Seabigbear: see my thread in the general section about my trip.......I saw one of your relatives in Virginia!

hahahaha! that is awesome. 

Any hope that the $1000 sugessted retail price comes in a tad lower at $900?

I'm close to $900 but that last $100 is going to break the bank as is and I'll have to settle for a GTX 680 FTW 4GB now and wait till after Christmas for a second.

just curious I'm happy with my 2x gtx 680's but if I wanted to,, could this power supply run 2x gtx 690s and my entire rig? and I don't think I have 4x 8pin pci-e connectors , I think I have 3x 6+2pin pci-e though..
http://www.newegg.com/Pro...x?Item=N82E16817703012

I'm going to assume there will be back plates eventually sold for the GTX 690? 
 
How about High flow air brackets? You'd have thought it would have come with wider spacing on the rear air brackets at this price.

Spendy card.

Mosher

Well considering the 690 comes with 5 power phases per side for 10 total is in line with the Signature SC Series hardware specs.

Pricing on each Signature Series cards is $529.99 per card. Two in SLI would cost $1059.98 total.

Two reference 680's SLI cost $999.98. Reference 680's come with 4 power phases each.

GTX 690 with similar hardware of Signature coming in at $999. 

I have a feeling it will be on par performance with reference cards with the extra power phase per side. Speculating 5% within range.

Add in the better cooling solution to everything you mentioned as well for the 690.  That is what I dont get when people are complaining about price.  The way you broke it down makes the best sense and the best way to explain it.  It does have some "extra" stuff that a standard 680 does not have, so I think that the pricing is right on target.
 
Of course, come Thursday when review sites have their benchmarks up and especially the OC results will tell the tale of this card.  If rumors of hitting 1300mhz on the core are true (I have heard this a few times now) it will make things interesting.  Since the chips are binned, perhaps they OC very well.  I know that my 680's the best I can do is a +100 on the offset and that is it...at 105 I get a crash.  So for me I hit 1006+100=1106 base clock and I think the highest boost clock I have seen was 1185 or so. 
 
If the 690's even average with an OC a 1200 with a 1280 boost or so it will be a big win in my opinion.  What will be interesting to see is if the thermal threshold has been changed for this card as well. 
 
 

http://www.guru3d.com/new...es-in-the-guru3d-lab-/

So this gtx 690 come out 05/03/2012?
and it's 2x 2gb, same concept as before not actual 4gb, right?

Syan48306

Well I'm still crossing my fingers for a step up to a GTX 690. If not, I can always sell the 680. 

I image we'll hear more about the 7990 next month with the 690 soon to follow. The real question is if the GTX 685 or the GTX 690 will come first. 

 
Why would you want a PoS GTX 690...it's only got 2GB per core. My Skyrim right now is using 1.1GB (with a lot of the "medium res" textures) and I still have Skyrim HD to install, which'll push Skyrim to "Crash On Load Saved" (meaning it exceeded the 1280MB my 570 has). I'm guess that with everything tricked out Skyrim would need at least 1.8GB of VRAM.

If I read the EVGA's 680 specs page right the GTX 680 FTW will have 4GB for a single core to use. So unless EVGA can figure out how to fit 8GB on their "custom" 690, it's not going to be worth the money. And you'll still end up needing to lower graphic settings in new games just to fit under the VRAM limit*. 
 
*I have to run BF3 on "Medium" settings because on Ultra the game crashes after about 45min of play. Watching Precision, VRAM peaks at about 1GB - 1.2GB at the time of the crash. But for those 45-ish minutes I get ~30FPS @1680x1050 and it looks wonderful

Nvidia and AMD should wise up and either:
a) make all their x70 (or AMD equiv) and higher come stock with at least 2.5GB
b) put memory expansion sockets on them AND then sell us the extra VRAM (if you don't want to void the warranty that is, if you don't care then you'd buy them 3rd party) 

Bigger vram should be needed.. I have about 7 games installed on my pc right now and all of them hits 2gb vram mark when I was playing them 1080p 3d. I am pretty sure some of them goes past 2gb but gtx 680's 2gb is limiting them to go any further. Since 690 being slower than gtx 680 sli.. I doubt it will do any better with same 2gb per core. I really want 4gb per core or 4gb version of gtx 680.

lol.. are people not sleeping coz they are waiting to grab gtx 690?

it lives and has been spotted at NewEgg  04G-P4-2690-KR  ,should be ready for today's launch maybe moderate quantities.If they had gone even 2.5g or 3g (wanted 4g) i would have wanted one .
 

Here's what EVGA's GTX 690 looks like
 
http://www.youtube.com/wa...eature=player_embedded
 
Looks like the egg does have them, its just not up yet.

wow no back plate ,no high flow bracket ,  no EVGA graphics,looks exactly like reference sample seen on the announcement?