It’s been a long agonizing wait for Nvidia’s next generation graphics cards for us gamers and enthusiasts and all we can say is that it has been totally worth it. Zotac was the first to send us their retail sample of the GTX 680 and as always they seem to have one of the best bundles in the market. Currently there’s only one SKU of kepler and Zotac have stuck with the reference design and specifications. The bundle includes two Molex to 6 pin power connectors, DVI to VGA adapter drive disk installation manual and the best bit- Assassin’s creed’s 3 game pack.
The card is built around the same reference design with Zotac’s signature orange color thrown in. it is a handsome card with large GeFore GTX lettering on the side which can be seen if you have a windowed case. The GTX 680 is actually a bit shorter than the GTX 580 measuring just 10 inchs long. The entire card is enclosed so all the hot air escapes through the rear vents. There’s single blower fan in the front which is a lot quieter than their previous offerings.
Nvidia have added a bunch of new features to the GTX 680 such as GPU boost adaptive V-sync and some new AA models. GPU Boost is similar to Turbo Boost the card will dynamically increase the clock speeds and voltages during gameplay if and only if it does not go beyond the set TDP. Adaptive V-sync can now be found in the Nvidia control panel. It dynamically toggles the V-sync state depending on the frame rate. For instance if you are getting more than 60 fps then V-sync will be on the avoid screen tearing and if it dips below 60 fps then it switches it off to avoid stuttering.
The core of the Zotac GTX 680runs at 1006 MHz and the boost clock is set to 1058 MHz. it features 1536 shader units or CUDA cores which is three times what the GTX 580 had. The memory is 2 GB GDDR5 running on a 256-bit memory bus. The card supported DX11, DX11.1 open GL 4.2, PCIE 3.0, 3-way SLI support, 3D vision surround and PhysX.
Our test rig comprised P67A-UD3R motherboard, 8 GB G.SkillRipjaws RAM and Intel SSD 520 240 GB SSD. Nvidia have used a normal aluminium heatsink and copper heat pipes for the cooling in order to keep costs down and it works like a charm. The card is whisper quite on full load as well with the fan speed set to ‘auto’. The card scored 9028 points in 3Dmark 11 defeating the Radeon HD 7970 by a good margin of 1200 points. With AA set to 4x Battlefield 3 ran at 70 fps in full HD while Crysis 2 and Dirt 3 ran at 62 fps and 93 fps respectively. On an average the GTX 680 is around 20 percent faster than the HD 7970.
If you are in the market for the best single GPU graphics card then Zotac’s GTX 680 is the best bang for buck GTX 680 in the market.
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