Zotac GTX680 SLI Review
Up Close
Published: 30th March 2012 | Source: Zotac | Price: £429 |
Up Close
A graphics card without a fantasy figure on the front. Saints be praised. The Zotac black and yellow colour scheme always looks classy and here it's nice and minimalist. After all, with such a beast inside the box, why waste excitement on the outside?
The card itself is well protected in the dense foam and heavy cardboard combination.
As well as the adaptors for power and display we have the Zotac bundle of games and drivers. If you haven't tried Trackmania it's worth a punt and you get three days with the Zotac card.
Here it is in all its glory. We get so used to cards with red trim on them that we really like the yellow Zotac scheme. Not only does it make a nice change but we think it looks better.
Otherwise the card is the same as we saw on the stock model, with nVidia green branding on the side and a dark PCB.
Outputs remain the same two, there is an HDMI, two DVIs and the DisplayPort.
Most Recent Comments
Nice review as always and it's still nice to see the brands evenly matched It's been awhile and as you have said many times in your reviews it don't matter which camp you want they are both as good as each other if you want Nvidia go that way if you want AMD go that way it great to see.
Some decent performance, I love how cool these 680s run as well, the fan doesn't even spin up much so they are also quiet. The scaling is bound to improve with new drivers as well, hopefully to around 80%+.
Now, where can I steal a pair of these cards form
Now, where can I steal a pair of these cards form
I don't understand the CPU limited quote, and I'll be glad when those oc-bench-score-being-slower-than-the-stock-card disappear off the comparison charts. Both the bios numbers the same on these ? (should be easy to see on the stickers)
Really nice review as always Tom. Not too impressed with the temps tbh. 77 C on an open test bench seems too hot imo, but since the fans don't really spin up making the cards uber quiet, it's a reasonable compromise.
just imagine the fan power needed to cool these in a closed case ????
AMD, Nvidia, comes down to specs at the end of the day, 3Dmark favor's the strong, and so do I.
SWeet review TTL. Thx.
SWeet review TTL. Thx.
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Originally Posted by Rastalovich
I'll be glad when those oc-bench-score-being-slower-than-the-stock-card disappear off the comparison charts. |
i would love a single card but sli is beastly wonder what quad sli results are like 
seem to do well in sli but think i will stick with the single card setup
its nice to see what can be done now with this generation of cards, i was thinking a single 680 was overkill for any game. makes my 460 seem inadequate lol
If the 7970 is louder but cooler and the 680 is quieter but warmer, cant you just spin down the fan speed on the 7970 and have it quite and warmer just like the 680?
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Originally Posted by HighlanderHD
If the 7970 is louder but cooler and the 680 is quieter but warmer, cant you just spin down the fan speed on the 7970 and have it quite and warmer just like the 680? |
Great review! As usual
Yep. 7970 seems a bit cooler, but a bit noisy (stock). The only difference between 680 is that AMD has no any useful/useless features like 680 has. Still I see no reasons for fanboy pee-war.
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Or- you can spin up the 680 fan, to make it as noisy and cool as 7970 does
Yep. 7970 seems a bit cooler, but a bit noisy (stock). The only difference between 680 is that AMD has no any useful/useless features like 680 has. Still I see no reasons for fanboy pee-war.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by HighlanderHD
If the 7970 is louder but cooler and the 680 is quieter but warmer, cant you just spin down the fan speed on the 7970 and have it quite and warmer just like the 680? |
Or- you can spin up the 680 fan, to make it as noisy and cool as 7970 does
The reason the 680 preforms worse overclocked, is the overclock is to high for that load.
Just like Intel Speed Step
if the 680 has more headroom it overclocks higher(single thread apps), if it is loaded down (all cores active) it doesn't boost .
Somewhere there will be a line where a slight OC will let it boost to the max TDP, but pushing the OC just a few MHz more would cause the 680 to not boost at all, cutting performance.
Overclocking video cards just got harder, now you have to actually find a balance over your entire spectrum of applications and workloads instead of just find the highest stable MHz, because you could be cheating yourself out a bit of performance.
From Toms SLI videos the pair of 680s were never really at 100%, so they boost all they can, whatever Tom raises the base frequency, they still boost higher.
With a single card, it's workload is higher, so it doesn't boost as much, if at all.
Just like Intel Speed Step
if the 680 has more headroom it overclocks higher(single thread apps), if it is loaded down (all cores active) it doesn't boost .
Somewhere there will be a line where a slight OC will let it boost to the max TDP, but pushing the OC just a few MHz more would cause the 680 to not boost at all, cutting performance.
Overclocking video cards just got harder, now you have to actually find a balance over your entire spectrum of applications and workloads instead of just find the highest stable MHz, because you could be cheating yourself out a bit of performance.
From Toms SLI videos the pair of 680s were never really at 100%, so they boost all they can, whatever Tom raises the base frequency, they still boost higher.
With a single card, it's workload is higher, so it doesn't boost as much, if at all.
Good read, I like these overkill reviews
Nice review. Good to see how AMD and Nvidia are so close, helps us guys.
Having owned a Zotac 680 for 2 weeks, first week air cooled, second week liquid cooled, overclocking it brings a big performance boost. I get 500mhz+ on the vram and at least 188mhz on the core. Running kombustor DX11 immediately shows the performance boost with the minimum fps, average and max increasing significantly.
The figures I wrote down from my OCing on air:
Kombustor DX11 default clocks = 216min, 229 average.
+175core/+500vram = 247min, 266 average.
That difference is enough to make gameplay smoother on BF3 ultra on the most demanding 64 player map: Damavand Peak.
Yes, agree, if the clocks are pushed too far it can actually reduce performance but it's so easy overclocking and you quickly establish what too far is using Kombustor Dx11 mode (gives you immediate feedback of the min, max, average).
It's also important to use the EVGA OC scanner to check for artifacts. Although I had the vram at 650mhz, artifacts show past 500mhz.
Have been as high as 247+ on the gpu core.
The figures I wrote down from my OCing on air:
Kombustor DX11 default clocks = 216min, 229 average.
+175core/+500vram = 247min, 266 average.
That difference is enough to make gameplay smoother on BF3 ultra on the most demanding 64 player map: Damavand Peak.
Yes, agree, if the clocks are pushed too far it can actually reduce performance but it's so easy overclocking and you quickly establish what too far is using Kombustor Dx11 mode (gives you immediate feedback of the min, max, average).
It's also important to use the EVGA OC scanner to check for artifacts. Although I had the vram at 650mhz, artifacts show past 500mhz.
Have been as high as 247+ on the gpu core.
Beasts.
mmm im fine with one card, for one 1080p 60hz monitor you dont need more power... now testing what grammaton_feather says, I hope I get the same results xD
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