EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Classified Review: Pushing GTX 680 To Its Peak
by Ryan Smith on July 20, 2012 12:00 PM ESTFinal Words
Wrapping things up, it’s hard not to find ourselves coming to two opinions on EVGA’s GeForce GTX 680 Classified.
Treated like any other GTX 680, out of the box the GTX 680 is a very impressive card. EVGA’s various touches such as 4GB of RAM, a larger cooler, a factory overclock, and of course additional VRM circuitry that leads to a higher stock power target, all serve to make the GTX 680 Classified a clearly better card than the reference GTX 680. Furthermore thanks in large part to EVGA’s binning there’s even more overclocking headroom to play with, leading us to reach a 1211MHz core clock without ever increasing its voltage. It’s a very good – if very expensive – GTX 680.
Of course the real draw with the GTX 680 Classified is with its overvolting support, and that’s where things don’t hold up quite as well. From an end-user perspective NVIDIA’s overvolting restrictions make the entire voltage manipulation process needlessly difficult. The fact that an external controller is required for voltage control and that it can’t easily be tied to overclocking settings is a considerable step back from what GTX 500 series cards could do. NVIDIA has purposely made overvolting more difficult, and while it’s not impossible it’s enough to give you pause as to whether the additional effort and the additional cost are worth it.
Bringing that into further consideration is that our overclocking results with overvolting weren’t all that great. With a reasonable voltage increase we picked up an additional 75MHz on the GPU clock and 100MHz on the memory clock, which compared to our initial overclock on stock voltage isn’t a particularly big improvement. While we hate to draw overclocking conclusions from a single sample, if our results are anywhere near accurate then it means EVGA is wringing out most of the potential of the GTX 680 in the factory, which is great for conservative overclocking, but it diminishes the value of having overvolting.
Ultimately there’s a sizable contingent of enthusiasts that will buy the GTX 680 Classified regardless of the above simply because it has overvolting support, and those enthusiasts will be perfectly happy with the card even with the restrictions NVIDIA has put in place. At the same time gamers who are simply looking for an ultra-premium GTX 680 will find that the GTX 680 Classified fills that role well. Otherwise if you’re on the fringe and are considering other cards (e.g. the GTX 680 FTW+), then this will probably come down to how you view its unique features. The GTX 680 Classified is without question an impressive card, but with a price tag of $659 (+$80 for EVBot) that may not be quite enough if you don’t value voltage control.
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Belard - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
This card is so old-school looking... like an Atari 2600... or 70s camera.ekon - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
Few people are aware that EVGA was in the compact camera business back in the 70s:http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=65bac5&s=6
Belard - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
Wow, Amazing!Its so cool how a 1970s camera's lens look just like a blower! What were the chances!
:)
Belard - Sunday, July 22, 2012 - link
Kinda funny. I showed my 7yr old the big picture of this EVGA GTX 680 classified card and he said "it looked really old"... wow.For the retro- look, it does look nice. There will come a time when the computer toys we have today will look like OLD OLD junk.
If mankind makes it another 100 years, our PCs, tablets and GPUs would be like telegraph equipment.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
That's an amazing comment considering the years long AMD standard block look on 99% plus AMD cards we've been treated to.I remember being sick to my stomache seeing the same old red red red red red pcb on them all. Finally one amd fan promoter claimed he had a blue pcb amd card and linked a pic but it has the same old sad red square cover with the black lines.
I do realize when the amd double D breast design recently hit many fanboys went into some sort of sexually perverse mental mode, but that shouldn't wipe out the endless years of amd standard fare we were all tortured with.
In the case of this card, there's a lot of white on the outside I haven't seen anywhere else, the white "top" with printing will be staring at you out of the case, something so many cards have been oblivious too for far too long... then we also have the black carbon look - another unusual feature although with the fanboysim over anything and everything black that is understandable as I'm sure their pr boys figured that part a clear win, sadly enough.
Haravikk - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
With 4gb RAM it seems like it's almost intended to be the ultimate Second Life card; powerful enough to handle that app's mediocre but insanely demanding graphics with the RAM to hold all the hundreds of overly high-resolution textures plastered onto every visible surface.But for $660 I'm not sure it's worth the novelly =)
dave1_nyc - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
OK, I know that this is trivial, but the previous Classified at least looked kinda cool and unique. This one seems visually unappealing.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
But once you put it in the case, usually within a few minutes of having an insane "unboxing" session much like a religious pilgrimage with a possible absolutely boring youtube minutes somehow considered a "treat" by the disturbed (of which there are many), you shove it in the case and put on the side cover... never to really see it ever again in it's fully glory, until it's death.What you will see is the big fat WHITE laberl and red classified printing jamming at your face if you have a side window..... clearly the most important aspect - even though 98% don't have a window to look through... but if you do - you're set.
Don't mind me - I'm still amazed how "the feel" of some look makes it or breaks it for 99% of the retarded humans that surround me - especially when "the looking" is done like .000001% of the time as in the case of these video cards.
It must have to do with their estrogen levels I tell myself, or maybe they don't have a girlfriend and that's why...
MrSpadge - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
> Software overvoltage control is forbidden.I can understand this for the reference design. But for custom designs? WTF?!
shin0bi272 - Sunday, July 22, 2012 - link
The instant I saw the original 680 I said that the 256bit memory bus was going to limit it severely. Even before I saw any other stats for the thing I knew id never buy one. Nvidia was cheap when they released the 680 because they saw what the 7970 was putting out and they said we'll call our 660 midrange our 680 high end and we can make more money (also love the fact that you guys test the handful of games that amd's 7 series beats the nvidia 6 series... not cherry picking your benchmarks at all nooo).This card does push the 680 to its limit which is cool and all but it just proves that a) the 256bit mem bus is still a midrange card designator no matter how much they claim gddr5 is fast enough to not need more than that... it does. And b) Nvidia could have pushed the 680's base clock up much higher and, while it would still be bottle necked bad, it would have been more attractive.
Bring on the 700 series Im done with the 6's