Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

GTX 680MX is practically a Desktop 680

Dirtyharry50 said:
Real men game on Falcon Northwest computers such as this one I configured for myself. Note the price tag at the bottom but this is the real deal, no compromises. Unfortunately, it does not run OS X so you will of course need to purchase an appropriate Mac for your needs as well. :D

Here is your customized Mach V system configuration.


System Details

Chassis
ICON2 Exotix - Any Single Color
Chassis Logo Insert
White Light
Chassis Fan Kit
Performance Fan Pack
Sound Dampening
AcoustiPack Sound Dampening Foam
Power Supply
1500 Watt Modular
Motherboard
Rampage IV Extreme
Processor
Intel® Core™ i7 3960X 3.3GHz
Processor Cooler
Liquid Cooling - Mach V
Processor Overclock
No Processor Overclock
Memory
Elite 1866MHz 64GB (8x8GB)
Video Card
Quadro 6000 (6GB)
Video Card 2
Quadro 6000 (6GB)
Video Card 3
Quadro 6000 (6GB)
Monitor
30" 2560x1600
Sound Card
On-Board Audio
Speakers
Z-523 2.1
Networking
On-Board Ethernet
Hard Drive
m4 SSD - 512GB
Hard Drive 2
m4 SSD - 512GB
Optical Drive
24x DVD Writer
64-Bit Operating System
Windows 8 Standard
Office Software
Office Professional 2010
Warranty
3 Year Warranty - Mach V

Shipping options

UPS Ground : $240.10
UPS 2-Day : $624.03
UPS Overnight : $966.24
USPS (APO Only) : $915.00
UPS 3 DAY : $366.00

Total System Price: $17140.75

This my friends is what a top of the line gaming PC costs not to be confused with something cobbled together with parts from newegg.com. This bad boy is a state of the art PC gaming rig.

Personally, I think the iMac is a better value given that it can also run games pretty well for most mere mortals and costs quite a bit less plus you don't need to buy another computer just to have a decent desktop operating system (OS X).
Click to expand...

There are many things wrong with this post. The Quadro card is for programing and general utility, not for gaming. It has more horespower to tap into, but it's not optimized for games.

Further, each of those cards is near $4000.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133347

Your supposed spec shows a triple SLI setup in a system costing less than $2K? .... you do the math.
 
iKnackwurst said:
Are there even any big benefits for the normal home user to get the CPU upgrade for the 27"? Would it extend the lifetime of the iMac?
Click to expand...

If you want me to reach for a benefit for a typical home user, it would increase resale value.

It's good for serious image editing/audio mixing/etc. It's unnecessary for casual & gaming use. You could install SETI@Home and find alien life faster, but it's not going to do much for Quicken/TaxCut/etc. or any other normal home number crunching.

----------
mojothemonkey said:
Your supposed spec shows a triple SLI setup in a system costing less than $2K? .... you do the math.
Click to expand...

You missed a zero in his post. He's purporting that the system costs less than $20K. :p
 
mojothemonkey said:
There are many things wrong with this post. The Quadro card is for programing and general utility, not for gaming. It has more horespower to tap into, but it's not optimized for games.

Further, each of those cards is near $4000.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133347

Your supposed spec shows a triple SLI setup in a system costing less than $2K? .... you do the math.
Click to expand...

Less than $20k actually. Read the number again.

I thought the same though. Why would anyone buy Quadros for gaming? 64GB RAM has no point for gaming either. He simply chose the most expensive stuff available and thought "well that must be the best!".

Either this guy is daydreaming or he just wasted a huge amount of money just so he could feel like a "real man".

EDIT: Just noticed the guy copy/pasted all shipping options, meaning it's from the configuration page, not from an actual confirmation or receipt.
 
Last edited:
mojothemonkey said:
There are many things wrong with this post. The Quadro card is for programing and general utility, not for gaming. It has more horespower to tap into, but it's not optimized for games.

Further, each of those cards is near $4000.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133347

Your supposed spec shows a triple SLI setup in a system costing less than $2K? .... you do the math.
Click to expand...

It is not a "supposed spec." That system is sold by Falcon Northwest. Complain to them I guess. Are you going to tell me it wouldn't run circles around a typical alienware pc costing 3 grand?

----------
pgiguere1 said:
Less than $20k actually. Read the number again.

I thought the same though. Why would anyone buy Quadros for gaming? 64GB RAM has no point for gaming either. He simply chose the most expensive stuff available and thought "well that must be the best!".

Either this guy is daydreaming or he just wasted a huge amount of money just so he could feel like a "real man".

EDIT: Just noticed the guy copy/pasted all shipping options, meaning it's from the configuration page, not from an actual confirmation or receipt.
Click to expand...

Geeze, you guys are so serious. I was joking about a "real man's" gaming PC because actually I think the comparisons to the current top spec iMac and inferior (overall) windows boxes are inappropriate. There is a sort of elitist view that Mac's simply aren't good enough vs a home built PC (which is nowhere near what you can buy from Northwest if they want to be elitist) when the fact is the benchmarks for the 680m (not even the mx) show excellent gaming performance on iMac. Yeah, you could buy some more frames per second your eyes could not generally detect but what for when if you are here, you probably like OS X, Mac, Apple, etc.

The benchmarks I looked at over at notebookcheck showed a 680m running good FPS at ultra settings at 1080p on a decent range of current demanding titles. How much more do people really need? The mx may do those games at 1440p although that remains to be seen. I really think a lot of people have fallen prey to marketing of GPUs and other computer components and if they were run through blind studies where they didn't know what was inside various computers testing game performance in many cases they'd have trouble distinguishing differences that look dramatic to them in benchmarks.
 
Last edited:
The Alienware is going to be faster lol. The Quadro 6000 is based on the GTX480 Fermi core and Kepler is much much faster.
 
lixuelai said:
The Alienware is going to be faster lol. The Quadro 6000 is based on the GTX480 Fermi core and Kepler is much much faster.
Click to expand...

My bad, swap out for the top end desktop card on the market in 3 way SLI then. The other guy was right. I just ran down the list picking the most expensive options to see just how much you could blow on a system there. I actually wondered about the quadro cards but was too lazy to look into them. I stand corrected.
 
if apple puts a 680MX in a laptop, i'll sell everything i own and buy it.


17" with 680MX SLI, 120 Hz 3D yes plz
 
Last edited:
Zeov said:
if apple puts a 680MX in a laptop, i'll sell everything i own and buy it.


17" with 680MX SLI, 120 Hz 3D yes plz
Click to expand...

Please dont be such a fool. This will never happen and you know it already. Buy a alienware and have fun carrying it around.

Also the gtx 680mx is a beast. Why?

GTX 675 MX:
Cuda cores: 960
Core clock: 600
Texture fill rate: 48
Memory Clock: 1800mhz
Memory bandwith: 115.2GB/s

GTX 680M (king of the mobile gpus now)
Cuda cores: 1337
core clock: 720
Texture fill rate: 80.6
Memory clock: 1800mhz
Memory bandwith: 115.2 GB/s

GTX680MX
cuda cores: 1536
core clock: 770
texture fill rate: 92,2
Memory clock: 2500mhz
memory bandwith: 160GB/s

----------
karpich1 said:
If that is the post I'm thinking of.... you weren't comparing apples to apples (so to speak) if you took the Alienware into consideration.

The benchmarks listed one nVidia laptop by Schenker, one AMD laptop by the same Schenker, and ANOTHER AMD laptop manufactured by ALIENWARE

CAD, no contest. AMD blew nVidia away.

Games though, comparing only Schenker to Schenker (ignoring Alienware) it was nVidia 6 / AMD 9. Most the wins/losses were relatively close (a couple of percent). Though each had 1 or 2 insane wins that I attribute to nVidia or AMD tailoring their drivers to do really well in Game X for benchmarks.




Price wise though, I don't know if one is better than the other. Since finding stable/good Prices for Mobile cards is kind of odd.
Click to expand...

You shouldnt compare the gtx680m to the best of AMD.

The gtx680mx which is in the iMac, should be 20-25% faster then the gtx680m

See the above quote
 
alstrike said:
I would guess about 400€ because the high end Nvidia chips are really expensive.

Check out this german website and you can see that they charge 419€ for the 680m... :(

http://www.deviltech.de/deviltech.p...b8eb/cl/alist/cnid/8a142c3e4143562a5.46426637
Click to expand...

You are probably close. The current gtx 680m was very expensive when confiugred on other laptops.

However since the gtx675mx comes as standard on the current iMac, i have a small hope it will only be 200 dollars/euros etc
 
henrikrox said:
You shouldnt compare the gtx680m to the best of AMD.

The gtx680mx which is in the iMac, should be 20-25% faster then the gtx680m

See the above quote
Click to expand...

I know, I was referring to the benchmarks posted by the grandparent

His point was the regular 680m is around the same performance as the 7xxxm AMD for $300 more. So... that must mean the 680MX will be even MORE expensive... and at that point would it have been more cost-effective for the user had they just gone the AMD route.

The blurb you quoted was me saying: "the regular 680M wasn't as far away from the AMD as it appeared" As a friend saw those benchmarks and said "OMFG" because he was looking at the Alienware numbers instead of the apples-to-apples numbers.

Obviously, we don't have 680MX benchmarks available yet so all we can infer from the specs are that they will be between the 680M and the regular 680. Which side is it closer to depends on real-world tests.

----------
naiver12 said:
Would it be possible to upgrade the Imac 2011 27" high-end with an 675mx or 680mx?
Click to expand...

I'd like to think that if they were, they would have mentioned them. Since that would be a HUGE boon for them. It would be like them forgetting to mention that the 13" MacBook pro now offers optional Retina.


Since they did not, I imagine no. As it is, the general theory is that the 680MX is going to be Hot (like Africa Hot) and squeezing that in the 21" would cause more problems than solutions.

The 27" has more room the play around with and thus can take bigger and badder GPU's.
 
Ok, I would do the uprade by my self. So i would by a 675mx und uprade my Imac 27" 2011, that was my intension behind that :D

Btw.
680MX is 25% faster than the 7970m.
the 7970M is 15% faster than the 675mx.
the 675mx is 30% faster than the 6970m
the 6970m is 15-29%% faster than 660m.
the 660m is 10% faster than 650m.
the 650m is 18% faster than 640m
 
Dirtyharry50 said:
Real men game on Falcon Northwest computers such as this one I configured for myself. Note the price tag at the bottom but this is the real deal, no compromises. Unfortunately, it does not run OS X so you will of course need to purchase an appropriate Mac for your needs as well. :D

Here is your customized Mach V system configuration.


System Details

Chassis
ICON2 Exotix - Any Single Color
Chassis Logo Insert
White Light
Chassis Fan Kit
Performance Fan Pack
Sound Dampening
AcoustiPack Sound Dampening Foam
Power Supply
1500 Watt Modular
Motherboard
Rampage IV Extreme
Processor
Intel® Core™ i7 3960X 3.3GHz
Processor Cooler
Liquid Cooling - Mach V
Processor Overclock
No Processor Overclock
Memory
Elite 1866MHz 64GB (8x8GB)
Video Card
Quadro 6000 (6GB)
Video Card 2
Quadro 6000 (6GB)
Video Card 3
Quadro 6000 (6GB)
Monitor
30" 2560x1600
Sound Card
On-Board Audio
Speakers
Z-523 2.1
Networking
On-Board Ethernet
Hard Drive
m4 SSD - 512GB
Hard Drive 2
m4 SSD - 512GB
Optical Drive
24x DVD Writer
64-Bit Operating System
Windows 8 Standard
Office Software
Office Professional 2010
Warranty
3 Year Warranty - Mach V

Shipping options

UPS Ground : $240.10
UPS 2-Day : $624.03
UPS Overnight : $966.24
USPS (APO Only) : $915.00
UPS 3 DAY : $366.00

Total System Price: $17140.75

This my friends is what a top of the line gaming PC costs not to be confused with something cobbled together with parts from newegg.com. This bad boy is a state of the art PC gaming rig.

Personally, I think the iMac is a better value given that it can also run games pretty well for most mere mortals and costs quite a bit less plus you don't need to buy another computer just to have a decent desktop operating system (OS X).
Click to expand...

Couple of comments: having put together systems (including the water cooling, etc.) myself, you've just overpaid by a large sum. Also, you are using Quadros for a reason apart from gaming I hope. They have better IQ, but they also don't give the optimal framerates (though having three may not allow you to see the difference). You don't need a system like this to play games, and it's kind of pointless. I've had a $4k+ gaming machine in the past, and it's overkill oftentimes. What was your point exactly? Anyone can overpay for a system like that above, which will lose half it's value upon receipt.

PS: If you are going to go 'all out' on a system, but not add a Xonar Essence to improve the audio quality, I think you're missing out.
 
naiver12 said:
Ok, I would do the uprade by my self. So i would by a 675mx und uprade my Imac 27" 2011, that was my intension behind that :D

Btw.
680MX is 25% faster than the 7970m.
the 7970M is 15% faster than the 675mx.
the 675mx is 30% faster than the 6970m
the 6970m is 15-29%% faster than 660m.
the 660m is 10% faster than 650m.
the 650m is 18% faster than 640m
Click to expand...

Yeah. There is a massive jump from the 660m to the 675mx. The sadness is the lameness of the 650m 512MB in the top-spec 21". They could have at least put a 1GB BTO.
 
naiver12 said:
Ok, I would do the uprade by my self. So i would by a 675mx und uprade my Imac 27" 2011, that was my intension behind that :D

Btw.
680MX is 25% faster than the 7970m.
the 7970M is 15% faster than the 675mx.
the 675mx is 30% faster than the 6970m
the 6970m is 15-29%% faster than 660m.
the 660m is 10% faster than 650m.
the 650m is 18% faster than 640m
Click to expand...

If you are not working at Nvidia, i dunno where you getting this % from. When there are no real benchmarks out for either the gtx 675mx and gtx 680mx.

Hopefully you know the difference between theoretical gpu performance and real world gpu performance.

We dont even know if Apple is downclocking the gtx 680mx/675mx cards. So your statement is just wrong.
 
Wtf!!!

flopticalcube said:
Yeah. There is a massive jump from the 660m to the 675mx. The sadness is the lameness of the 650m 512MB in the top-spec 21". They could have at least put a 1GB BTO.
Click to expand...

Seriously, what is up with that? I feel like Apple just gave all the 21.5" iMac users a nice warm golden shower by slapping in a lackluster GPU in the supposedly "high-end" version! The least they could've done was throw in a GT 650M with 1GB VRAM or GTX 660M with 512MB VRAM, but of course they skimp on the 21.5" GPU, forcing people to pay a premium for the higher tier GPUs that come along with the 27". Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that we got the iMac and I'll probably max out the 21.5" but seriously Apple, give people the most bang for their buck!

----------

Are you also after the 21.5"?
 
MagicThief83 said:
Seriously, what is up with that? I feel like Apple just gave all the 21.5" iMac users a nice warm golden shower by slapping in a lackluster GPU in the supposedly "high-end" version! The least they could've done was throw in a GT 650M with 1GB VRAM or GTX 660M with 512MB VRAM, but of course they skimp on the 21.5" GPU, forcing people to pay a premium for the higher tier GPUs that come along with the 27". Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that we got the iMac and I'll probably max out the 21.5" but seriously Apple, give people the most bang for their buck!

----------

Are you also after the 21.5"?
Click to expand...

No. I was hoping that Apple would not go down this route and I may have reconsidered but not now.

----------
uptownnyc said:
Is it fast enough to play Battlefield 3 using Bootcamp?
Click to expand...

On medium, maybe. BF3 is a heavy VRAM user. Wait.. are you talking about the 650m or the 680mx?
 
Last edited:
I got the information from this site: 675mx http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-675MX.82580.0.html

and

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-680mx/description

Built for speed and efficiency, the GeForce® GTX 680MX GPU outpaces the competition by up to 30%(2) Plus, NVIDIA GeForce™ drivers ensure that you’re always getting the most out of your GPU for the ultimate gaming experience.

(2)Compared to RADEON HD 7970M

Of course, we have to wait for real world Bench, but i think the GTX 680MX will beate every mobile-gpu.
 
henrikrox said:
Please dont be such a fool. This will never happen and you know it already. Buy a alienware and have fun carrying it around.

Also the gtx 680mx is a beast. Why?

GTX 675 MX:
Cuda cores: 960
Core clock: 600
Texture fill rate: 48
Memory Clock: 1800mhz
Memory bandwith: 115.2GB/s

GTX 680M (king of the mobile gpus now)
Cuda cores: 1337
core clock: 720
Texture fill rate: 80.6
Memory clock: 1800mhz
Memory bandwith: 115.2 GB/s

GTX680MX
cuda cores: 1536
core clock: 770
texture fill rate: 92,2
Memory clock: 2500mhz
memory bandwith: 160GB/s

----------



You shouldnt compare the gtx680m to the best of AMD.

The gtx680mx which is in the iMac, should be 20-25% faster then the gtx680m

See the above quote
Click to expand...

Please don't be such a fool believing everything you read on the internet.
 
naiver12 said:
Would it be possible to upgrade the Imac 2011 27" high-end with an 675mx or 680mx?
Click to expand...

No. Edit: this is a lazy answer. You could probably do it, if you're technically skilled and determined enough, but the cost and time invested would make it silly and pointless. Also mobile GPUs are not something you can just order from newegg.
 
Last edited:
The unusual delay of the release of the 2012 iMac will probably ruin my plan to get a decent price for my 2010 iMac. So my pockets are not deep enough to pay more than 200€ for an BTO GPU upgrade. My iMac is used for work AND for entertainment esp. gaming and therefore I need a decent GPU.

I'd like to know if the 675MX is decent enough GPU to provide me for 2 years of a decent gaming experience or if I have to swallow the pill and shell out more for the 680MX. I don't need to play BF3 or Witcher 2 on ultra but I don't want to play on low either.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back