NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB Video Card Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

When it comes to the performance results, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 easily becomes the fastest gaming graphics card that we have ever tested. It is also one of the better looking cards that we have ever used as well. You can tell that NVIDIA left no stone unturned and has tried to make this product the best video card the company has ever released. The GeForce GTX 690 is a revolutionary product as it raises the bar for what one will expect to get from a flagship video card. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 has a suggested retail price of $999, so the use of exotic materials actually helps reduce the sticker shock a little bit. No one wants to drop a thousand dollars and get a cheap looking product that also feels cheap in your hands. NVIDIA made sure that customers will not experience that with the GeForce GTX 690.

Looks aside, the GeForce GTX 690 performed exceptionally well and our gaming experience was excellent! With the slightly lower core clock speeds we figured that the GeForce GT 690 would perform slightly slower than two GeForce GTX 680 video cards running in SLI and our testing confirmed this. It also confirmed that it blows away the AMD Radeon HD 6990, which is the competitors current dual-GPU graphics card. Overclocking the GeForce GTX 690 was also very easy to do and we were
able to have the card running over 1200MHz in games with relative ease. NVIDIA made it known to the world today that they are the fastest card available and that AMD better bring something amazing out with the Radeon HD 7990 if they want to compete.

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.

According to NVIDIA, the GeForce GTX 690 will be available in limited quantities from add-in card partners, including ASUS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, Palit and Zotac starting today, with wider availability by May 7. Here in North American the main partners will be ASUS and EVGA, so those are the two brands to look for. NVIDIA expects to be able to stock these cards, but the are being produced in limited quantities, so expect them to be scarce at the beginning.