Published in Graphics

Gainward GTX 680 previewed

by on22 March 2012

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Preview: Up to 50% faster than GTX 580 in 3Dmark 11

Today Nvidia launched the Geforce GTX 680, its first graphics based on the new Kepler architecture, Nvidia's answer to AMD's Southern Islands family.

The card ended up clocked at 1006MHz for base clock and 1500MHz (6.0GHz effective) for 2GB of GDDR5 memory. Built by TSMC in the new 28nm process, the GK104 GPU features 1536 CUDA cores and offers a few new tricks, but we will get round to the details in our full review. Gainward’s GTX 680 is a reference card, but there is little to complain about even, as even the basic design is nothing short excellent. The cooling is good, keeping temperatures at bay with relatively little noise, and we have no complaints about the rest of the card.

Currently, Gainward's GTX 680 is already available in Europe. It is listed at Mindfactory.de with a currently lowest €498,95 price tag.

gpuz gainward gtx 680


Judging by the box design, Gainward thinks the GTX 680 has what it takes to crash the party, and our preliminary tests are quite promising.

gainward GTX680 1


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The GTX 680 is powered via two 6-pin power connectors. The card has a dual-link DVI port (with analog VGA), one dual-link DVI port (digital only), one standard HDMI and DisplayPort. Thanks to Nvidia’s new display output logic, Kepler based cards can support up to four displays.

gainward-gtx-680-testbench

Sadly, we got the card just a couple of hours ago, so we were unable to do a proper review ahead of the launch. Still, judging by our initial results and reviews around the web, we are convinced the GTX 680 will live up to the hype.

Stay tuned for our full review, but in the meantime you can check out a couple of scores, 3Dmark and AvP. We have a long night ahead of us, but the GTX 680 makes for some good company.

gtx 680 mark 2011

gtx 680 avp 3

gpuz gainward gtx 680 load temp

Last modified on 28 March 2012
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