NVIDIA

Introduction:

Just over a month ago NVIDIA proved it was on the right track when it released the GTX 680 that featured an all new GPU micro architecture called Kepler. The GTX 680 proved to be the fastest single GPU card on the block and addressed issues that seemed to dog the Fermi-based offerings including power consumption and heat. With the drop to 28nm, the GK104-based GTX 680 delivered excellent power consumption and thermal performance to match its impressive gaming performance. It soundly beat AMD's HD 7970 in just about every test it was run through including in Surround (Eyefinity) resolutions of 5760x1080. Again, impressive to say the least. Now here we are a month later and NVIDIA just announced the successor to the GTX 680 with the introduction of the GTX 690. This balls out card features not one but two full powered 28nm GK104 GPU cores with 3072 CUDA cores and 4GB of 6Gbps GDDR5 memory. I have to think NVIDIA learned some valuable lessons from the GTX 590 that was down clocked to meet a power envelope to put a card such as this out as its flagship offering. If it is as good as GTX 680 SLI it will prove to be a success.

NVIDIA brought new technologies to the party when it released the GTX 680 including Adaptive VSync, FXAA, and dynamic clock control called GPU Boost. To go with those we get Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TXAA) for improved visual quality with a lower hardware overhead performance hit. Built like a tank, the GTX 690 should prove to be the ultimate gaming card for those that have to have the best multiple screen or high resolution gaming experience. Lets see what makes it tick!