NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX vs GTX680MX ?

Both are very good cards for gaming... The x at the end of those card names means their actually underclocked desktop versions. I personally would go for the 2gb option because it will handle rendering games at higher resolutions better like the native resolution on the 27 inch.

If it is not too much, absolutely go for the 2 GB 680MX option without question.

The GTX 680MX uses 122 Watt, whereas the GTX 675MX requires 100 Watt so we can expect more heat and higher temperatures. However, it is unclear what new cooling system the new iMac uses and how efficient it is. It may even be possible that the GTX 680MX configured iMac will use a special power supply and cooling system to manage it. Nonetheless, if you are a dedicated gamer or need such performance than make the purchase immediately. There are probably a limited quantity since this is an exclusive GPU offered for the iMac only, and I have yet to see other vendors offering this option.

Have a look at notebookcheck. The GTX 680MX and GTX 675MX are both on that chart, though only the latter has any benchmarks yet.

Hello. Possibly a silly question..

That chart had the 675 and 680 benchmarks but does the 675 always have 1gb and the 680 have 2gb? Or can that change and those benchmarks are both based on 2gb etc.

I know nowt about GPU...

Which one is good for rendering video?

I'm also not sure which one to get, but will wait for the final prices before I can make a safe decision.

According to wikipedia the 675MX has a maximum of 1152 GFLOPS processing power, whereas the 680MX doubles this to 2234.3 GFLOPS. Of course these are theoretical achievable performance numbers, so I wouldn't count on double the performance. None the less this is very exciting for games because it is comparable to a Desktop 660 which is considered a good bang-for-the-buck graphic cards. If it isn't 200€ more on top of the 675MX I will take that option.

For video editing is it going to be worth the upgrade from 675MX to 680MX or would you rarely see much of a difference between the two.

You would definately see a difference in high resolution gaming!

Both 675MX and 680MX are gaming GPUs. They are also useful if you are doing 3D design or similar - although in that case there probably won't be any difference between the two. If you want to play latest games at high settings at the native resolution - definitively go 680MX. But the 675MX is also pretty fast.

DeafRaiders said:

Which one is good for rendering video?

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Video is usually rendered on the CPU, so the GPU does not matter much.

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lucasfunkt said:

For video editing is it going to be worth the upgrade from 675MX to 680MX or would you rarely see much of a difference between the two.

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I don't think that you will see much difference - it depends on whether your software uses GPU acceleration (and even then both cards would be probably similarly fast).

DeafRaiders said:

Which one is good for rendering video?

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lucasfunkt said:

For video editing is it going to be worth the upgrade from 675MX to 680MX or would you rarely see much of a difference between the two.

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Ahh.. very different questions.

Although neither is optimized for rendering, both would do so very well. The 680MX would render a bit better - in this case primarily due to the VRAM and less the actual GPU performance. (Your use of the word rendering has been assuming you mean creating CGI Effects etc, not just splicing shots together.)

For video editing (splicing shots), I don't expect it to make much difference. Serious video editing tends to be CPU limited, not GPU.

rainbowsofwhite said:

Would the GTX 680MX use a lot more power or create more heat?

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I run smcfancontrol a lot so I would just use that to keep my iMac cool.

rainbowsofwhite said:

Found some interesting info:

VideoCardz

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WoW I did not know there was such a big gap between these two cards. It is like night and day. The 680 comes with pci express 3 where the 675 is using pci express 2. So the 680 requires the extra bandwidth? I wonder if the big difference in specification will be reflected in price. If it is only 100gbp then it has got to be worth it right?

rainbowsofwhite said:

I've decided to stick with the stock GTX 675MX card & spend the money on the SSD Flash Storage instead.

I rarely play games, and the most intensive activity I do is Adobe Premiere & After Effects, which will be more reliant on the i7 processor.

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On CS6, both After Effects and Premiere can make quite effective use of GPU power, which can decrease preview and render times by a significant amount. Most plugins (the Trapcode Suite, Optical Flares and Element to name a few) in After Effects are sped up considerably with access to a good Nvidia GPU, not to mention the base programs themselves.

After Effects

Premiere Pro

I would strongly suggest reconsidering if AE and Premiere are important to you. Neither the 675 nor the 680 are cited as "significant performance gains" by Adobe, but I wouldn't hesitate to future proof my machine for when Adobe writes better drivers.

Ice Dragon said:

If it is not too much, absolutely go for the 2 GB 680MX option without question.

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Not too much, are you kidding? Since when does Apple stop overcharging?

MightyWhite said:

Hello. Possibly a silly question..

That chart had the 675 and 680 benchmarks but does the 675 always have 1gb and the 680 have 2gb? Or can that change and those benchmarks are both based on 2gb etc.

I know nowt about GPU...

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I'd say not always. But VRAM won't effect the frame rates at 1080p. It will only prevent bottlenecking at extremely high resolutions, or say at 1440p w/ high anti-aliasing.

rainbowsofwhite said:

I've decided to stick with the stock GTX 675MX card & spend the money on the SSD Flash Storage instead.

I rarely play games, and the most intensive activity I do is Adobe Premiere & After Effects, which will be more reliant on the i7 processor.

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Might you reconsider the GTX 680MX? 2GB of VRAM is most likely going to benefit you in the long run if any software updates/features might make use of it.

As for the SSD option, why not go with Fusion drive for higher storage capacity and nearly equal disk read/write speeds? If you are going to be purchasing the 512 or 768GB options then you can expect anywhere from $800-1300 based on the 13" rMBP configurations, opposed to $250 for a 1TB Fusion Drive or up to $550 for the 3TB option (1TB based on Mac Mini pricing, although it is a 5400RPM HDD). However, if your workflow requires pure flash storage for maximum performance than please disregard the aforementioned comments.

The only thing I'm worrying about at this point is the pricing of the GTX 680MX. My intuition tells me Apple will charge $300-400, but I'm hoping for $200 at most.

Oh, and the CPU upgrade is most likely going to cost $200 at most, accordingly to last year's model pricing for the i7.

wmy5 said:

Not too much, are you kidding? Since when does Apple stop overcharging?

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I mean if we are talking $200 or $300, fine. If it is $500 or more, forget it.

You are already spending $2,000 for the iMac itself, you might as well get the top of the line video card as I see it.

Ice Dragon said:

I mean if we are talking $200 or $300, fine. If it is $500 or more, forget it.

You are already spending $2,000 for the iMac itself, you might as well get the top of the line video card as I see it.

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I hope $200 is the price, but my intuition tells me that won't happen.