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The Asus GTX680 arrives in a spectacular box with three red claws on the front. Very dramatic. They also list the main specifications of the hardware on the front of the box.
The bundle is rather weak, some literature on the product, a software disc and a power converter cable.
The Asus GTX680 follows the Nvidia reference design, with a company sticker running along the middle of the card. It is built around a black PCB. The rear of the PCB has a Richtek RT8802A voltage controller visible which rests on its own little PCB. You can see this closer on the next page via the high resolution images.
The GTX680 is SLI capable in 2,3 and 4 way configurations. Be prepared to dig deep into your wallet for a QUAD setup.
The GTX680 is powered from two 6 pin PCI E connectors, which are stacked above each other. We can see just how optimised the power draw must be already as Nvidia have ditched the demand for an 8 pin connector. The maximum power draw from two 6 pin connectors is around 225 watts.
The card has ports for two DVI connectors, dual link. There is also a full sized HDMI port (1.4a compatible) and a full sized DisplayPort connector. You can use all of the outputs at the same time, so finally Nvidia have caught up with AMD in this regard.
There are a plethora of screws to remove to get access to the PCB. The cooler is encased inside the plastic shroud with only the copper base viewable. This design does cool the core, memory and VRM's. The board uses high quality Hynix GDDR5 memory, model H5GQ2H24MFR rated to run at 1,500mhz (6,000mhz effective).
An overview of the card in GPUz. the core runs at 1006mhz with a ‘boost clock' speed of 1059mhz. More on this later in the review. The GTX680 has 2GB of GDDR5 memory which is connected via a 256 bit memory interface.
Price isn’t bad considering the performance. Small audience, but the bragging rights alone mean it is important.
Nice, good power consumption too, which is something they always struggled with, Like Intel currently who can’t compete in mobile space.
bad samples? tskkk. worth the wait, thanks Z.
MSI R7970 lightning is a great card, well priced too. a lot of the reference cooled cards were £500 when they were released.
I was looking to do an upgrade to this but the price and the fact I need a mobo upgrade (actually whole system) as well pulled me away. I would of done it if I wasn’t heading to college next year and I’m going to get a laptop.
Thanks for that review. Big Green just gave AMD a slap in the face with lower prices and more performance. I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these beautiful cards. It will be really interesting to see what the manufacturers come out with for non-reference cards.