EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Classified Review: Pushing GTX 680 To Its Peak
by Ryan Smith on July 20, 2012 12:00 PM ESTCrysis, Metro, DiRT 3, Shogun 2, & Batman
Since the GTX 680 Classified doesn’t bring anything new to the table architecturally, we’ll keep our commentary on its stock performance brief. At stock it’s much like any other overclocked GTX 680 (factory or otherwise), with the only real room for differentiation being the greater amount of RAM and the higher power target. In practice the greater amount of RAM doesn’t make much of a difference in our single-GPU tests, as that much RAM is far more beneficial for the ultra-high resolutions of multi-monitor gaming, at which point you’re going to need a second card to provide the necessary horsepower.
The higher default power target on the other hand is quite interesting. The GTX 680 Classified will hit its top boost bin almost all of the time thanks to the generous power target, something the reference GTX 680 can have trouble with even at stock. So although reference cards can be overclocked to this level, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll match the GTX 680 Classified’s boost clocks in that state.
Starting off as always in Crysis, there’s actually not much to see. Since the reference GTX 680 is already memory bandwidth limited here and since the GTX 680 Classified doesn’t have a memory overclock, the factory core overclock does very little for its performance here.
Metro isn’t a title that we’ve previously considered to be memory bandwidth limited, but given its GPU-crushing nature like Crysis (and the fact that the 7970GE does so well here), maybe we should take that into consideration. The GTX 680C picks up 7% here at 2560, which is decent but it’s less than what the factory overclock can provide when the GPU can fully stretch its legs.
Now when the GTX 680 Classified can stretch its legs in a GPU-bound situation, we see the full impact of that factory overclock. With DiRT 3 it picks up the full 10% performance improvement the factory overclock is capable of providing.
Things also look good with Shogun 2 at 2560, with another 10% gain. On the other hand 5760 only picks up 7%.
Batman on the other hand doesn’t do the GTX 680 Classified any favors, which is a bit odd. 3-5% just isn’t what you expect here, since there’s no real evidence that the game is CPU or memory bandwidth bottlenecked.
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ubernator44 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link
edit, sorry 17 phases :P 14+3 phases :Psan1s - Friday, July 20, 2012 - link
This isn't really intended for ordinary gamers, but rather overclockers using exotic cooling. In that case, the overclocking features this card provides makes it a far more valuable card to them in comparison to reference cards.RussianSensation - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
Ya, but in that case the MSI Lightning 680 imo is the better card. It has more premium components and is also ready for LN2.CeriseCogburn - Sunday, July 29, 2012 - link
And has a 375 W ceiling..... right....Sabresiberian - Sunday, July 22, 2012 - link
As far as cooling solution, that's just your opinion, (actually from what I've read it's wrong because the Lightning gets warmer) and a lot of people aren't going to like MSI's because they want the warm air moved out of the case.The big kicker for me though is the 4GB of memory; if you plan on running 3x 2560x1440, 2GB just isn't enough. I'm an MSI fan, but I can't use their product to fill my needs. If I want 4GB and "unlocked voltage" my only choice is the EVGA Classified.
Amoro - Friday, July 20, 2012 - link
I wonder why the SC version is the only one with overclocked memory. Does that mean that overclocking the memory isn't valuable? Typo maybe?ltcommanderdata - Friday, July 20, 2012 - link
Probably because stable memory overclocking is difficult to achieve when you are trying to drive double the VRAM. Seeing 4GB of VRAM seems to be overkill, keeping 2GB of VRAM and increasing memory clocks would probably have been more worthwhile although it doesn't quite have the same marketing ring to it as "4GB".CeriseCogburn - Sunday, July 29, 2012 - link
I wondered where all the blabbering amd fanboys skittered off to in their constant 3GB ram drone psychosis....Let me just share a quote : " Quote :
The 4GB -- Realistically there was not one game that we tested that could benefit from the two extra GB's of graphics memory. Even at 2560x1600 (which is a massive 4 Mpixels resolution) there was just no measurable difference. "
LOL
So now the blabbering jerks will yapper about cost, complain about the 7970 6GB being "superior" and have the most enormous and gigantic brain fart concerning their endlessly godless and irritatingly stupid 3GB ram superiority dance vs 2GB 680 670.
It's a freaking TOTAL BLACKOUT at alcoholic blood toxic death level.
Just wait, because no amount of evidence will do it for the amd fanboy, and their masters at amd have known this for years, and have been playing them like a retarded out of tune fiddle gets played. A week or a day on they will be back at it, on some other article , any webspot they land... and the brain fart will be what they are not even aware of.
It's clear how Hitler came to power.
mpschan - Friday, July 20, 2012 - link
Where are their mid-range offerings? Where are their $200-300 cards on this latest architecture?I'm starting to think that by the time we see a 660 AMD will be releasing their 8000 series.
superccs - Friday, July 20, 2012 - link
Yeah I totally clicked on this article thinking it was a 660 review. WTF? Nvida, you no like midrange anymore?Bork!