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GTX 675MX or GTX 680MX

jmpage2 said:
Come off of it. Have you seen the benchmarks that the 680MX is putting out? It is producing outstanding results in very demanding games, especially when you consider that it's an all-in-one and not some full tower with an SLI game card setup.

For $150 the upgraded graphics card is almost a no brainer. It will certainly extend the useable life of the machine if the person has even a passing interest in gaming, video or photo work.

To give a similar example, the machine I have right now is a 2009 i7 iMac with the upgraded 4850 graphics card. At that time the 4850 was only available in the top spec machine. Because I have the 4850 I can still play some of the newer games nearly three years later. If I'd gotten the lower spec video card, then games like Diablo III, etc, wouldn't even be an option as they would perform terribly.
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The 680mx is in my opinion a gaming card. The 675mx for 3d grapics professinals would be sufficient. After ordering the 675mx the only thing I am worried about is will 1gb of ram be enought on the card. Bearing in mind I will use the saved money on a new tripod for my camera and a few other items.

I just can't see myself pushing the 675mx to the extent I will the i7 cpu which will be 100% load for hour's on end. If I can push the gpu that hard then I will be saying well done to me.

On a side note the iMac is about minimalistic simplicity, so jamming it full of components we just dont need just defies all logic.
 
Right, but the OP already indicated that HE uses HIS mac for occasional gaming... which should make the upgrade to the better video card an easy decision.
 
jmpage2 said:
Right, but the OP already indicated that HE uses HIS mac for occasional gaming... which should make the upgrade to the better video card an easy decision.
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Yes exactly, but this thread is very usful for anyone contemplating which card they need to go for. So if you are in to gaming then go for the 180MX. If I was in to gaming I would just buy a 360 and play halo2 with a controller designed for gaming all for $40.00 but that is just me.
 
jmpage2 said:
Come off of it. Have you seen the benchmarks that the 680MX is putting out? It is producing outstanding results in very demanding games, especially when you consider that it's an all-in-one and not some full tower with an SLI game card setup.

For $150 the upgraded graphics card is almost a no brainer. It will certainly extend the useable life of the machine if the person has even a passing interest in gaming, video or photo work.

To give a similar example, the machine I have right now is a 2009 i7 iMac with the upgraded 4850 graphics card. At that time the 4850 was only available in the top spec machine. Because I have the 4850 I can still play some of the newer games nearly three years later. If I'd gotten the lower spec video card, then games like Diablo III, etc, wouldn't even be an option as they would perform terribly.
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my comment was native resolution and high settings + AA

3dmark11 scores of <7,000 @stock clocks are not gonna do that in BF3, C3, etc

put BF3 to 2560x1440 with utra and 4-8X MSAA and lets see if it can maintain 30fps
 
GPUFreak said:
my comment was native resolution and high settings + AA

3dmark11 scores of <7,000 @stock clocks are not gonna do that in BF3, C3, etc

put BF3 to 2560x1440 with utra and 4-8X MSAA and lets see if it can maintain 30fps
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Okay, sure. If you want to turn on AA and turn up all of the details the iMac is not going to compete with a dedicated gaming rig. However, the 680 still provides double the frame-rates in most games compared to the lower end card... and many will be VERY happy to be able to game at native resolution even if details are set to "medium" and AA is not turned on.

The 680MX blows away any other "laptop" part that's been available for a machine like the iMac ever before. $150 for double the speed? Yes please.
 
jmpage2 said:
Okay, sure. If you want to turn on AA and turn up all of the details the iMac is not going to compete with a dedicated gaming rig. However, the 680 still provides double the frame-rates in most games compared to the lower end card... and many will be VERY happy to be able to game at native resolution even if details are set to "medium" and AA is not turned on.
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If ur willing to turn down resolution...then 675mx will be plenty. @1080/1200p both will run most games at high to ultra settings


Also, forgot to mention this, but anyone know why it performs so much lower than a 660ti? Based on its specs, it should be closer to that than the 660/7870(which it is between)
 
GPUFreak said:
If ur willing to turn down resolution...then 675mx will be plenty. @1080/1200p both will run most games at high to ultra settings
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Running at native resolution makes a bigger difference than AA. Which is why most would be happier with the 680MX getting 2X the performance of 675MX at those resolutions.

To me it's a bit funny that people get the top spec 27" iMac at a $2000 price tag and then try to point out the foolishness of spending less than 10% more for a very large GPU upgrade. It's like the thread where people are picking apart the idea that someone would spend an extra $75 for RAM that they might not "need".
 
jmpage2 said:
To me it's a bit funny that people get the top spec 27" iMac at a $2000 price tag and then try to point out the foolishness of spending less than 10% more for a very large GPU upgrade. It's like the thread where people are picking apart the idea that someone would spend an extra $75 for RAM that they might not "need".
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It is foolishness to believe that 32GB RAM and 680mx are the best option for everyone. The facts are:
- Do you game? Get the 680mx.
- Do you do photo/video work? Get either the 675mx or 680mx.
- Do you just surf the web? Get the 660m.
- Does anyone need 32GB of RAM? No; it's mainly for bragging rights.

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jmpage2 said:
Running at native resolution makes a bigger difference than AA. Which is why most would be happier with the 680MX getting 2X the performance of 675MX at those resolutions.
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Also, I'm not sure the 680mx is 2x the performance of the 675mx. According to this tread, its about 4 fps less on Heaven.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1510765/
 
nosnhojm said:
It is foolishness to believe that 32GB RAM and 680mx are the best option for everyone. The facts are:
- Do you game? Get the 680mx.
- Do you do photo/video work? Get either the 675mx or 680mx.
- Do you just surf the web? Get the 660m.
- Does anyone need 32GB of RAM? No; it's mainly for bragging rights.

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Also, I'm not sure the 680mx is 2x the performance of the 675mx. According to this tread, its about 4 fps less on Heaven.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1510765/
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It is double in 3DMark and in many benchmarks. Not all games will take as much advantage of the faster GPU and additional RAM of the 680MX.
 
jmpage2 said:
It is double in 3DMark and in many benchmarks. Not all games will take as much advantage of the faster GPU and additional RAM of the 680MX.
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It's not strong enough to make the extra 1gb of VRAM that big of a difference, as the times you would need it, the GPU would still be too weak.

And proof please? 680mx is not 2x 675mx
 
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Roughly 2X faster in synthetic benchmarks and of course double the video RAM. Obviously this does not equate to double the frame-rate in all games or render operations but I would guess 50% plus boost at full resolution in many situations.

I'm going to bow out of this discussion after making one final comment. In the desktop video world it is extremely common for people to spend an added $250-$500 for a video card that gives a 20-30% performance bump in demanding games. Getting the performance upgrade of the 680MX over the 675 for the $150 premium is really a no brainer for people that play games, or perhaps do a lot of video render.
 
By posting that benchmark, you make your argument invalid, you should be ashamed.....

Pass mark is a joke, and should never be taken seriously

Find me one LEGITIMATE benchmark and ill admit your right, but until then, I will say the 675mx is smarter
 
Just looking at the benchmarks! Good for me and my old card.

Intel hd 4000: 461

Quadro 2000 my old card: 1292

Gforce GTX 675M my new card: 2363? is this not the MX?

Gforce GTX 680MX: 3653

The benchmark is justified you are paying double the 675 card price for the extra top end fps performance. If you were to look at the 3D modling benchmarks the quadro would be right up there with its efficient drivers and you would see less performance increase in 3D over 675 to the 680.
 
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By posting that benchmark, you make your argument invalid, you should be ashamed.....

Pass mark is a joke, and should never be taken seriously

Find me one LEGITIMATE benchmark and ill admit your right, but until then, I will say the 675mx is smarter
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Well, considering the tone of your post, I guess I could not resist yet another bite at the 'apple'. Did I not clearly state that these were synthetic benchmarks? Now you can rip into the legitimacy of 3DMark;

3DMark for 675M 3340;

http://community.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu/NVIDIA+GeForce+GTX+675M/review

3DMark for 680MX 6883;

http://www.barefeats.com/imac12g1.html

Normally Apple upgrades are overpriced (look at the cost of RAM, Fusion drive, etc). However, the 680MX is pretty reasonably priced at $149.

And now, feel free to have the last word, because that's obviously your real motivation here.
 
jmpage2 said:
Well, considering the tone of your post, I guess I could not resist yet another bite at the 'apple'. Did I not clearly state that these were synthetic benchmarks? Now you can rip into the legitimacy of 3DMark;

3DMark for 675M
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Is the card in the iMac not the 675MX?
 
I highly recommend the 680mx. It outperforms anything else by a mile. I do huge photo edits, web designs and some rendering. This iMac is a beast!

Here's a vid of Starcraft 2 in max. Also I've played Diablo 3 maxed.

 
Tri-stan said:
Is the card in the iMac not the 675MX?
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Yes, you are right, would be interesting to see what the difference is there. I still suspect 680MX is 50% faster in most situations. It has more pipelines, etc, than the 67x series.
 
No one seems to have a real benchmark comparison between the 675mx and 680mx.

On the paper the 680mx looks quite a lot better than the 675mx but I suspect that the real world difference is very moderate. This has been the case with every GPU upgrade in earlier high end 27" iMac's.

At least one can say that the 680mx upgrade for video / audio editing is a complete waste of money. To begin with it's kind of ridiculous to do some sort of "professional" video / audio work on consumer hardware, and even if you did the +150 upgrade would be spent much wiser elsewhere.
 
So, the GTX680MX it is than! Thanks for the responses, I will add I dont play console games only PC as I prefer the mouse and keyboard. I can see with improvement in drivers etc the cards allowing games to run faster so we should have alot of fun in the coming years!
 
I'm a owner of an iMac 27" with the 675mx card. When I test it With 3dmark i get right more than 6100 score.

If you look at the nvidia page of the 675mx it will say that it has 960 Cuda, 600 GPU clock and 1800 MHz memory clock. But the 675mx in the iMac does not have that spec. It has 1344 Cuda, 720MHz GPU clock and 2500 MHz memory clock. So it is not that far away from the 680mx card after all.

The two big differences is 1GB vs 2GB and 1344 Cuda vs 1536 Cuda cores
 
oyKris said:
I'm a owner of an iMac 27" with the 675mx card. When I test it With 3dmark i get right more than 6100 score.

If you look at the nvidia page of the 675mx it will say that it has 960 Cuda, 600 GPU clock and 1800 MHz memory clock. But the 675mx in the iMac does not have that spec. It has 1344 Cuda, 720MHz GPU clock and 2500 MHz memory clock. So it is not that far away from the 680mx card after all.

The two big differences is 1GB vs 2GB and 1344 Cuda vs 1536 Cuda cores
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Wow that is quite a find, I was wondering why people were quoting 6000 + benchmarks for the 675mx. It is really not that far off the 180mx. Just shows you don't have to max the bto iMac to get great performance and future proofing.
 
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