Geforce GTX 680 review

3D Vision surround on a Single GPU

Whether or not NVIDIA would like to admit it, ATI's Eyefinity certainly changed the way we all deal with multi-monitor setups. As a result in the series 500 products there was multi monitor support for gaming with three monitors, this is called Surround Vision. The downside here was that you needed at least two cards setup in SLI for this to work.

It would not have made any sense to have not addressed this with Kepler, so Surround vision and 3D Surround vision are now supported with one card That means you can game even in 3D on three monitors with just one GeForce GTX 680 as the new display engine can drive four monitors at once. Keplers display engine fully supports HDMI 1.4a, 4K monitors (3840x2160) and multi-stream audio.

Using up-to 4 displays

We just had a quick chat about 3D Vision surround but Kepler goes beyond three monitors. You can connect four monitors, use three for gaming and setup one top side (3+1) monitor to check your email or something desktop related.

Summing up Display support

• 3D Vision Surround running off single GPU
• Single GPU support for 4 active displays
• DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 1.4a high speed
• 4K monitor support - full 3840x2160 at 60 Hz

In combination with new Desktop management software you can also tweak your desktop output a little like center your Window taskbar at the middle of the three monitors or maximize windows to a single display. With the software you can also setup and apply bezel correction. Interesting though is a new feature that allows you to use hotkeys to see game menu's hidden by the bezel.

PCIe Gen 3

The series 600 cards from NVIDIA all are PCI Express Gen 3 ready. This update provides a 2x faster transfer rate than the previous generation, this delivers capabilities for next generation extreme gaming solutions. So opposed to the current PCI Express slots which are at Gen 2, the PCI Express Gen 3 will have twice the available bandwidth and that is 32GB/s, improved efficiency and compatibility and as such it will offer better performance for current and next gen PCI Express cards.

To make it even more understandable, going from PCIe Gen 2 to Gen 3 doubles the bandwidth available to the add-on cards installed, from 500MB/s per lane to 1GB/s per lane. So a Gen 3 PCI Express x16 slot is capable of offering 16GB/s (or 128Gbit/s) of bandwidth in each direction. That results in 32GB/sec bi-directional bandwidth.

Adaptive Vsync

In the process of eliminating screen tearing NVIDIA will now implement adaptive VSYNC in their drivers.

VSync is the synchronization of your graphics card and monitor's abilities to redraw the screen a number of times each second (measured in FPS or Hz). It is an unfortunate fact that if you disable VSync, your graphics card and monitor will inevitably go out of synch. Whenever your FPS exceeds the refresh rate (e.g. 120 FPS on a 60Hz screen), and that causes screen tearing. The precise visual impact of tearing differs depending on just how much your graphics card and monitor go out of sync, but usually the higher your FPS and/or the faster your movements are in a game - such as rapidly turning around - the more noticeable it becomes.

Adaptive VSYNC is going to help you out on this matter. So While normal VSYNC addresses the tearing issue when frame rates are high, VSYNC introduces another problem : stuttering. The stuttering occurs when frame rates drop below 60 frames per second causing VSYNC to revert to 30Hz and other multiples of 60 such as 20 or even 15 Hz.

To deal with this issue NVIDIA has applied a solution called Adaptive VSync. In the series 300 drivers the feature will be integrated, minimizing that stuttering effect. When the frame rate drops below 60 FPS, the adaptive VSYNC technology automatically disables VSYNC allowing frame rates to run at that natural state, effectively reducing stutter. Once framerates return to 60 FPS Adaptive VSync turns VSYNC back on to reduce tearing.

This feature will be optional in the upcoming GeForce series 300 drivers, not a default.