microsoft's latest DirectX 11.1 specification brings vendor-neutral 3D to the PC. It will be interesting to see how that compares to NVIDIA's and AMD's proprietary solutions in a couple of years.

I rate the 3D Vision 2 glasses an 8/10 tng points and the first versions 7/10 tng points.

Cooler Master SickleFlow R4 vs Corsair SP120 head-to-head

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 16:36:50 +0000

Our resident reviewer, Kyle, has just put up another great video for your Sunday viewing pleasure. In this episode, he looks at case cooling and pits two 120mm fans against each other, the £10 Cooler Master Sickleflow R4 and the $15 Corsair SP120. He compares noise levels and cooling performance between these two fans using HWMonitor and covers other features of them as well.

The Corsair has an FDB bearing and and an understated look, while the Cooler Master a sleeve bearing and attractive blue LEDs. So which was the better fan? The answer is in the video, right here.

SteelSeries Kinzu V2 Optical Mouse Review

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:22:45 +0000

Today we will be looking at the new SteelSeries Kinzu V2 4 button scroll-wheel optical mouse in black. We would like to thank SteelSeries for providing us with a sample for review.

Features:

THE BASICS
Designed to deliver only what you need to dominate the competition.

COMPACT & LIGHTWEIGHT
Delivers a consistent performance in a compact, 4-button design.

AMBIDEXTROUS
Finely engineered shape suits all grips to ensure maximum control and comfort.

TOGGLE ON-THE-FLY
CPI toggle for on-the-fly high/low sensitivity adjustments.

COUNTS PER INCH
Scalable pointer speed up 3200 in increments of 400, 800, 1600 and 3200 CPI.

GLIDES
Featuring high performance UPE material for a low-friction glide.

DOUBLE BRAIDED CORD
Improved durability and tangle-free via its double braided nylon cord.

THE STEELSERIES ENGINE
Program your buttons, optimize your sensitivity, and create unlimited profiles.

Specifications

Weight: 77 grams (0.17 lbs)
Height: 36 mm (1.4 in)
Width: 64 mm (2.5 in)
Length: 117 mm (4.6 in)
Buttons:
- Left click
- Right click
- Scroll wheel / Middle click
- CPI Toggle
The SteelSeries Engine:
- Set custom CPI settings
- Program your mouse buttons
- Set polling rate
- Record macros
- Track button usage statistics
- Set game triggers for profiles
- Setup unlimited profiles for the settings above…
Mouse glides Material: high performance UPE material covers 16 % of mouse bottom to ensure maximum glide. We recommend changing glides regularly as they will eventually be worn down.
Double Braided cord:
- USB 2.0 connector
- Anti-tangle braided cord for enhanced durability
- Cord length: 2 meters (6.5 feet)
Operating systems compatibility:
- Windows 2000
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7
- Mac OS X
Optical Sensor:
- Frames per second: 3600
- Inches per second: 65
- Mega pixels per second: 3.7
- Counts per inch: 400 – 3200
- Maximum acceleration: 30 G
- Sensor data path: True 16 bit
- Lift distance: ~2 mm
- Maximum polling: 1000 Hz

The Packaging in Pictures

Angled Front

Angled Rear

Front Packaging

Rear Packaging

Kit of Parts

The Mouse in Pictures

Front View

Back View

Underneath

Braided Cable

Software

Although no software is provided with the mouse, and it does work plug and play (even the CPI Toggle button), SteelSeries do provide accompanying software via a download from their website. This comes in the form of their SteelSeries Engine software, which brings all of their devices under one umbrella type software.

Upon installation, the setup program proceeded to update the firmware on the mouse (who knew a mouse needed firmware updates?) and then present us with a view of the mouse where we could customize the 3 main buttons and program macros for them.

There is also a tab to adjust the two different CPI settings available when pressing the CPI toggle button, as well as adjusting the polling rate of the mouse. You can even setup multiple profiles and have them triggered by program launches, so you could have different CPI settings and polling rates for different games loaded automatically when you start them.

If you have multiple SteelSeries peripherals, it definitely makes for a better experience being able to manage them all in one place, without the need for multiple tray icons and background programs.

Conclusion

The first thing that struck me about the Kinzu V2 from SteelSeries, is that it is a small mouse, however it has been marketed as such with the words “Size doesn't matter. Really.” I am more accustomed to using larger mice, which you can rest your hand on, however that it simply personal preference, this is more of a finger tip controlled mouse and it does that very well.

My day to day mouse uses laser technology, and while the Kinzu V2 is “only” optical, I will be honest, the time I have been using it for this review, I do not think I have even noticed. It glides wonderfully, thanks to its proportionally massive glide pads and I have seen no cursor creeping which I would commonly associate with optical mice.

The Kinzu V2 has a very nice finish to it, the main body of the mouse has an almost eggshell feel to it, with a subtle yet stylish speckled grey colour, for our unit. From the manufacturer’s website, the mouse looks to be available in an array of colours, although they appear to be in a gloss finish.

I like the fact that SteelSeries have gone with the trend of braiding their cables, it gives the mouse a feeling of real quality, although one disadvantage I have noticed of braided cables outside the chassis is its tendency to attract dust.

Overall I think the Kinzu V2 from SteelSeries is a well thought out mouse, with a feeling of quality and some great add-on software available from their website. I do think it would have been nice to have a few more customizable buttons, although it could potentially take away the simple understated design of the mouse.

While a little pricey at around £25-30, a lot of the decision behind choosing a mouse is personal preference, so if you are in the market for a well-built mouse which is not like a brick in your hand, you cannot go far wrong with the SteelSeries Kinzu V2.

EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Kepler Review

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 19:09:11 +0000

Today we will be taking a look at the new GeForce GTX 680 graphics card, NVIDIA's latest flagship. The model we have is a reference card from EVGA, which we will be comparing to AMD's top GPU the Radeon HD 7970 and their previous offering the HD 6970. In this review we will also be performing the tests on AMD's current top end CPU and motherboard platform, which you can find more details of later on in the review.

With the arrival of the GeForce GTX 680 comes a new architecture, codenamed Kepler, which replaces the Fermi architecture of NVIDIA's two previous generations of cards, the 400 and 500 series. You can see the specifications of the new card below, alongside the other two cards we will be comparing with plus NVIDIA's previous offering the GTX 580:

Here is a screenshot of GPU-Z showing the properties of the card:

One new technology that the GTX 680 brings is called GPU Boost, this works much like the Turbo boost features on the latest Intel and AMD CPUs. A base clock is set, in the GTX 680's case this is 1006MHz, but most cards are capable of exceeding this in reasonable conditions and so the card will automatically overclock itself if it has enough headroom in terms of temperature and power draw. You can see this in the GPU-Z screenshot below, note the top line shows that during the render test, the card (and drivers) have automatically overclocked the card from the base clock of 1006 MHz, up to 1123.5 MHz. NVIDIA specify that there will be an average boost clock of 1058 MHz, to achieve this the vcore is also increased, which will increase heat output, so the card may clock back down again if it runs out of TDP (thermal design power) headroom.

On the next page of our review we will take a look at EVGA's product packaging!

Box & Packaging

While not particularly the most stunning box art, I have to say that EVGA package their cards a lot better than some, especially considering etailers don't always pack the outer box all that well.

Outside/Front:

Outside/Rear:

Packaging:

Even the accessories are in little EVGA anti-static sealed bags:

Kit of parts:

Yes, even a poster with QR barcode:

On the next page we will take a look at the card itself!

The Card

I will be honest when I first saw the card, I did feel a little underwhelmed given the price of the thing, but its understated appearance is growing on me, and it does look surprisingly awesome fitted as you will see later.

Double protection (there is another film underneath):

Back shot:

Shroud shot:

Rear I/O:

The GeForce GTX writing is embossed:

On the next page we will be looking at some of the smaller details on the card.

The Card [cont.]

Front vent:

Stacked 6-pin PCI-E connectors:

Rear Vent:

Notice how the fan is off centre:

Next we will see how the card looks installed, and discuss the test setup!

Test Setup and Installation

The test setup we are using for the tests today are as follows:

Hardware:

AMD FX-8150 Black Edition (3.6 - 4.2 GHz)
ASUS Crosshair V Formula
Corsair TX650
Corsair Force 60GB SSD
AMD: XFX Radeon HD 7970 Black (1GHz)
NVIDIA: EVGA GeForce GTX 680

Software:

Window 7 Pro x64
Bulldozer Hotfixes Installed (KB2645594 & KB2646060)
AMD Catalyst 8.921.2 RC11
NVIDIA Forceware 301.10

And here is the card installed:

My favourite shot:

Now its time for some benchmarks, first up Crysis 2!

Crysis 2 Results

To get accurate repeatability in Crysis 2, we used the Adrenaline Crysis 2 Benchmark Tool with the following settings:

1920x1200 Resolution
Ultra Preset
Edge Blur, No AA
DirectX 11 Mode
High Resolution Textures On
Central Park (Adrenaline) Map

We recorded the following results:

Graph (Requires Javascript & Flash)

While minimum framerates where basically equal between the HD 7970 and the GTX 680, when you consider that the AMD card is overclocked from the stock 925MHz up to 1000MHz, the GTX 680 still manages to pull out a lead in excess of 16% for the average FPS.

On the next page we will put the cards through the Stalker: Call of Pripyat benchmark.

Stalker: Call of Pripyat Results

We ran the Stalker: Call of Pripyat benchmark with the following settings:

1920x1200 Resolution
DirectX 11 Mode
Ultra Preset
No AA
No SSAO
Tessellation Enabled
No Contact Hardening Shadows

We will show each output graph of the benchmark below, followed by an aggregated result to compare cards:

HD 6970:

HD 7970:

GTX 680:

We then averaged each of the Minimum, Average and Maximum FPS for each test, per card. For example, the average minimum FPS for the GTX 680 in this test was (33.4 + 37.7 + 24 + 32.7)/4 = 32.0

Graph (Requires Javascript & Flash)

Once again, the stock GTX 680 has pulled out a considerable lead over the already overclocked HD 7970 by nearly 20% for the average FPS. The NVIDIA card (or possibly driver) also shows much better handling of minimum FPS in the rain scenario than the two AMD cards.

For our final test, we will put the cards through the Unigine Heaven Benchmark

Unigine Heaven Results

We ran Unigine Heaven 2.5 with the following settings:

1920x1200 Resolution
DirectX 11 Mode
High Shaders
High Textures
Trilinear Filter
4x Anisotropic Filtering
Occlusion Enabled
Refraction Enabled
Volumetric Enabled
Tessellation Normal

We recorded the following results.

Graph (Requires Javascript & Flash)

The improvement AMD made in tessellation performance between the HD 6970 and HD 7970 clearly shows here, but it is still lacking as the NVIDIA card is able to pull out a lead of over 13%

Conclusion follows...

Having only had the card to play with for a day, it is hard to give a solid conclusion on the product, but with that said, the time I have had with it has been very positive and the card is noticeably quieter than the HD 7970, both during idle and under load. The idle temperatures are also a lot more respectable and despite having the Zero-Core feature on the AMD which would drop idle power consumption down to a minimal 1W while the monitor is off, I couldn't help but notice that the use of hardware acceleration for web browsing nowadays made it quite warm, the GTX 680 on the other hand is much cooler, helping it to stay quiet when its full power is not needed.

There are some really nice new features brought about by the GTX 680 which as a gamer I really appreciate. Adaptive V-sync for example, which only turns V-sync on when the framerate exceeds your refresh rate, thereby stopping screen tearing without stutters, as games without triple buffering, jump down from 30 fps then back to 60 fps, which can leave you feeling quite ill sometimes. Then there is the GPU boost feature, a much better implementation than having fixed clocks, which in the past while NVIDIA cards often packed a punch, they were known for being power hungry beasts which many people joked you could fry an egg on. Not the GTX 680 though, it has a feeling of sophistication, it doesn't feel like some mad brute anymore, and I'm sure some people will miss that, now it feels much more refined, like NVIDIA have started to pay attention to the little details, and bring something genuinely competitive to the market.

If you are in the market for a £400 ($500) graphics card, unless AMD start aggressively cutting the price of the HD 7970, the GeForce GTX 680 certainly cant be beat as a single GPU solution.

Is there a test you would like us to try? Drop us a comment as we will be publishing a one month in review with some extra performance figures including some the latest games, you have a chance to influence what these will be!