GAMING GEAR AWARD
GIGABYTE GV-N680SO-2GD RRP: $559.99 | Website: www.gigabyte.com
Test Machine Intel Core i7 3770K GIGABYTE Z77X-UP5TH Transcend AxeRAM 2400MHZ CL9 ANTEC HCP 1200W PSU Windows7 64-Bit
G
TX 680s are no longer the top of the food chain when it comes to game performance. The AMD GHz edition graphics cards saw to that. Add the recent price cuts from AMD into the mix and what you end up with is a line up from AMD that is for all intents and purposes unmatched. For the overclockers the situation is more dire as there’s simply no incentive right now to be concerned with the GTX 680, or is there? As with our last GTX 680 review, we noted just how perilous the situation is with the GTX 680. With the stringent controls that NVIDIA has placed on the GPUs and its partners, 16 The OverClocker Issue 21 | 2012
overclocking for the rest of us who do not have special access to people at NVIDIA or vendors is made damn near impossible. For gamers fortunately, well the situation is a little different. See, despite the domination of the GHz edition card from AMD in the HD7970, there’s some fight left in the GTX 680 and no more is it obvious than when you power up the GIGABYTE card. Before we get into the performance, please note that we are not oblivious to the size of this card and the noise it makes. With so many little fans, this looks loud and it is if the fan speed is set sufficiently high enough. There’s just no glancing over it. If quiet computing is important to you, this is sadly not the card for you unless you can get it water cooled in which case the situation is different. For the vast majority of people who will be using this graphics card, the noise just may be tolerable especially if you game with headphones. As for the size of this card, it’s not diminutive in anyway.
Actually it dwarfs every other graphics card we’ve tested to date. It’s a three slot card, so in no way will you be able to get four-way SLI working with this card. We suspect two or maybe three way on XL-ATX boards but you get the picture for sure. How air is blown on to the GPU here is fairly unique as it redirects air from the side of the case and not the bottom. Given that this is where a case fan would be situated, you are going to get cooler temperatures than a traditional design may offer. It may only be a few degrees lower when idle, but during those intense gaming sessions or simple overclocking sessions, the difference will be noted. Performance wise, well there’s not much to say really. It’s the highest clocked GTX680 out the box with a base clock of 1,137MHz. Keep in mind that the base clock is actually what’s important, if only because the boost clock isn’t something that you can pin down and rely on consistently. By that we mean, two 680SO cards will