TheOverclocker Issue 20 | Page 28

EVGA GTX680 CLASSIFIED RRP: $659.99 | Website: www.evga.com Test Machine • Intel Core i7 3770K • Asus MAXIMUS V Extreme • Transcend AxeRAM 2400MHZ CL9 • Antec HCP 1200 PSU • Windows7 64-Bit W e’ll get right into this and spare you the humdrum. We’ve previously reviewed a GTX 680 here and despite the slight overclock on this card you’re looking at an identical product. At least this is true where gaming is concerned. Sure enough this is the highest clocked GTX 680 we’ve ever tested with a base clock of 1,111MHz however, don’t be fooled into thinking the overclock will make previously unplayable settings on a reference 680 a thing of the past. It doesn’t work that way. What you’re likely going to find is that in the most strenuous circumstances this GTX 680 fares no better than a reference card. 24fps 28 The OverClocker Issue 20 | 2012 performance will no doubt improve by 13% in some cases but that puts you at just under 27fps which still isn’t playable. If you’re a gamer and are really looking for that additional performance that will let you break the 30fps mark then you just may be interested in the graphics card. It’s not the factory overclock as we stated earlier, but it’s in how far it will allow you to go over and above that. Once your base clock is around the 1,190MHz that’s when things will start getting interesting and the difference between a standard GTX 680 and this beastly card become pronounced and dare we say worth the additional investment. As true as that is though, there are still cheaper ways to go about achieving this performance especially because EVGA does have other GTX 680 cards that will happily reach these speeds. So then what’s the point of the classified card? Well, much like any “Classified” product from EVGA, the point is to produce the best overclocking experience possible. Given that the standard GTX 680 has shown itself to be a nuisance in as far as reaching those stratospheric frequencies which we so dearly desire, EVGA would have us believe they have come to our aid, borrowing nothing from the reference card save for the actual GK104 GPU. The card has been purposely built from the ground up to need nothing but a GPU POT (preferably those by K|NGP|N one would assume) to make a decent stab at breaking records; personal or otherwise. It is in this single minded design where EVGA hopes you’ll find justification for this $659.99 piece of kit. The classified makes this price a little easier to swallow by offering twice the memory at 4GB, however very few