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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 in quad-SLI configuration benchmarked

Summary: What would happen if all four of NVIDIA's new GPUs were fitted into a single machine? Insane and impressive!

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

By for Hardware 2.0 |

This is both insane and impressive - four GeForce GTX 680 cards fitted in a quad-SLI configuration, benchmarked for our pleasure!

Dutch website Hardware.info managed to get four of NVIDIA's new GPUs and decided to see what would happen if they were all fitted into a single machine. What happened was that the system blew away the current benchmarks.

See also: Hardware 2.0 'Very Best Kit List' for February 2012

The system scored an impressive 21,107 in the 3DMark11 benchmark test, comfortably beating the quad-Crossfire AMD Radeon HD 7970, which scored 20,853, and also aced the 3DMark11 Extreme test with 10,850, once again beating the quad-Crossfire AMD Radeon HD 7970, which only managed a score of 9,989.

Can the rig run Crysis 2? You bet it can run Crysis 2! It managed 99.8 frames per second with Crysis 2 running DirectX 11 at hi-res anti-aliasing and at a screen resolution of 1920x1080. What's interesting is that the current drivers don't seem to scale very well since a single GTX 680 managed 98.9 frames per second. I expect that this will be fixed in future driver updates from NVIDIA.

It plays Skyrim a lot better. Two GTX 680s ran the game at 92.8 frames per second running on three screens at 5750x1080, beating the quad-Crossfire AMD Radeon HD 7970, which only managed 91 frames per second.

There is a downside though - power consumption. Even with the system at idle, Two GTX 680s consumed 114.5 Watts, far more than three Radeon HD 7970s that only pulled 99 Watts. Push the system hard and you can expect two GTX 680s in an SLI configuration to pull a whopping 475 Watts. You'd better have a really good, really stable power supply unit.

If you're looking for power, then this is the sort of setup that should appeal to you, but at over $2,000 for the graphics cards alone, you will need to dig deep!

Related:

Image credit: Hardware.info

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11 comments
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  • Not Realistic

    The video cars in slots 1 through 3 have their cooling air intakes totally obstructed. They would overheat quickly during a proper stress test. In the real world, this rig would melt down on day 1.
    Sqrly
    Reply Vote

  • No wonder it's 90 degrees in here

    OK, so is this the answer to the "when will tablets replace desktops?" articles? I mean, if people think the new iPad gets hot, just wait until they get in a closed room with this setup.
    Robert Hahn
    Reply Vote

  • Useless

    This is worthless ... less than 0.1% of the userbase would use 4 cards in sli.. heck I have 2 cards in SLI and realize it was a big waste of money after a few months ... games like Battlefield 3 and Moder Warfare 3 perform worse in SLI configuration then on a single card because of bad optimization. Lots of older games run really bad or not at all in SLI.. I blew my money on two cards a few months ago thinking it would "enhance" the experience ... well nowadays I have sli turned off in my control panel and one card is just sitting idle in there every single day .... an expensive dust catcher...
    DJK2
    Reply Vote

    • Professional use

      Bro, this is important for the people who use it in professional ways. Quadros are really awersome, but sometimes these high end cards can help a lot.
      Nevellin
      Reply Vote

  • IE

    Will it make Internet Explorer a fast browser?
    No? Then it's not useful.

    (old joke)
    Rikkrdo
    Reply Vote

  • Bad ROI

    The Benchmarks are meaningless, unless that is what you actually use the equipment for. If the best that can be achieved by the addition of an extra 3 cards is a frame or 2 faster speed, coupled with the negatives of more heat( create system issues?) and power draw then it seems a little vidiotic to spend the extra coin.
    SevenEd
    Reply Vote

  • My third GTX 680 is on the way

    Nothing really insane about it, I just orders my third 680 for 3D Surround.
    Heatlesssun
    Reply Vote

  • it's not a mac

    cant do this on anything from apple. and yes thier are a few of us who do use rigs like this every day boso's.
    sarai1313@...
    Reply Vote

  • Only managed

    "which only managed"

    When a review says that between fps of 91 and 92 its suspect to fanboyism or tainted at best.

    Quad 680 or 7970 are so close using phrases like "only managed" is unwarranted and only makes the review seem biased.
    RAJOD
    Reply Vote

    • Read a little closer.

      ___TWO___ GTX 680s ran the game at 92.8 frames per second running on three screens at 5750??1080, beating the ___QUAD____-Crossfire AMD Radeon HD 7970, which only managed 91 frames per second.

      Before you go around throwing accusations, you should brush up on your reading comp. It's a stupid test regardless as no game is really optimized to run at quad SLI/Xfire.
      oneday1
      Reply Vote

  • The main reason for using quad-SLI...

    Of course, the article totally ignored the main reason for setting up a quad-SLI configuration. It's not so you can run Skyrim in an immersive environment, or your Super Mario Brothers emulator without stuttering.

    It's so you can begin your new career as a password cracker.

    A setup like this should be able to do, what, a couple of million password combinations a minute?
    Muzhik1
    Reply Vote
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