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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Grooveriding - Friday, July 20, 2012 - link
Very disappointing card for that price. $660 for this ?The MSI GTX 680 Lightning can also be overclocked and overvolted, showed higher overclocks, has a better cooler and costs less than this card.
More disappointment from EVGA along with their scaled back warranty and the need to pay them additional money for extended warranty coverage/stepup program.
/thumbs down
RussianSensation - Friday, July 20, 2012 - link
$740 for the EVBot controller + a card with a blower fan, dinky heatsink (compared to MSI Lightning 7970/680 and Sapphire TOXIC 7970) is overpriced imo. It's not like the extra 100mhz or 4GB of VRAM over 2GB 1230-1290mhz GTX680s will make this card more future proof for next generation games.To make it even more laughable, this card isn't even close to the fastest factory preoverclocked GTX680 either:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
If I wanted the best single-GPU with bragging rights, I'd rather get the GTX690 at that point. The 690 would be much faster and quieter and actually be good to go for next gen games. This seems like a marketing exercise.
Ryan Smith - Friday, July 20, 2012 - link
The thing is that I really don't consider a blower to be a negative thing here. This card barely passed 50dB under load, and at the same time it's fully exhausting. Open air coolers have their place, but not having to worry about additional case cooling is quite convenient.RussianSensation - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
Ya, I agree that this blower is one of the better ones. But even from your review, the blower was struggling to keep this card under 70*C with overvolting. Under regular overclocking, it worked perfectly fine but the card only reached 1211MHz (1301 with GPU Boost). Those clocks are nothing special and plenty of $500-560 GTX580s such as Gigabyte Windforce 3x, Asus Direct CUII, Zotac AMP!, Galaxy KFA2 can reach those clocks. So the question is why is this card $660? 4GB of VRAM is a waste at 1080/1200P and at 2560x1600 with AA, 1.2ghz HD7970 is faster.But if you are going to overvolt, the cooler suddenly becomes a limitation, especially after buying EVBot for $740. Suddenly you aren't too far off from a real special card - GTX690 - that's actually going to be fast enough to play today's and next generation games. Going from 1301mhz to 1377mhz with volt mod is not going to make GTX680 any better for newer games since that's not good enough, especially after you consider that because it gets too hot, the delta is less than 76mhz in actual gaming.
Sabresiberian - Sunday, July 22, 2012 - link
The overvolted card reached 83C in the review - but the max recommended temp for a GTX 680 is 98C. It did that keeping the noise down to 56.3dB.I tell you what I think - the people that have problems with EVGA's choice of cooling here is simply that it's not sexy. The fact that it works well is secondary.
The overclocked Classified is faster than the 7970GE in 4/5 games @ 2560x1600 in this review. It's faster in 5/9 of them.
Spunjji - Monday, July 23, 2012 - link
I don't think you can call 56.3dB "keeping the noise down", though. That's approaching conversational levels of noise - more importantly the fans on blower heat-sinks sound subjectively worse; less like the broadband noise of a desk fan and more like the drone of a hair-dryer.So, it's not all about "style". There are other legitimate concerns at play here.
CeriseCogburn - Sunday, July 29, 2012 - link
" Supplying this power is a pair of 8pin PCIe power sockets, which means on paper the GTX 680 Classified can safely draw up to 375W. In practice it’s not clear whether GK104 can actually take that, at least with air cooling, so pushing this card much beyond 300W is mostly in the realm of hardcore water and liquid nitrogen overclockers. "blag blah blah blah: is overpriced imo. It's not like the extra 100mhz or 4GB of VRAM
blah blah blah blah: To make it even more laughable
blah blah blah blah: Those clocks are nothing special
blah blah blah blah: This seems like a marketing exercise
You seem like a moron.
RussianSensation - Sunday, September 2, 2012 - link
We were discussing this card's value vs. the GTX680 Lightning. It's worse than the Lightning in overclocking, price and noise levels. Compared to the 7970, it's ridiculously overpriced and will get beaten by a 1250mhz 7970. So there are at least 2 better options on the market: GTX680 Lightning and Sapphire Vapor-X 7970 GE. Plus, at these prices, you can now get HD7950 Crossfire or catch a sale on 2 GTX670s for $340 each. Sorry but $660 for the Classified is a rip-off.As of September 2, this overpriced pile of garbage is still $660 on Newegg, and then you need to add $60+ for EVBot = $720:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
That's a joke and a half. Almost $300 more than the Vapor-X, $180 more than the GTX680 Lightning, and still more expensive than the fastest single GPU this round: Sapphire TOXIC 7970.
Plus, this Classified pile of overpriced marketing will get owned by $640 MSI TwinFrozr III 7950s in CF or $730 GTX670 SLI.
Seriously, only non-nonsensical fanboish noise comes out of your mouth. Even among NV's choices, this card is terrible.
Sabresiberian - Sunday, July 22, 2012 - link
Nice link to a deactivated product in which 4/9 of the people that bought it had trouble. I wonder why it was deactivated? Speaks to the quality of your entire post. "Dinky heatsink". Did you read any of the article at all?Yeah, I'm going to be spending all my video card money on Galaxy products, for sure. I especially like that their card had one DisplayPort and 3 HDMI ports. I'm sure I'm going to run 3 TVs off it.
ubernator44 - Monday, September 17, 2012 - link
alright so you must realize that:1; you will never see the potential out of this card with only air or normal liquid cooling.
2; because of #1 anyone who isnt into phase change/ln2/ or sub zero cooling thinks this is a waste.
you must realize that this thing has 18 power phases O.o like holy crap. the only real perk this card has is its amazing ability to reach extreme clocks at low voltages given the fact you use subzero cooling. anything else is just not adiquate. so yes, for 90% of people, this thing is a 660 dollar brick, for us extreme overclockers, this is a godsend! just look at kingpin and what he got off this beast. for you gamers out there that only use a max of normal liquid cooling, a 680 FTW+ is probly all you will want to pay for. anything else (like this card) is useless to you. so yes, amazing card, small market target, but they made it anyway, which is rare for a company to do!