Gamers: 2012 is the year

Technology has been rising and moving forward so fast that we don't realize when a product gets outdated. I have been looking at 2012 to be a big year for gamers with the Radeon 7000 series released, it was the start of a new era with 28nm graphic processing chips coming out. It is now followed by the world's fastest GPU GTX 680. I am pretty much waiting to see how the 7990 and the 690 perform. It is really good to know that Intel's Ivy Bridge is also right around the corner. With the GPU's an CPU's are getting more and more powerful and more efficient we have a lot of power to kill games. With games like Mass Effect 3 already out, its a big month for gamers. We are waiting for GTA 5, it will be the best of all games. Max Payne 3 and Far Cry 3 are also the much awaited games for the fans.

Nvidia GTX 680 - The world's fastest GPU

Nvidia GTX 680 is now the fastest GPU on the earth. It has surpassed its main rival 7970. It is also the most power efficient GPU.

These are the features given by Nvidia for the GTX 680

	Kepler GPU Architecture NVIDIA's Kepler GPU architecture has been designed from the ground up not just for maximum performance in the latest DirectX 11 games, but optimal performance per watt. The new SMX streaming multiprocessor is twice as efficient as the prior generation and the new geometry engine draws triangles twice as fast. The result is world class performance and the highest image quality in an elegant and power efficient graphics card.
	NVIDIA GPU Boost  Up until now, GPUs have operated at a fixed clock speed when playing 3D games, even if they have the potential to run faster. GPU Boost intelligently monitors graphics work load and increases the clock speed whenever possible. The result is that the GPU always performs at its peak and you get the highest framerate possible.
	NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync Nothing is more distracting than framerate stuttering and screen tearing. The first tends to occur when framerates are low, the second when framerates are high. Adaptive V-Sync is a smarter way to render frames. At high framerates, V-sync is enabled to eliminate tearing, at low frame rates, it's disabled to minimize stuttering. It gets rid of distractions so you can get on with gaming.
	NVIDIA Surround with Up To Four Monitors1  Nothing is as breathtaking as playing your favorite games across three monitors. At 5760 x 1080, the expanded field of view fully engages human peripheral vision and provides for the most immersive experience in racing and flight simulators. Add in a fourth display to keep tabs on chat, email or web while you are gaming.
	Two New Anti-aliasing Modes: FXAA and TXAA Anti-aliasing smoothes out jagged edges but can be demanding on framerates. FXAA is a new antialiasing technology that produces beautiful smooth lines with minimal performance impact. And with Kepler based GPUs, you'll be able to enable FXAA in hundreds of game titles through the NVIDIA Control Panel. The second mode, TXAA, is an in-game option that combines MSAA, temporal filtering, and post processing for even higher visual fidelity.
	NVIDIA 3D Vision® Ready2 NVIDIA 3D Vision brings a fully immersive, stereoscopic 3D experience to the PC. A combination of high-tech wireless glasses and advanced software, 3D Vision transforms hundreds of PC games into full stereoscopic 3D. Get up to 2x monitor and keyboard brightness with NVIDIA 3D LightBoost technology4. In addition, you can enjoy 3D movies and 3D digital photographs from 3DVisionLive.com in eye popping, crystal-clear quality.
	NVIDIA SLI® Technology3 Used by the most demanding gamers worldwide, SLI lets you link up to three GeForce GTX 680s together for astounding performance. And with NVIDIA’s track record for fast and frequent software updates, you’ll not only get the best performance in existing games, but future games too.
	NVIDIA PhysX® Technology  Full support for NVIDIA PhysX technology, enabling a totally new class of physical gaming interaction for a more dynamic and realistic experience with GeForce.

Specifications:

GTX 680 GPU Engine Specs:

1536CUDA Cores

1006Base Clock (MHz)

1058Boost Clock (MHz)

128.8Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)

GTX 680 Memory Specs:

6008Memory Speed (Gbps)

2048MBStandard Memory Config

256-bit GDDR5Memory Interface Width

192.2Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)

GTX 680 Support:

4.2OpenGL

PCI Express 3.0*Bus Support

YesCertified for Windows 7

3D Vision, 3D Vision Surround, CUDA, DirectX 11, PhysX, SLISupported Technologies¹

3-waySLI Options²

Display Support:

4 displaysMulti Monitor

2560x1600Maximum Digital Resolution

2048x1536Maximum VGA Resolution

YesHDCP

YesHDMI³

One Dual Link DVI-I, One Dual Link DVI-D, One HDMI, One DisplayPortStandard Display Connectors

InternalAudio Input for HDMI

GTX 680 Graphics Card Dimensions:

10.0 inchesLength

4.376 inchesHeight

Dual-slotWidth

Thermal and Power Specs:

98 CMaximum GPU Tempurature (in C)

195 WMaximum Graphics Card Power (W)

550 WMinimum System Power Requirement (W)⁴

Two 6-pinSupplementary Power Connectors

Here are the Nvidia Geforce Technologies that the 680 has.

DirectX 11The Latest Graphics Technology for Games

3D VisionStereoscopic 3D for Your Games and Movies

3D Vision SurroundThree Monitor Gaming in Stereoscopic 3D

CUDAGPU Accelerated General Purpose Computing

PhysXGPU Accelerated Physics for Games

SLIMaximum Performance on Multiple GPUs

Nvidia GTX 680 specifications and benchmarks

GTX 680 is now the fastest GPU in the world, after months of waiting the official results are out. Below are the specifications of the much awaited GPU.

	GTX 680	GTX 580	GTX 560 Ti	GTX 480
Stream Processors	1536	512	384	480
Texture Units	128	64	64	60
ROPs	32	48	32	48
Core Clock	1006MHz	772MHz	822MHz	700MHz
Shader Clock	N/A	1544MHz	1644MHz	1401MHz
Boost Clock	1058MHz	N/A	N/A	N/A
Memory Clock	6.008GHz GDDR5	4.008GHz GDDR5	4.008GHz GDDR5	3.696GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus Width	256-bit	384-bit	256-bit	384-bit
Frame Buffer	2GB	1.5GB	1GB	1.5GB
FP64	1/24 FP32	1/8 FP32	1/12 FP32	1/12 FP32
TDP	195W	244W	170W	250W
Transistor Count	3.5B	3B	1.95B	3B
Manufacturing Process	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm	TSMC 40nm
Launch Price	$499	$499	$249	$499

Thanks to anandtech for their testings, in the Crysis test we saw 7970 a bit faster than the 680.

The 680 was way faster than the 7970 in Battlefield 3 tests.