Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 OC edition review - Introduction

Introduction

It has been a fairly short time ever since GeForce GTX 680 was released by NVIDIA. Meanwhile we have shown you the reference review, 2-way, heck even 3-way SLI articles and an overclocking tweaking guide just on this one product.

It's now half April though and NVIDIA's partners have had some time to pimp the cards. That's right, customize them. Today that honor goes to Gigabyte.

Kepler my friends is the codename for the architecture behind the GeForce series 600 graphics cards. The GeForce GTX 680 2 GB is a fact and selling in the stores as we speak. The all new product has some interesting new features which we'll happily discuss with you -- obviously the GeForce GTX 680 is positioned against AMD's Radeon HD 7970 so we'll pit them against each other.

So the first real customized GeForce GTX 680 has been released. Gigabyte's GeForce GTX 680 OC (WindForce) edition comes with a custom made PCB that is armed with Gigabyte's durable component selection. Cooling will be based on the latest model of their three fan WindForce cooler, which I can say works pretty darn well in both performance and silence. you'll spot two power connectors consist out of a 6-pin and one 8-pin PCIe PEG connector giving the card a little extra breathing room for overclocking.

The card's base clock frequency is set at 1071 MHz while the memory runs stock. Anyway, have a quick peek at the product after which we'll dive into the GPU architecture, photo shoot, benchmarks and on an on ... next page please.