EVGA currently offers six GTX 680 graphics cards, the fastest one being its GTX 680 Hydro Copper, whose GPU runs at 1150MHz. Of course, those of you that prefer traditional air coolers have five other GTX 680 cards to choose from. Air cooled graphics usually run at lower clocks and our today’s guest is EVGA’s GTX 680 SC Signature, which is the fastest of the company’s air cooled GTX 680s. The card’s GPU runs at 1086MHz and the memory at 1552MHz (6208MHz effectively). Note that reference clocks are 1006/1502MHz for GPU/memory.
Apart from the clocks, EVGA’s GTX 680 SC Signature isn’t much different from the reference design. The cooler had a corrective surgery and it totally reflects EVGA’s image – all in all, pretty nice. Most importantly though, the factory overclocked GPU is cooled well.
The card is powered via one 6-pin and one 8-pin connector.
The cooler packs a nice punch and a little effort will considerably speed up EVGA’s GTX 680 SC Signature, even beyond the clocks on EVGA’s GTX 680 Hydro Copper. As the picture below proves, 1185MHz ran stable. We managed to get this score with standard voltages set in the card’s BIOS and AUTO fan operation. After some work with voltages and speeding up the fan, we managed to overclock it even further. Since we still don’t have the final maximum clock, we’ll leave it for our full review.
Those of you who’d rather see dual fan cooling should know that EVGA is preparing Signature 2 card with special cooler design, which should cool better and be quieter due to two fans. However, if you’re not bent on low noise, Signature’s cooling is nice and not too loud. Thankfully, the times of GTX 480s and other noisy cards are past us.