NVIDIA Announces GeForce GTX 690, $999USD Dual Kepler GPU card - available May 7

[caveman-jim]

This weekend saw the NVIDIA GeForce Lan party in Shanghai, where NVIDIA CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang announced a new ultra enthusiast product - the GeForce GTX 690, based on dual GTX 680 GPU's:

April 29, 2012—NVIDIA announced the GeForce® GTX 690, the world’s fastest consumer graphics card1—with a bold industrial design to match.

Powered by dual Kepler™ architecture-based GeForce GPUs, the GTX 690 is meticulously designed—inside and out—to deliver the most refined, elegant and smooth PC gaming experience possible.

Engineered to reach a new threshold in gaming performance, the GTX 690 also looks the part. Its array of innovative technologies is complemented by sleek materials that contribute to the exotic design of the card, including:

• An exterior frame made from trivalent chromium-plated aluminum, providing excellent strength and durability
• A fan housing made from a thixomolded magnesium alloy, which offers excellent heat dissipation and vibration dampening
• High-efficiency power delivery with less resistance, lower power and less heat generated using a 10-phase, heavy-duty power supply with a 10-layer, two-ounce copper printed circuit board
• Efficient cooling using dual vapor chambers, a nickel-plated finstack and center-mounted axial fan with optimized fin pitch and air entry angles
• Low-profile components and ducted baseplate channels for unobstructed airflow, minimizing turbulence and improving acoustic quality

The GTX 690 is powered by a total of 3,072 NVIDIA CUDA® cores, all working to deliver awesome gaming performance for ultimate gaming setups. Designed for the discriminating gamer and ultra-high-resolution, multimonitor NVIDIA Surround™ configurations, the GTX 690 delivers close to double the frame rates of the closest single GPU product, the GTX 680. Plus, it is more power efficient and quieter when compared to systems equipped with two GTX 680 cards2 running in NVIDIA SLI® configuration.

“The GTX 690 is truly a work of art—gorgeous on the outside with amazing performance on the inside,” said Brian Kelleher, senior vice president of GPU engineering at NVIDIA. “Gamers will love playing on multiple screens at high resolutions with all the eye candy turned on. And they’ll relish showing their friends how beautiful the cards look inside their systems.”

The GTX 690 graphics card is designed using GeForce GPUs based on NVIDIA’s 28-nanometer Kepler architecture, following the introduction late last month of the GTX 680.

Availability
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 GPU will be available in limited quantities starting May 3, 2012, with wider availability by May 7, 2012 from NVIDIA’s add-in card partners, including ASUS, EVGA, Gainward, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Inno3D, MSI, Palit and Zotac. Expected pricing is $999.

AMD apparently haven't noticed the card yet, as their AMD Game page still proudly proclaims itself to be home of the world's fastest graphics card - for 894 days, and counting. Perhaps they're waiting to see if the benchmarks really do show the GeForce GTX 690 to be 50% faster than the Radeon HD 6990?

[acroig]

I'll get 3 at launch.

[caveman-jim]

one for you and each of the boys or you gonna keep two for yourself?

[caveman-jim]

The cores are downclocked vs. the 680 card, 915MHz/1018 boost vs. 1006/1058 on the 680, and it needs two 8-pin power inputs.

[CurrentlyPissed]

Price is a bit rediculous. I understand 2x680s = $1000, but these are downclocked. And the dual GPU cards have always been slightly less.

[caveman-jim]

Yeah, you're paying a premium for the lower power (dual 8-pin/375W vs. quad 6-pin for 2 680's) and smaller form factor (single card, double height vs. needing two dual height slots).

[Akumajo]

Price is a bit rediculous. I understand 2x680s = $1000, but these are downclocked. And the dual GPU cards have always been slightly less.

I think its the bulletpoints that are the real reason for the price despite the downclocked GPUs:

An exterior frame made from trivalent chromium-plated aluminum, providing excellent strength and durability
A fan housing made from a thixomolded magnesium alloy, which offers excellent heat dissipation and vibration dampening
High-efficiency power delivery with less resistance, lower power and less heat generated using a 10-phase, heavy-duty power supply with a 10-layer, two-ounce copper printed circuit board
Efficient cooling using dual vapor chambers, a nickel-plated finstack and center-mounted axial fan with optimized fin pitch and air entry angles
Low-profile components and ducted baseplate channels for unobstructed airflow, minimizing turbulence and improving acoustic quality

Thats going to set some kind of precendent if companies like Asus, EVGA, etc decide to make an even more special version of the card (as the reference is already sounding pleasing to overclockers) that can somehow exceed the reference design with perhaps a secret stepping revision GPU or extra special cherry picked... like the Asus Mars and Asus Mars II (theres people on youtube who actually boasted buying two of the latter!!).

That is a really bold step up from previous reference Nvidia dual GPU cards that Nvidia is taking by putting such high quality components in a single PCB card, my how technology changes, I am sure that eventually AMD will throw the gauntlet and put their own premium monster tech dual Tahiti card as a reference design.

I am guessing PC gamers will start having real hard core reasons to upgrade given that Crysis 3 is coming next year with its updated CE3.4 which should in theory bring Dx11.1 madness, eventually we will see Id Software's Doom 4, Epic Games next PC project based on their next UE, the unknown Frostbite 2 based games with Dx11.1 features that will also be revealed and among other things its also been a while since Futuremark released their benchmark... it should be also high time for them to make a new version of their benchmark showcasing Dx11.1

Seems like competition is looking great... not only is there more performance but also price breaks too, and super premium, good stuff indeed.

[Akumajo]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5795/nvidia-unveils-geforce-gtx-690-dual-gk104-flagship-launching-may-3rd

TDP 300W??!! on a dual GPU high end premium card???!!!

[Pr3tty F1y]

TDP 300W??!! on a dual GPU high end premium card???!!!

Likely at idle

[moshpit]

I'll give AMD this one though, they can keep on claiming the worlds fastest video card until the day the GTX 690 hits store shelves. A paper launch doesn't trump a purchasable product. Once GTX 690 hits the streets, AMD can be called to task if they try to keep the fastest card title.

[nycdarkness]

I think its the bulletpoints that are the real reason for the price despite the downclocked GPUs:

An exterior frame made from trivalent chromium-plated aluminum, providing excellent strength and durability
A fan housing made from a thixomolded magnesium alloy, which offers excellent heat dissipation and vibration dampening
High-efficiency power delivery with less resistance, lower power and less heat generated using a 10-phase, heavy-duty power supply with a 10-layer, two-ounce copper printed circuit board
Efficient cooling using dual vapor chambers, a nickel-plated finstack and center-mounted axial fan with optimized fin pitch and air entry angles
Low-profile components and ducted baseplate channels for unobstructed airflow, minimizing turbulence and improving acoustic quality

Most of the above goes to crap the moment someone puts a water block on it. I hope the hydro versions are the same price. If a hydro version ends up costing 100-200 more that's going to be utter bs unless they include a stock cooler as well.

[Akumajo]

Great Caesar's Ghost man, holy crap I can't believe I found this on the internets today.

[caveman-jim]

I'll give AMD this one though, they can keep on claiming the worlds fastest video card until the day the GTX 690 hits store shelves. A paper launch doesn't trump a purchasable product. Once GTX 690 hits the streets, AMD can be called to task if they try to keep the fastest card title.

AMD have now pulled their 'Worlds Fastest Graphics Card' claim from the game.amd.com page, guess that means someone somewhere is buying these...