[Dusan Despotovic]

Nvidia Kepler GTX680 vs Radeon HD 7970
Yesterday we have published the review of AMD Radeon HD 7950 graphic cards, which is a better alternative for GTX 580 at almost the same price. And now it’s time for Nvidia to have its own turn. We have got information from our sources that upcoming Nvidia Kepler GTX680 will be up to 45% faster than AMD’s present flagship, Radeon HD 7970.As the price point and the specifications of HD 7970 and HD 7950 are found to be the same as what we have published earlier, this time too, we believe that these specifications, price and release date of entire Kepler series mentioned below will hold true.

But surprisingly reference GTX680 will have just 2GB frame buffer, even with 1GB lesser than HD 7970, Nvidia GTX680 is able to perform 45% faster. Also GTX680 boasts double the amount of stream processors compared to GTX580. We already know that the entire Kepler series will be PCI-E 3.0 compliant. For a $100 more than HD7970 you will be getting almost a 45% faster card, now you might have guessed, GTX680 is priced at $649 and will be released in April 2012. Entire Kepler series is being manufactured on TSMC’s 28nm technology. Another rumor that had spread earlier was that Nvidia will be skipping 600 series and will use 700 series for their Kepler series, but now it’s been made clear that, Nvidia is not going to skip GTX600 series. Now you can see the specifications, price point and release date of Nvidia Kepler series GPUs.

Kepler based Nvidia GTX 600 series GPUs – Highlights

Nvidia Kepler GTX690
750MHz Core clock
2×1.75 GB 4.5GHz GDDR5 Memory
2×1024 Stream Processors
2x448bit Bus Width
Priced at $999
Both AMD and Nvidia are following the same trend in maintaining the order of the series in GPUs. Like HD 7990, GTX 690 has a core clock lesser than GTX 680 and Bus width similar to GTX 670. Compared to AMD HD 7990′s price point of $ 849, GTX 690 is priced at $ 999. But comparing to the performance the GTX 690 can offer, HD 7990 is definitely over priced, and sure AMD has to reduce their prices drastically after the release of GTX 600 kepler series.

Nvidia Kepler GTX680
850MHz Core clock
2 GB 5.5GHz GDDR5 Memory
1024 Stream Processors
512bit Bus Width
Priced at $649
45% faster than HD 7970
Nvidia has a clear winner in its hands and that’s why they have commented that they had expected much more from AMD. But still we already know that AMD is preparing its revised GCN HD 8000 series graphic cards, which may be release in the latter half of this year.

Nvidia Kepler GTX670
850MHz Core clock
1.75 GB 5GHz GDDR5 Memory
896 Stream Processors
448bit Bus Width
Priced at $499
20% faster than HD 7970

Nvidia Kepler GTX660Ti
850MHz Core clock
1.5 GB 5GHz GDDR5 Memory
768 Stream Processors
384bit Bus Width
Priced at $399
10% faster than HD 7950

Nvidia Kepler GTX660
900MHz Core clock
2 GB 5.8GHz GDDR5 Memory
512 Stream Processors
256bit Bus Width
Priced at $319
Performance similar to GTX580

Nvidia Kepler GTX650Ti
850MHz Core clock
1.75 GB 5.5GHz GDDR5 Memory
448 Stream Processors
224bit Bus Width
Priced at $249
Performance similar to GTX570

Nvidia Kepler GTX650
900MHz Core clock
1.5 GB 5.5GHz GDDR5 Memory
256 Stream Processors
192bit Bus Width
Priced at $179
Performance similar to GTX560

Nvidia Kepler GTX640
850MHz Core clock
2 GB 5.5GHz GDDR5 Memory
192 Stream Processors
128bit Bus Width
Priced at $139
Performance similar to GTX550Ti