GIGABYTE GV-N68OC-2GD
GAMING
GEAR
AWARD
RRP: $529 | Website: www.gigabyte.com
Test Machine
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Intel Core i7 3770K
GIGABYTE Z77X-UD5H
SEAGATE 7200.12 500GB
ANTEC HCP 1200
Windows 7 64-bit SPI
H
ere’s an odd one for
you. Overclockers as a
demographic, most likely
people like you who read this
magazine and other such
publications, are what vendors
use to sell to the gaming
public. Your achievements,
the hardware built for our
favourite past time, all of it is
supposed to eventually filter
down to the gamers; this is
where the money is. Through
sheer numbers alone, gamers
have the buying power.
However it’s hard to sell to
gamers directly as such, sell
to the enthusiast (You) and
by extension appeal to the
gamers. If we know anything
about competitive overclocking
24 The OverClocker Issue 19 | 2012
it’s that hardware will get
tortured in one bench session
in a way no gamer could in a
card’s entire lifetime. (Bold
statement that –Ed!)
So how does this relate to
the GTX680 from GIGABYTE
or GTX680’s in general?
Simply put, the GTX680 is
an incredible graphics card
for gamers. There’s nothing
faster, it’s cool and offers
some really neat capabilities
which bring it in line with
what AMD has been offering
with Eye-Finity for a while.
In a gaming context there’s
simply no matching it (Maybe
the HD7970 GHZ Edition can,
we will have to see) despite
on paper looking somewhat
weaker than the competitions
best offering.
While we don’t really bother
with gaming benchmarks,
the performance difference
between this card and the
HD7970 isn’t trivial. Despite
the advances made in 3D
stereoscopic gaming by AMD,
NVIDIA still has the better
ecosystem.
We could harp on about
information you already know
and aspects you’ve probably
experienced, but we’d rather
tell you about what really
matters and that’s simply the
overclocking aspect of the
GTX680.
Without mincing words, it’s
tricky, very tricky. Keep in
mind we are not saying the
GIGABYTE GV-N68OC-2GD
sucks (what a mouthful).
What we are saying is that
all GTX680s by and large are
tricky, at least the ones based
on the reference card. We
are well aware of K|NGP|N
and TiN’s achievements with
the GTX680, however we’d
put money on it that the vast
majority of overclockers even
the proficient ones are not
likely to reach those speeds
as the sheer volume of mods
alone make it unfeasible