Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 SOC review - Introduction

Introduction Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 SOC review

The graphics card market is competitive and fierce, as such the top tier manufacturers always put something special on the table. Over at Computex this year Gigabyte surprised the community with an SOC model of the R7970 and GTX 680, yes the GeForce GTX 680 SOC (Super OverClock) from Gigabyte has arrived here on the Guru3D testing-grounds.

The GTX 680 SOC edition, albeit limited, will become in decent quantities as this really is an exclusive high-end product catered towards a very small segment of enthusiast users only.

This SKU tagged under product code Gigabyte GV-N680SOC-2GD is Gigabyte's most high end GTX 680 offering. The product has a whopping three slot design and comes packed with five fans blowing air through a huge aluminum fin area that is covered with a metal cover to optimize the overall airflow. An Anti-turbulence cooler features nine 6mm copper heatpipes leading to a massive vapor chamber cooler. Tied to the cooler are industrial quality fans, five of them creating airflow that I know and have seen in servers. Gigabyte claims that is can dissipate 500 Watts of heat, which again is massive.

The PCB itself is custom of course, Gigabyte uses a 2 ounce copper PCB with solid caps, ferrite core chokes and a digital 8-phase power design. The base frequency of this product is the highest we have seen to date, 1132 MHz. That means that the boost clock is moving towards the 1202 MHz range. The memory is clocked at 6200 MHz, 2 GB of graphics memory by the way not a 4GB partition.

Kepler my fellow gurus, is the codename for the architecture behind the GeForce series 600 graphics cards and now in the Olympic Summer 2012 we have spotted many highly tweakable models from all partners. ASUS, MSI, EVGA and Gigabyte outted cards that can do surprising stuff. NVIDIA however put severe breaks on software based voltage tweaking, right now all cards will get into the 1200 MHz region, but that's it really. As NVIDIA requires the cards to all have a maximum voltage plafond of 1.175V through NVAPI.

Obviously we have a thing or two to show you but first have a quick peek at the product. Let's startup the article shall we ?