EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Classified Review: Pushing GTX 680 To Its Peak
by Ryan Smith on July 20, 2012 12:00 PM ESTOC: Gaming Performance
Having taken a look at how well we were able to overclock the GTX 680 Classified and what the power, temperature, and noise impact of that overclock was, it’s finally time to take a look at what it does for gaming performance. As always we’ve culled our results a bit to focus on games that need the extra performance and avoid games that are likely to be CPU limited (and hence waste the overclock).
Thanks in large part to our memory overclock the GTX 680 Classified finally picks up some Steam in Crysis. At 36fps for overclocking without overvolting it’s just enough to tie the Radeon HD 7970, which shows just how far behind the 7970 the GTX 680 is. The higher overclocks afforded by overvolting improve performance a bit more, but with such a small improvement in memory clocks we see an equally small improvement in Crysis performance.
Metro responds well to our combination of core overclocking and memory overclocking, which leads to the stock voltage overclocked GTX 680 Classified picking up 9% and pushing it ahead of the 7970GE to 43fps. Overvolting and further overclocking adds just one more frame per second however.
Shogun 2 ends up being our most interesting result, but not necessarily for the right reasons. As we alluded to earlier, overvolting will send power consumption shooting towards the GTX 680 Classified’s power target, which is exactly what has happened here. The overclock without overvolting sees a respectable performance increase, but additional voltage sends performance back down to the point where it’s not much better than the stock GTX 680 Classified. Overall our core clock was typically under 1100Mhz here when overvolted.
Shogun 2 appears to be an outlier among all of the games we test, but it’s a stark reminder that there’s more to overclocking than just adding power and cranking up the core clock.
Where the stock GTX 680 Classified didn’t greatly improve on the reference GTX 680, overclocking has changed things significantly. 73fps represents a 12% performance improvement for the stock voltage overclocked GTX 680 Classified, while overvolting gets us to 75fps.
Finally with BF3 we see another solid gain from overclocking, with the non-overvolted GTX 680 Classified improving over the stock card by 9% to 76.5fps. Overvolting gets a further 2.6fps (3%) to 79.1fps.
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SteveLord - Friday, July 20, 2012 - link
I too have been waiting on a mid range offering. This is crap nVidia.......RussianSensation - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
What's wrong with HD7850 for $200-210 or MSI TwinFrozr HD7950 $310, both with 30-40% overclocking headroom? HD7950 @ 1.1ghz > GTX680. No point in waiting for this mythical GTX660Ti.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
You have the mythical $200 or $210 7850 that bottom price is running anyone $220 for the crappiest version around.Why do you people always talk lies ?
HisDivineOrder - Friday, July 20, 2012 - link
nVidia will launch the 660 part on the day the entire Radeon 8xxx series shows up. On the very day.I know I've waited forever and a day for it, too. I've given up hope. I think it's a myth at this point. A story grandpappies tell their youngin's. A tall tale.
The Geforce 660 is a legend wrapped in a mystery drizzled with lies and peppered with vague promise.
RussianSensation - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
Rumor: August 16th for 660 series.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
What does midrange mean to you ? The 460 560 560ti 570 580 have "midrange" covered... unless of course you mean non mid mid range, or middler lwor midrange, or range of ranges unranged of which there are none....WHAT are you people expecting ? What cards exactly is this mythical purportedly missing midrange supposed to fall in between for you ?
I'm serious, it's been many, many months, but by logic alone, there isn't a card spot you so desire, and by absolute omission for just as long....
What the freak do you people expect ? The only thing I can possibly imagine is a "midrange card" that falls above the 580, above the 7870, above the 6970, below a stock 670... and costs perhaps "$150=$200" for your "midrange budget" - right ?
I don't get it. Won't one of you midrange wannabes explain it - sometime before it appears, or like is the fantasy supposed to be an absolute mystery forever ?
Galidou - Sunday, August 5, 2012 - link
What do we expect?? Mid range prices with last gen top of the line performance but new gen power consumption and temperatures.... Seems pretty clear to me. Ok you need an example... gtx 560ti between gtx470-480 performance but less power and lower temperatures so I don't have to change power supply if I go sli nor change my case, in the end, save some money and game as well + overclock better.Everything that came out from nvidia from THIS very generation is overkill for gaming at 1080p, and that's the most used resolution in the whole freaking world, end of the discussion... who do you beleive you are criticizing everyone's desire/needs? GOD?
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
Ok, well thanks for trying.However, nothing is overkill for 1080P, they ALL have to be turned down except the TOP duals.
So a 680 and 7970 are underkill for 1920 1200 + 1920 x 1080.
Belard - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
Remember when the 4850 first came out as a $250 card... yet eventually ended up as a $100 card. Even todays modern $100 video cards are not much faster than the 4850... and that card is over 4 years old!If we go by the usual scale of GPU performance increases at targeted price points...
For today, we should be able to get the performance of a 5870 card at a $100 price.
What do we have? The 6870 is slightly slower than the 5870 (great model naming there AMD - idiots), it costs about $155. (okay, the 5870 was a $500 card).
The smaller and cheaper to make 7850 is slightly faster than the 5870, but it costs about $225?! The 6870 is a better deal since its $75 cheaper yet about 7% slower.
So realistically, the $130 7770 is over-priced as its 2/3rd the performance for a $20~30 savings over the older 6870.
Of course, the 5770/ 6770 and 7770 are all pretty much the same card... not impressive.
RussianSensation - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
MSRP for the HD4850 was $199, HD4870 was $299. HD4850 was never $250.I agree with you that most of the performance increase in GPUs has happened in the $250+ level. Although HD7850 OCed = GTX580. The 7850 can be found for $200-230 no problem and GTX580 cost $500 just 1.5 years ago. So it is progress, just not as fast as in the past.
It's too expensive to make fast GPUs in the ~ $100 level. If you can only afford $100-130 GPUs, I think you are better off just getting a PS4 or the next Xbox. The allure of the PC are the games you can't play on consoles, controls, mods and better graphics and much cheaper game prices. $300 for a GPU isn't expensive when you consider the prices of games on the PC.
But ya I agree with you that HD7750/7770 are a joke. The latter is just 25-30% fater than a 2.5 year old HD5770. NV has nothing for less than <$400 (GTX670) worth buying. I guess that's what happens when wafer prices rise and the market for <$100 GPUs disappears.