NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 performance overview

Now that NVIDIA's dual-GPU beast has hit the market it's time to take a look at a pair of reviews to see how the GeForce GTX 690 performs.

AnandTech concludes that the GeForce GTX 690 has met NVIDIA's goal of making a dual-GPU card that reaches the performance of a pair while also being quiet and consuming less power than the dual video card SLI setup. The site concludes that if you're gaming at 2560 x 1600 or 5760 x 1200, the GTX 690 is at least worth the consideration.

From a gaming performance perspective we haven’t seen a dual-GPU card reach the performance of a pair of high-end cards in SLI/CF since the Radeon HD 4870X2 in 2008, so it’s quite refreshing to see someone get so close again 4 years later. The GTX 690 doesn’t quite reach the performance of the GTX 680 SLI, but it’s very, very close. Based on our benchmarks we’re looking at 95% of the performance of the GTX 680 SLI at 5760x1200 and 96% of the performance at 2560x1600. These are measurable differences, but only just. For all practical purposes the GTX 690 is a single card GTX 680 SLI – a single card GTX 680 SLI that consumes noticeably less power under load and is at least marginally quieter too.

Legit Reviews also writes that NVIDIA left no stone unturned and made one of the best video cards the company has ever released, the GTX 690 is the fastest card on the market and also one of the better looking cards.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 did amazingly well when it came to power consumption, heat and noise. The noise levels are more than acceptable and when gaming it ran quieter and used less power that the GeForce GTX 680 SLI setup! If you want the very best performance for $999, you are best off going with two GeForce GTX 680 cards at $499 each. That said, the GTX 680 SLI setup uses more power and is louder than the GeForce GTX 690 that performs basically at the same level. The GeForce GTX 690 also will appeal to those with Small Form Factor (SFF) systems that can only fit one video card. For example Mini ITX motherboards only have one PCI Express x16 slot if you want the best, the GeForce GTX 690 is the only call to make.