GeForce GTX 690s

[Troika]

I was wondering if they are still worth trying to get a hold of. Also, how hard would it be to get a matching pair for "quad" sli? Or would it be two way sli because there's two cards? I'm not actually sure how the computer would recognize them.

[WereCat]

Not worth it.

2 cards SLI barely scale properly, 4 cards just don't scale in any game.

 

Yes, 2x GTX 690 would be Quad SLI.

[3 Lions]

1 minute ago, Troika said:

I was wondering if they are still worth trying to get a hold of

No not really, even a 1060 3GB can beat it in terms of raw performance.

[Troika]

3 minutes ago, LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo said:

No not really, even a 1060 3GB can beat it in terms of raw performance.

I don't think it'd be that low. Some of the benchmarks I could find puts it's performance at or just below that of a GTX 1080

[Jurrunio]

It will work (if your mobo support SLI, idk), but it's more for showing off nowadays. Power draw is massive for its (or their) performance.

 

1 minute ago, Troika said:

I don't think it'd be that low. Some of the benchmarks I could find puts it's performance at or just below that of a GTX 1080

Synthetic benchmarks use all cores available, but not games.

[Vegetable]

3 minutes ago, Troika said:

I don't think it'd be that low. Some of the benchmarks I could find puts it's performance at or just below that of a GTX 1080

Not even close. If you had quad SLI Gtx 690's (4 GPUs in total) with PERFECT scaling, then maybe. But even then it has 2gb VRAM so unless you're doing 720p 144hz it's ass for 2018. In games I would be surprised if 2 690's did ANY better than a single 690. 

[Troika]

5 minutes ago, Vegetable said:

Not even close. If you had quad SLI Gtx 690's (4 GPUs in total) with PERFECT scaling, then maybe. But even then it has 2gb VRAM so unless you're doing 720p 144hz it's ass for 2018. In games I would be surprised if 2 690's did ANY better than a single 690. 

I'm curious now but I don't know if I'll be able to find a matching pair nowadays. They retailed for about $1000 usd +/-$500ish depending on what brand it was but now, I dunno. Somewhere between $100 or $400, I'd guess without really searching. I'm gonna try and poke around to see what I can find. Maybe a nicer home than a old crosshair ii with a phenom ii 940. I doubt those are good enough to not bottleneck them.

7 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

It will work (if your mobo support SLI, idk), but it's more for showing off nowadays. Power draw is massive for its (or their) performance.

 

Synthetic benchmarks use all cores available, but not games.

I mean, when it comes to sli, I doubt power draw is a big concern Xp

[Jurrunio]

5 minutes ago, Troika said:

I mean, when it comes to sli, I doubt power draw is a big concern Xp

2

Each 690 has a maximum power draw of 300w. Using two of these will kick that up to 600w, excluding other stuff on the PC. You need a beefy power supply for that and deal with all the heat kicking out.

[TrueMegaManiac]

Never a bad card, just a bad price. It also needs a decent PSU since it is essentially 2 gtx 680s in SLI on a card. Not as bad as GTX 590, but still hungry. There is a Tech Yes City vid where he finds them for pretty cheap and he later tested them to see how they held up.

[Mick Naughty]

I’d sure as heck get one. Mainly a deadly one or something. Good center piece being the best looking card ever made. 

[Inkz]

Unless someone is giving it to you, or for an extremely low rate. Performance wise you can probably do better, not to mention the high heat and power draw associated with it.  Are they cool? Yes, but for gaming they don't really make sense.

[Zeitec]

8 hours ago, Troika said:

I was wondering if they are still worth trying to get a hold of. Also, how hard would it be to get a matching pair for "quad" sli? Or would it be two way sli because there's two cards? I'm not actually sure how the computer would recognize them.

No. The answer is no. Unless it's literally $50 it's not worth it. It's 2 undercloocked overheating loud 680s in SLI. Games don't support sli very well anymore, and in games without sli you're looking between 1050 and 1050ti performance (closer to the non ti). Even with fantastic sli support (which is rare) you're sitting around 1060 performance, with triple the power draw, twice the noise, a lack of modern features, and no resale value.

[Troika]

11 hours ago, TrueMegaManiac said:

Never a bad card, just a bad price. It also needs a decent PSU since it is essentially 2 gtx 680s in SLI on a card. Not as bad as GTX 590, but still hungry. There is a Tech Yes City vid where he finds them for pretty cheap and he later tested them to see how they held up.

He got them for $234 usd and that's aparently a good deal, I found one so far on craigslist near me for $180, which is a better deal since its less money. The downside is that the seller doesn't have a specific brand listed, which makes me think its a reference card. Those tend to be a little slower than aftermarket ones from EVGA, Asus, etc. I'm gonna keep doing some digging, hardware swap on reddit never fails to disappoint for good deals. Plus, if a 690 is just two 680s sharing a single pcb, $180 is a bargain since I saw 680s going on ebay between $120 and $200. That's basically $90 between the two chips on the 690.

[Troika]

Oh, another thing I noticed on the Tech Yes City video. He was using a 800w psu, from the estimate I got, you need closer to 960w to run the system. Maybe its the cpu i7 4960X I'm contemplating on using. Yes, dual x16 slots may only yield 1% to 3% performance gains if at all but I want to give the platform the best possible conditions without breaking the bank. An X99 based board with a broadwell-e chip would cost too much more and DDR4 is rather pricy. X79 is fairly budget friendly, even with extreme chips costing about the same as a current gen i5 k series to a non-k i7. Plus, the X79 still includes dual x16 slots operating at pci-e 3.0. As for cooling, I'm wondering if there's a way to mount aio liquid cooling loops so I don't have to go with a custom loop solution.

[r3loAded]

21 minutes ago, Troika said:

I saw 680s going on ebay between $120 and $200

That doesn't mean that they worth that amount of money. That a 3 generation old graphics card. if you want to buy it just for the fun of it or as a project then it's ok. But at this point I'm sure you know the performance of it and that it doesn't worth the money for the return performance.

 

I almost bought a 690 last year for £80 but when I did some digging with regards to performance, power draw and heat dissipation I changed my mind.

[TrueMegaManiac]

9 hours ago, Troika said:

He got them for $234 usd and that's aparently a good deal, I found one so far on craigslist near me for $180, which is a better deal since its less money. The downside is that the seller doesn't have a specific brand listed, which makes me think its a reference card. Those tend to be a little slower than aftermarket ones from EVGA, Asus, etc. I'm gonna keep doing some digging, hardware swap on reddit never fails to disappoint for good deals. Plus, if a 690 is just two 680s sharing a single pcb, $180 is a bargain since I saw 680s going on ebay between $120 and $200. That's basically $90 between the two chips on the 690.

All 690's are technically reference cards since nvidia, just like with titans, disallowed the creation of custom PCB's and cooling for 690's.

[Troika]

39 minutes ago, TrueMegaManiac said:

All 690's are technically reference cards since nvidia, just like with titans, disallowed the creation of custom PCB's and cooling for 690's.

Oooohh, ok, that makes sense. I found an EVGA one and it looks exactly like the reference card. With thay said, I found two with waterblocks, one's EVGA and the other is from one I never heard of, Koolance.