Faster But Not Hotter...

Greater efficiency is what Kepler is all about. To prove the point, NVIDIA pointed out that in GDC 2011, Epic Games had to use 3 GeForce GTX 580s in SLI mode to demo Samaritan using 4xMSAA. In the recent GDC 2012, they used a single GeForce GTX 680 to deliver the same image quality using FXAA. More on that later, but it goes to show how much more efficient Kepler is.

We have to point out though that FXAA is much less strenuous on the GPU than 4xMSAA so the single GeForce GTX 680 is really only equivalent to about two GeForce GTX 580s. So the amount of power saved would be 293 watts, not 537 watts as NVIDIA claimed. Still, that is a significant drop in power consumption and thermal output.

The greatly reduced power consumption also has the effect of doing away with the 8+6 pin power connectors on the GeForce GTX 580 and replacing it with two 6-pin power connectors. Incidentally, NVIDIA cut down the length of the GeForce GTX 680 by stacking the two 6-pin connectors, thereby allowing the card to fit into more cases.

... Or Louder!

Due to the more efficient architecture, NVIDIA has a lower thermal load to deal with. With a new dual-slot heatsink design with three embedded heatpipes, they were able to reduce the size of the card while improving thermal dissipation. Note the gap between the heatsink and the exhaust port on the bracket - this allows for improved airflow from the heatsink and a faster exhaust out the back of the card.

The new fan features acoustic dampening materials to minimize annoying tones in the noise produced by the fan, like the blade passing frequency tone. As a result, the GeForce GTX 680 boasts a peak noise level of just 46 dBA. That's about the same noise level produced by the modern inverter air-conditioner, and about 5 dBA lower than the AMD Radeon HD 7970.

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