The GeForce 680 was released yesterday. Lots of reviews up, but Tom's Hardware is always a good bet.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gef ... ,3161.html

Bottom line is that it's pretty badass. This is about $500, but the crazy thing is that this is not the high-end version of Kepler. This is the replacement for the 460gtx.

At any rate, more models should trickle out soon. $500 is too much for me, but with any luck we'll get a really nicely performing card for half that price in the next month or so.

Nvidia is starting to annoy me with its military-style naming of cards. Hunter-class? Wtf does that even mean. What does it hunt? Pixels?

Similarly, my card is a Geforce 560 Ti and the box and manual say it has "military-grade components". I'm sure they use a lot of GPU's in the war on terror.

I suspect that has less to do with nvidia and more with the manufacturer.

Regardless, it's probably not a lie. Components != graphics card... components == capacitors and crap like that. Believe it or not, the military actually uses electronics with capacitors.

Wel yeah, but what's the point of putting that on a graphics card description?

I see. Seriously though, that's hardly common knowledge among normal consumers. Which, if all the screaming colors and half-naked chicks on your average gpu package are anything to go by, are probably a much larger group than the techheads. It's still bizarro marketing to me.

I know I'm not exactly a tech wizard (haha) but I for one wasn't aware of this epidemic. You'd think I would have heard of it before even as a non-insider given my time spent on the internet (and on gaming websites).

honestly, I'm really surprised you didn't. It was a really big deal maybe 5-6 years ago. I remember reading about it on slashdot, and I remember lots of motherboard and graphics board recalls as a result. *shrug* I guess we move in different circles.

Anyway, that epidemic has made a lasting impact. You'll see motherboard and other components marketing high-quality capacitors and such.

example:
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3/M4N68TM_V2/

Mm now something is vaguely coming back. It may have been during the year and a half I was in Prague and didn't have internet at home, would explain why I didnt really live through it consciously.

yea, not too surprised. It's not the first time. 8800gt recycled into 9800gt just one example. I think it's still sleazy, though.