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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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