GTX 680 and TS2012

[NKP1]

Anybody get one of these new cards yet? Curious how it might compare to a 7970 with TS2012.

[arizonachris]

A $500 card that's not gonna make too much difference? (plus, they are all sold out) My GTX560Ti will do just fine for now. I know someone who has a 7970 but doesn't run RW.

Oh, yes, I do want an EVGA GTX680. Not for RW, just because I want it. Hey, Santa Railworks!

[NKP1]

And I've been real happy with my "antiquated" 8800GT. But . . just ordered a 680! A PNY brand. Rotten Egg flashed one up as available for a moment so I grabbed it. Should be here in a few days. Dell and Tiger Direct has at this very moment an availability with the Galaxy brand. Now I need to go get Durango & Silverton and my day will be complete. How about yours?

[arizonachris]

Well, my last PNY card died a month after I bought it. That was a GTX470. Hope they got the 680 right. I was able to exchange mine thru New Egg for an EVGA card.

My day is still unfolding. Durango is awesome. I only fell in the river once so far. What a great route! You will want to get the Free Download Manager: http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/download.htm Trust me on that one.

I do still want a 680, but this 560Ti sure is running great for now. You will let us know how nice that card is I'm sure. (I would, LOL)

[NKP1]

D&S downloaded and installed. Yep free download manager is the only way I could download it. 7 minutes vs. an hour plus. And then it would always hang up at 30mb or so. So FDM was the only way to go. Anyway D&S is a good route. still assembling train. And yeah I played with a GTX 570 for about a month but was disappointed. I prefer MSI but they are sold out. This PNY should be ok. I'll keep it until a dual or triple fan superoverclocked plus comes out. Either MSI or EVGA. If within 30 days of this PNY reference card I will trade it in.

[NKP1]

GTX 680 is due tomorrow. They say it requires 38A in the 12v rail. I was concerned my 6 year Antec 650w trupower trio would be inadequate @ 19a/rail. Even though it'll handle a total max load of 52a. It would probably be ok but swapped it out anyway for a Corsair 700w gamer supply. This one has 56A on a single rail. Everything seems to run ok.

[arizonachris]

Good choice on the new PSU. some of those older Antec's had bad capacitors. I had a True Power take out one of my Folding PC's, had to replace everything.

Let us know how you like the 680. (yes, I still want one)

[Cardinal51]

For what it is worth . . . the cards mentioned in this thread according to http://www.videocardbenchmark.net . . . .

Card - G3D Rating (higher is better) - Rank (lower is better)

GeForce 8800 GT - 947 - 133
GeForce GTX 470 - 2965 - 15
GeForce GTX 560 Ti - 2983 - 14
GeForce GTX 570 - 3587 - 6
Radeon HD 7970 - 3866 - 3
GeForce GTX 580 - 3955 - 2
GeForce GTX 680 - 4066 - 1

[NKP1]

Preliminary report. Card installed. Able to run D&S and COA BLC (free roam) ok with ssaa@3x3 and master detail checked on high.16-23fps. Unprecedented for me. No more moire patterns! Switches and fences never looked better. Dark scenes such as HSC "rushing the rations" opening scene still report 14fps even wth ssaa@2x2. Adaptive bloom & depth of field knock it down 4-5 fps. But I don't use those. HSC the champion looks real good. No more flickering shadows! Keep in mind I am still using a 6 year old v.1 pci-e AM2 motherboard and a 3.2 ghz x2 Athlon processor plus only 4gb ddr2 memory. Im sure it'll be even better with a new ivy bridge, 8-16gb ddr3 and pci-e v.3 motherboard. Along with 64bit OS on a SSD. When funds permit. Ill report more later.

[NKP1]

1920x1200. Again, PNY GTX 680 installed. Did a little modest overclock: 120% on the CPU and 110% on the PCI-E bus. Athlon dual core CPU is now at 3.52ghz. Temp on core 0 did not exceed 45c. Normally it sets at 38-39c. Zalman cpu9900a copper cooler.
HSC: Danger at Rose Tower
Multi-core: ON
30fps lock: ON
Master detail: High
SSAA 1x2 - 29fps
SSAA 2x2 - 29fps
SSAA 3x3 - 21-24fps

These are with the initial task. To couple and move some cars back to safe point. View 2 was used to watch F7 locomotive and monitor frame rate.
It did not drop below levels reported above.

I suspect for most day to day rail sim operations I will leave master detail on High and SSAA at 2x2. Seems to look real good and run pretty smooth at that setting.

[NKP1]

Quick cell phone pic of my AM2 rig with GTX 680 installed. Pretty happy with this at the moment. Red numbers below card is the CPU temp (reads 35c). 2006 model motherboard, processor and memory. Athlon 64 'X2 6400+ @3.52ghz, EPoX AF570 + Ultra, Gskill 4gb ddr2 @ 4-4-4-11, TS2012 on dedicated SSD, Zalman CNPS9900A cooler, new Corsair GS700 gamer PSU, 56a on +12v rail. Still running 32bit Win7. Experimented with 64bit OS, AMD 1090t 6-core cpu, Asus M5A97 EVO mobo, GTX 570 and 16gb of Corsair vengeance ddr3 memory. But those components did very little for actual TS2012 game play, so back to the store they went. Graphics horsepower is what's called for here and the GTX 680 delivers. 1920x1200. Currently averaging 29fps w/ SSAA at 2x2, mulit-core and 30fps lock on for most routes with master detail set on high. Durango & Silverton and C&O Alleghany run pretty well with SSAA at 3X3. Anyway, my major annoyances: moire patterns over switches and fences and flickering shadows are history. Sure, a lot depends on how well a route is written, problems still occur in the yards at Colton & Northern and the opening of HSC's "rushing the rations" and there still may be a fps hit when a AI train goes by but usually not enough to be a noticeable problem. And If so a little tweak here or there usually cures it. Overall this GTX 680 is really amazing to me. And I will no doubt upgrade rest of components again in next few months as time and funds permit.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

How is the card's cooling configuration? Does it use the reference design, i.e a sort of wind tunnel concept?
Does it have a full width exhaust grille in the backplane?
Please provide a pic with the grille and connections from the outside.

[NKP1]

This is a reference card. However there is much talk how this new card runs much cooler, quieter and uses less juice than previous models. Dual fan setups, etc will be available soon. I honestly don't see the need at the moment as current GPU temp is 31c and I can't hear it.

[NKP1]

As always with computer tech items, the moment you buy something new the next day there's something better > http://www.palit.biz/event/promote/2012 ... /index.php

[NKP1]

Sunday morning testing.
SSAA 2x1, master detail high, fps lock off
Colton & Northern
getting high frame rates with the GTX 680 where as with the 8800GT I was struggling
scenario 2 now 60fps, was 21-23fps
scenario 6 now 27-30fps, was <14fps and pretty much unplayable

HSC "rushing the rations" opening scene is the odd ball and still causes problems @ 14fps. Knocking the shadows down a notch or two here helps. SSAA@2x2 can give me 23fps when the initial AI train goes by. It had dropped to near nil with the older 8800GT.

Again gentlemen I am very pleased with this graphics card. Highly recommend trying this before any other pricey upgrades.