When we average the performance of the two cards among four popular, modern, demanding games (Crysis 2, Just Cause 2, Dirt 3, and Metro 2033), we see the GTX 680 just barely edging out the Radeon HD 7970. In some games it's a bit faster, in some a bit slower, but the performance is generally a little higher overall. This is with a graphics card that is slightly cheaper (around $20-30 less if you shop around online) and uses a bit less power.

At the end of last year, we praised the Radeon HD 7970 from AMD for its extremely high performance and fantastic energy efficiency. In the months since then, AMD has improved performance with driver updates, and yet Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 680 still manages to beat it on both counts, typically drawing less power and delivering slightly faster performance. Together with a couple of nice new features like TXAA and Adaptive vsync, it's a clear winner. AMD's 7000 series relies on a graphics architecture that is drastically different from previous AMD chips, so we may still see much better performance with driver improvements, but right now, if you have $500 to spend on a graphics card, the GeForce GTX 680 is the clear winner.