GEFORCE GTX 690

Following the recent introduction of the GeForce GTX 680, NVIDIA is introducing a Kepler architecture graphics card (read more about this architecture in the GeForce GTX 680 review) with two GK104 processors. NVIDIA already has experience in developing dual-chip solutions - the GeForce GTX 295 and GTX 590, but due to the limited power consumption, these models had very low operating frequencies, which greatly affected the results. The release of the GeForce GTX 690 can be called a huge step towards two-chip solutions. Thanks to the latest production technologies and the new Kepler architecture, the GeForce GTX 690 includes two full-fledged video chips.

Specifications

• Chip codename GK104;
• Technology of production 28-nm;
• 3.54 billion transistors per chip;
• Core area 294 mm2 per chip;
• Unified architecture with an array of processors for stream processing of various types of data: vertices, pixels, etc.;
• Hardware support for DirectX 11 API, including shader model Shader Model 5.0, geometric and computational shaders, and tessellation;
• Dual 256-bit memory bus: four independent controllers per chip, 64 bits wide each, supporting GDDR5 memory;
• Base core clock 915 MHz 
• Core clock at Boost Clock 1019 MHz 
• 2×8 streaming multiprocessors, including a total of 3072 scalar ALUs for floating point calculations (support for calculations in integer format, floating point, with FP32 and FP64 precision within the framework of the IEEE 754-2008 standard);
• 2×128 texture addressing and filtering units with support for FP16 and FP32 components in textures and support for trilinear and anisotropic filtering for all texture formats;
• 2x4 wide ROPs (64 pixels in total) supporting anti-aliasing modes up to 32 samples per pixel, including FP16 or FP32 framebuffer formats. Each block consists of an array of configurable ALUs and is responsible for Z generation and comparison, MSAA, blending;
• Integrated support for RAMDAC, two Dual Link DVI ports, as well as HDMI and DisplayPort.
• Integrated support for four monitors, including two Dual Link DVI ports, as well as HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2
• PCI Express 3.0 bus support
• Number of universal processors 2×1536;
• Number of texture units - 2×128, blending units - 2×32;
• Effective memory frequency 6008 (1502×4) MHz;
• Memory type GDDR5, 2×256-bit memory bus;
• Memory capacity 2×2 GB;
• Memory bandwidth 2×192.3 GB/s;
• Theoretical maximum fill rate of 58.6 gigapixels per second;
• Theoretical texture sampling rate of 234.2 gigatexels per second;
• Three Dual Link DVI-I connectors, one DisplayPort;
• Single SLI connector;
• Bus PCI Express 3.0;
• Power consumption 300 W 
• Two-slot design;

Like its predecessor GTX 680, the GTX 690 also supports the latest PCI-E 3 standard. NVIDIA positions the GTX 690 as the equivalent of a pair of two GTX 680s, both in terms of performance and price. The recommended retail price of the GTX 690 is $999, the cost of one GTX 680 graphics card is $499.

Design

The design of the GTX 690 is as follows: the cooling system casing is entirely made of metal and magnesium alloy, the GPU heatsink is made of chrome-plated aluminum. In terms of board dimensions, the GTX 690 is only one inch larger than the GTX 680 board at 11 inches. On the top end side of the video card shroud is a glow-in-the-dark GeForce soft-touch logo applied with a laser.

The principle of the cooling system in the GTX 690 is almost the same as that of the younger brother - the GeForce GTX 590. The cooling of the two GPUs is carried out by two separate radiators with a copper evaporation chamber. A large axial fan with a large diameter impeller is installed in the center of the cooling system, dispersing the air to the sides. To increase the cooling efficiency and reduce the noise from the fan, the casing of the cooling system was designed - special low-profile channels were designed right under the fan to direct the air flow to the radiators.

Also, NVIDIA engineers have improved the control logic of the fan, its rotation speed changes smoothly, not step by step.

There are 3 DVI ports and one DisplayPort on the back of the video card.

Pay

The GTX 690 graphics card uses a 10-layer board. All memory chips are installed on one side of the board.

Like the previous dual-chip model GeForce GTX 590, the GTX 690 is equipped with Samsung K4G20325FD-FC03 memory chips. The effective operating frequency of the memory is the same as that of the GTX 680 - 6 GHz. The video card power system has five phases for each GPU. All capacitors on the GTX 690 board are solid state.

We used MSI Afterburner for overclocking settings. As you can see from the screenshot below, we managed to achieve overclocking to +100 MHz for the core and up to +500 MHz for the memory.

At these frequencies, we get a card with faster performance than two GeForce GTX 680s, while maintaining comfortable temperature and noise characteristics corresponding to a non-overclocked GeForce GTX 690. There is simply no point in overclocking more - this performance will satisfy all existing needs.

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