Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Super OverClock Review
There’s just something about high-end, custom graphics cards that makes us a little giddy. Perhaps it’s their menacing appearance--even the fastest, most powerful processors just look like their lower-end counterparts when sitting side-by-side. But a hulking custom graphics card, with an elaborate, oversized cooler and fierce heat pipes wrapping around a gargantuan heatsink just looks freakin’ cool no matter how you slice it. Whip out a high-end graphics card and a CPU in front of a casual geek and we promise you they’ll point to the graphics card and blurt out, “What the heck is that?” far more often than not.
That’s exactly what happened the first few times we showed the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Super OverClock to some visitors of the lab. The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Super OverClock is one of those rare graphics cards that is a total departure from its reference model counterpart, and not only is it completely custom and much larger than a standard GeForce GTX 680, but it’s also clocked higher and has a few additional features, too.
The card’s full specifications are listed below, but we have more intimate details and a full performance profile posted on the pages ahead.
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| Chipset | GeForce GTX 680 |
| PCB Form | ATX |
| Core Clock | Base clock: 1137 MHz Boost clock: 1202 MHz |
| Shader Clock | N/A |
| Memory Clock | 6200 MHz |
| Process Technology | 28 nm |
| Memory Size | 2048MB |
| Memory Bus | 256 bit |
| Card Bus | PCI-E 3.0 |
| Memory Type | GDDR5 |
| DirectX | 11.1 API |
| OpenGL | 4.2 |
| I/O | Dual-link DVI-I*1 DVI-D*1 DisplayPort*1 HDMI*1 |
| Digital max resolution | 2560 x 1600 |
| Analog max resolution | 2048 x 1536 |
| Multi-view | 4 |
| Card size | H= 64mm, L=303 mm, W=148 mm |
| Power requirement | 650 W |
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This is the part of graphics card review where we’d usually discuss what additional goodies and software were included with the card, but our Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Super OverClock unfortunately shipped sans accessory bundle. Regardless, consumers don’t usually spring for a card like this one because it includes a couple of adapters and a nifty tchotchke or two. The hardware is the star of the show with a product like the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Super OverClock, and this puppy is a star indeed. More pics await on the next page.
