Nvidia has been really tight lipped on its next generation of PC video cards. The same video cards that are meant to combat AMD’s head start with the HD7970. If an early leaked review from Tom’s Hardware is any indication, the card is well worth the wait. The best part – the wait is only two days.

WCCF Tech got a hold of an early review from Tom’s Hardware for the GTX 680. The review has since been removed as Nvidia is forcing everybody to remain pretty quiet on their new video card until it launches on March 22. Good thing there are people who grab these things before they’re removed. The review gives us a good look at the performance of the new video card.

The GeForce GTX 680 uses the Kepler architecture that is comprised of a GK104 Core that contains 1536 Cuda Cores, 2 GB GDDR5 Memory buffer, a core clock at 1006 MHz and memory that’s clocked to 1.5 GHz. If you don’t understand what any of that means, just know this: the 680 is a beast that completely dominates the AMD HD7970 and the review proves that.

According to the review, the GTX 680 has up to 50 percent better performance than AMD’s HD7970 when playing games at 1920×1080 resolution. That performance can fluctuate depending on the machine and the resolution. The leaked review doesn’t make any mention of the other components, but we can assume based on similar reviews that the system was rockin’ an Intel i7 and at least 8 GB of RAM.

The funny thing is that the GTX 680 is only ever bested by the GTX 590. That makes sense, however, as the 590 is two GTX 500s working together to create a powerful card. I’m sure Nvidia will release a dual GPU card in the 600 line as well that will smoke the competition. For now though, the 680 appears to be an affordable powerhouse that should appease any gamer’s need for PC gaming.

To see additional benchmarks at a 2560×1600 resolution, check out the leaked review.

With the launch only two days away, the hype for the new Nvidia cards is at its peak. I’ll be saving all my pocket change over the next month to afford its $549 asking price. Are you going to be picking one of these bad boys up soon? Let us know in the comments.

[Lead image: WCCF Tech]