Experience in overclocking a gtx 680 card. Video cards

“...It is impossible to call the GTX 680 an undisputed leader. In terms of performance, the card is not much ahead of the HD 7970. Perhaps the only advantage of Kepler is its manufacturability. Automatic overclocking based on TDP reserve, original anti-aliasing modes, ability to play

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NVIDIA has entered the race for new generation video cards. At the end of March this year, it went on sale GeForce GTX 680 - main competitor AMD Radeon HD 7970. Now we will tell you what is hidden under the code name Kepler, how many cores the new crystal has received and at what frequency it operates. And, of course, we’ll answer the age-old question: who is faster, the “greens” or the “reds”?

Reorganization

Architecture Fermi, which they have been relying on for the last couple of years, has exhausted itself. It was replaced by Kepler. At first glance, everything is the same: stream processors are combined into SM modules, which, in turn, form GPC clusters, and the GPU is assembled from them. But if in GF110 (GeForce GTX 580) each SM module was equipped with 32 CUDA cores, then in Kepler there were six times more of them - 192 pieces. The thicker blocks (now called SMX) have also added auxiliary elements: there are now 16 “texture units” instead of 4, and 32 sets of special operations versus 4 SFU in the previous flagship.

A pair of SMXs and one rasterizer form the GPC (Graphics Processing Cluster). Four such sets form the basis of the chip GK104- the hearts of the GTX 680. Thus, the new GPU carries 1536 cores and 128 texture units on board, while the GF110 was content with 512 processors and 64 TMUs. But the number of PolyMorph Engines responsible for tessellation has been reduced: 8 versus 16 in the previous generation. Few? No matter how it is. The developers not only revised the operating principles of the PM Engine, but also added megahertz. So, according to engineers, overall productivity has increased by about 28%.

But what Kepler abandoned was frequency separation. At Fermi, the stream processors ran at twice the speed of the stone, now the numbers are equal. On the one hand, this is good: the main elements of GK104 received a hefty dose of adrenaline. On the other hand, the final power of a single CUDA core has dropped noticeably.

Another loss is the memory bus. The GK104 is equipped with four 64-bit GDDR5 controllers, so the bit width is 256 versus 384 bits for the GF110 and Thaiti on the Radeon HD 7970. The ROP is now also smaller: 32 instead of 46 units for the GTX 580.

New opportunities

Kepler introduced several new technologies. First - GPU Boost. It monitors temperature and power consumption and, if the indicators do not exceed critical values, automatically increases the speed and voltage of the crystal. All this works at the hardware level and does not turn off even during manual overclocking.

The second is the ability to connect four monitors at once. Moreover, for 3D Vision Surround(games on three displays) you no longer need an SLI connection, one GTX 680 is enough.

The third is a discrete video encoding chip NVENC. NVIDIA cards used to do a good job of processing video streams, but they used the computing power of CUDA cores for this. Now they play only a supporting role: the main calculations are performed by new module and does it four times faster than Fermi. The weak point of NVENC is that it is only familiar with the H.264 codec.

Fourth - fresh smoothing algorithms, TXAA And FXAA. The latter is a “cheap” replacement for traditional MSAA. The impact on performance is minimal, but the price comes with slight blurriness. TXAA is a more serious approach, and, according to the developers, it is not only superior to MSAA in quality, but also requires fewer resources.

Finally, the fifth is the adaptive vertical sync mode. Everything is simple here: VSync is activated only when fps exceeds screen resolution. As a result, a drop in framerate below the desired threshold no longer leads to a sharp drop in speed.

Cold Blooded

Despite the threefold increase in the number of stream processors, the number of transistors used to build the chip has increased slightly - from 3 to 3.54 billion. Thanks to the new 28-nm process technology, the core area and power consumption level are small. Even at maximum load, the TDP does not exceed 195 W, and this is when the base frequency has reached a fantastic level of 1006 MHz, and under GPU Boost it rises to 1058 MHz! For comparison: the Radeon HD 7970, operating at 925 MHz and carrying 4.31 billion transistors on board, consumes 250 W.

The cool nature of the GK104 allowed us to simplify the design of the board. The GTX 680 does not have an 8-pin PCIe connector, so beloved by top solutions - a couple of 6-pin sockets are enough. Only four phases are allocated to power the crystal, and judging by the wiring, the fifth was abandoned at the last moment. The length of the card is 25 cm, which is slightly shorter than that of the flagship GeForce of previous generations.

The new product is equipped with eight GDDR5 modules total capacity 2 GB. The memory speed is a record 6008 MHz, which partially compensates for the low bus width. Back panel equipped with one HDMI 1.4a with DisplayPort 1.2 and a pair of DVI. The interface uses PCIe 3.0, with backward compatibility with PCIe 2.0.

A two-story turbine is responsible for cooling. It includes a large aluminum radiator with three heat pipes and an unusual cylindrical turntable for “green” devices, the design of which uses sound-absorbing materials.

First in the world

We received the payment directly from the Russian office of NVIDIA. Appearance standard cards: the entire surface is covered with a black plastic casing and decorated with company logos. In terms of dimensions, the GTX 680 is indeed slightly smaller than its predecessor and looks very neat. From non-standard solutions We note the unusual arrangement of the power contacts: two 6-pin sockets are not in a line, but on top of each other.

For testing, we assembled a stand based on a motherboard Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R. The processor was used Core i7-920, memory installed three levels Kingston HyperX DDR3-1666 MHz 2 GB each, Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and all programs were recorded on Kingston SSDNow.

The list of applications includes 3DMark11, Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.5, Just Cause 2 , DiRT 2, Aliens vs. Predator, Batman: Arkham City And Total War: Shogun 2. The competitors were appointed GeForce GTX 590, GTX 580, AMD Radeon HD 6970 And HD 7970.

Who is first?

In 3DMark11, the new product turned out to be 17% faster than the HD 7970 and came close to the results of the double GTX 590! Kepler also liked the resource-hungry Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.5: superiority over AMD - 26%. In games, the numbers turned out to be even more interesting.

In Aliens vs. The Predator flagship of the “greens” showed 57.7 fps, ahead of the GTX 580 with HD 6970 and behind the HD 7970 and GTX 590 by 1.5 and 15.8 frames, respectively. The newcomer also lost in Just Cause 2, which is optimized for AMD drivers, - the difference with the HD 7970 was 21.7 fps. We managed to distinguish ourselves in DiRT 2, the “red” leader missed 37.5 fps.

NVIDIA's next victory is Batman: Arkham City. With PhysX and MSAA 8x turned on to maximum and a resolution of 1920x1080, the hero of our review produced a completely playable 26 fps, while the HD 7970 barely reached 20 frames. After turning off PhysX, the situation did not change: with MSAA 4x the gap was 4-6 fps, and after switching to 8x it was 15-18 fps. The triumphant march of the GTX 680 was stopped by Total War: Shogun 2. The older GeForce reached 23.2 fps, the HD 7970 - up to 24.9.

The last word

Let's be honest, we expected more from the GeForce GTX 680. Look at the final fps ratio: only 8% faster than the HD 7970. The same difference two years ago was between the GTX 580 and HD 6970. Yes, in many applications the “green” flagship is head and shoulders above its competitor. But all these are just optimized for NVIDIA games. In impartial tests - Aliens vs. Predator, Batman: Arkham City, Total War: Shogun 2—the rivals are on par.

Today's victory for the GTX 680 is quite possibly due to its late release. If GeForce had appeared before the HD 7970, AMD engineers would have had a nose bleed, but they would have pushed Graphics Core Next up to Kepler frequencies. What would come of it - see our signs. We overclocked the HD 7970 to the GK104 average speed of 1035 MHz and got similar results to the GTX 680.

It is impossible to call the GTX 680 an undisputed leader. In terms of performance, the card is not much ahead of the HD 7970. Perhaps the only advantage of Kepler is its technology. Automatic overclocking based on TDP reserve, original anti-aliasing modes, the ability to play on three monitors, a separate video decoding chip, PhysX, 3D Vision, noise insulation of the cooling system. And all this with an extremely modest power consumption of 195 W. Otherwise, AMD and NVIDIA are approximately equal. And now everything depends on competent support, driver configuration and, of course, the pricing policy of the companies. For example, HD 7970 can already be purchased for 16,500 rubles, official the price tag for the GTX 680 is 17,990 rubles.

Thinking out loud

If you take a little break from the Kepler results and take a closer look at the characteristics, you will notice a lot of interesting things. The GTX 680 looks too weird for a top-end graphics card. The first thing that catches your eye is the noticeable simplification of the memory subsystem: only 256 versus 384 bits for the GTX 580. Further - more. The power consumption of the new product is surprisingly low - 195 W. And although it fits modern trends performance per watt increase, we all know that NVIDIA has never been shy about making big and hot chips that consume 250 watts. The suspiciously modest amount of GDDR5 is also confusing - only 2 GB, and this is for a board that should provide an insane resolution of 5760x1080 when playing on three monitors. By the way, about the latter: the GK104 supports only four displays at the same time, although it could easily handle six, like the older representatives of AMD. And, finally, a negligible increase in elements and a modest core area. But NVIDIA has never strived for minimalism.

Drawing parallels with past generations, one gets the feeling that we are looking at a stripped-down version of the crystal and something more powerful may well await us soon. Of course, these are just thoughts out loud, and perhaps NVIDIA really went against its own principles, but the GTX 680 is very similar to some GTX 670.

In the main part of the article we mentioned several new technologies. Let's tell you more about them. Let's start with Adaptive VSync.

Any monitor has its own scanning frequency. For modern LCD panels it is 60 or 120 Hz with support for 3D Stereo. These numbers indicate the maximum number of frames the screen can display in one second. However, in some fps games crosses this border. On the one hand, this is good - no brakes. On the other hand, overscan leads to image twitching.

VSync allows you to adjust the refresh rate to the capabilities of your monitor. If the matrix is ​​limited to 60 Hz, then the video card will not produce more than 60 fps, which means there will be no image distortion. But this approach has one significant drawback. When the GPU cannot provide the required number of frames, VSync sets the bar to “no more than” 30, then 20 and 10 fps. And he doesn’t pay attention to the fact that the card easily maintains, for example, 40 fps. NVIDIA has solved this problem.

Adaptive VSync monitors system performance, and if the speed drops below 60 fps, it disables VSync, preventing the board from being idle. As soon as the game gains momentum, the restriction returns. Result: no artifacts or artificial freezes.

Smoothing

Next on the agenda are new antialiasing methods designed to replace the usual Multisampling Antialiasing. To understand why standard MSAA is bad, you need to understand the principles of its operation.

The technology was invented to get rid of aliasing at the corners of objects. Unpleasant nicks appear for a very simple reason. An LCD panel can be thought of as a sheet of notebook paper with small squares, each of which can be painted in one color. Try to draw some house according to these rules: horizontal and vertical lines will turn out smooth, and inclined ones will turn out “herringbone”. Everything is the same on a computer. The video card turns the shapes into pixels (ROP blocks do this) and fills the screen with them. Since the display has few dots, characteristic “teeth” appear on uneven surfaces. Getting rid of them is relatively simple: you need to repaint the pixels adjacent to the edges of objects in transition colors. To identify them, antialiasing is used.

First, SuperSampling was used for this: the scene was rendered at a resolution 2/4/8 times higher than required, then the image was compressed to the capabilities of the matrix and displayed on the monitor - the jagged edges disappeared. One bad thing is that this approach consumed an indecent amount of resources, so it was soon replaced by Multisampling. Using clever algorithms, he processed exclusively problem areas and did not touch the rest of the image, which significantly increased productivity.

Unfortunately, with the increase in the number of polygons and the emergence of new complex effects, this technology turned out to be ineffective: the loss in speed no longer corresponds to the increase in quality. Plus, engines with deferred rendering began to create a lot of problems. They first calculate the geometry and only then apply the lighting. A striking example- “Metro 2033”, where turning on MSAA led to a monstrous drop in fps. In general, there are enough difficulties with modern anti-aliasing, and manufacturers are looking for an alternative.

The first sign was Morphological AA, announced with the AMD Radeon HD 6970. The video card renders frames in standard definition and applies a light “Photoshop” to it - blurs the image. As a result, there are no “jags”, but the clarity of the textures is lost. NVIDIA now uses the same technique, although it calls it FXAA.

But TXAA is something new. It combines both traditional anti-aliasing methods and post-processing based on HDR and information from previous frames. The final result exceeds MSAA 8x in quality, and consumes less resources than MSAA 4x.

Let us note that all these innovations are not games of marketers. We conducted a test in which we compared MSAA and FXAA. The performance difference was 10%. You can see the result in the screenshots below. FXAA doesn't look as nice as traditional MSAA, but it's hardly noticeable in terms of dynamics.

Unfortunately, we were not able to test the new TXAA. It should be built into the game; his support in future projects has already been announced Epic, Crytek, Gearbox And CCP.

Overclocking

GPU Boost, implemented in the GTX 680, has long been requested for video cards. Automatic overclocking has been used in central processors since the days of the first Core i7. It entered the GPU only with the advent of the GTX 580, and even then in a stripped-down form. The technology was intended to protect against overheating: it reduced the speed when the TDP was exceeded. In this way, NVIDIA protected its chips from special heaters like FurMark and could significantly increase the final operating frequencies. The disadvantage of the old approach was the implementation: everything was controlled by drivers that responded to pre-defined applications.

This bug has been fixed by AMD. PowerTune, introduced with the Radeon HD 6970, also struggled with overheating, but the temperature was monitored by sensors built into the crystal, which turned out to be much more efficient software solutions and did not depend on specific programs.

With the GTX 680, engineers went even further. Hardware controls now overclock the GPU. When the game cannot fully load the stone and there is a TDP reserve, the performance of the board increases. As soon as the maximum level of power consumption is reached, the card slows down. Interestingly, the stated 1056 MHz is not the limit for GPU Boost. In our tests, Kepler often reached the 1100 MHz mark.

The only negative point is that “doping” cannot be turned off. Even when the base frequency is increased, GPU Boost continues to work. So, having set the Base Clock to 1100 MHz, we witnessed how the GK104 reached 1300 MHz! True, only professional testers will complain about this; a “free” increase will never hurt you and me.

Physics

Another news is the PhysX update. With the GTX 680 it gets two new effects. The first is a modified version of hair calculation. If individual strands were demonstrated on the GTX 580, then at the Kepler presentation we were shown a technical demo with a natural yeti, each hair of which reacted to external influences like wind or stroking.

The second is the possibility of destruction of objects. NVIDIA taught the engine to break objects in real time. And not just calculate the animation of pre-prepared blocks, but naturally break entire columns, apply textures to the resulting fragments and scatter them according to all the laws of physics.

Table 1.

Specifications

Table 2.

Synthetic tests

3DMark11

Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.5

Table 3.

Gaming tests (frames per second)

Aliens vs. Predator (DX11)

DiRT 2 (DX11)

Just Cause 2

Batman: Arkham City (DX11, Full PhysX)

Batman: Arkham City (DX11, no PhysX)

Total War: Shogun 2 (DX11)

Table 4.

Price/performance ratio

Introduction
The day before, our Mega Review portal announced the start of deliveries of video cards NVIDIA family GTX 690. Distinctive feature These video cards are based on two GK104 chips, on which the GeForce GTX 680 video cards are based. Considering the high cost of dual-chip GeForce GTX 690 solutions, we understand their low popularity among domestic users, so we would like to present to your attention the GeForce GTX 680 video card made by Zotac.
In today's review you will be presented with ZOTAC video card GeForce GTX 680 AMP! Edition, which is distinguished by the presence of factory overclocking. Note that today GeForce GTX 680 video cards are already the most productive solutions in the single-chip segment, and additional factory overclocking makes these solutions even more productive.

You should immediately focus on the following facts. As it turns out, the new GeForce GTX 680 video cards, due to their low power consumption, can boast of having a fairly high overclocking potential. With freon cooling, enthusiasts managed to reach a figure of 1957 MHz for the core, and with air cooling the maximum figure was 1442 MHz. Naturally, to achieve such high results, there was a need to perform a volt mod. The operating voltage of the graphics core has been increased to 1.212 volts. Few users will be able to repeat similar results, but they are the benchmark for the maximum operating frequencies of the new series of video cards.

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It is clear to all specialists who understand computer graphics devices that the GeForce GTX 680 video card should have been even more powerful than the existing version. The release of this video card is due to the fact that it is already quite good and outperforms all solutions of the Tahiti family in terms of performance. If AMD had been able to release a new revision of the Radeon HD 7970, we would have seen a completely different video card under the GeForce GTX 680 brand, and the existing product would have had a more modest name, for example, GeForce GTX 660 or GeForce GTX 670. But since this was not required, the top single-chip the video card received a number of advantages over the AMD Radeon HD 7970 solution. Firstly, this core contains fewer transistors and occupies a smaller area, which makes its production cheaper. Secondly, the cost of the standard version of the GeFirce GTX 680 is closer to $500, which is cheaper than the top AMD product.

The new line of GeFirce GTX 680 video cards solves all the problems of this family of video cards. The length of the new video card is 254 mm, which is less than the length of video cards from AMD Radeon HD 7970 series. The new video card is ready to work with multiple monitors without installing a second solution. Within NVIDIA technologies 3D Vision Surround allows the user to combine up to three monitors in 2D format and two monitors to demonstrate a stereoscopic image into a single tandem. The new Kepler graphics core has become even more energy efficient and more productive. The Kepler core has absorbed everything strengths Fermi kernel and got rid of most of its problems, which made it possible to increase productivity. Transition to 28 nanometer technological process made it possible to reduce the operating voltage of the transistors, which subsequently reduced the power consumption and heat generation of the new core. If the Fermi graphics core had high mathematical power and frankly weak processing of geometry and textures, then in the new Kepler core they tried to achieve a balance between these most important computing functions of the video card.

Many note that two gigabytes of video memory is clearly not enough for the GeForce GTX 680 solution. It is for these people that options with 4 gigabytes of video memory are offered. However, it should be noted that experience shows that two gigabytes of video memory is sufficient for a given video card even when working with multiple monitors. When purchasing video cards with 4 gigabytes of memory on board, you should note that these video cards have less overclocking potential than solutions with 2 gigabytes of video memory. Equipment

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The front side of the box indicates the video card model, the presence of an extended warranty and a download coupon Assassin games Creed.

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1. Temperature conditions of the video card.

2. Overclocking the video card
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 680 AMP video card! Edition showed rather weak overclocking potential. Without changing the standard voltage, the maximum frequency for the core was 1132 MHz, for video memory 1898 MHz. Conclusion
Considering the presence of factory overclocking, the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 680 AMP video card! Edition - she showed herself very well. Not high level prices, availability of everything you need in the basic configuration, high efficiency installed system cooling allows you to make a choice in favor of this video card.

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The table below summarizes the main video specifications NVIDIA cards GeForce GTX 680.

Testing methodology

To determine its performance, the NVIDIA GTX 680 went through a series of tests, which included some synthetic benchmarks and popular gaming applications. The results obtained were compared with modern models NVIDIA video cards and AMD. The system was assembled based on a Core i7 2600K processor. The test results were taken at default frequencies, as well as in an overclocked state. Test system worked under Windows control 7 Professional 64-bit. The following driver versions were used: NVIDIA - Forceware 296.10, AMD - Catalyst 12.3. The full testbed configuration is shown below.

Test bench

• Processor - Core i7 2600K @ 4.4 GHz (100 x 44);
• CPU Cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H100;
• Motherboard: Gigabyte Z68AP-D3;
• RAM - 8 GB (2x 4 GB) Mushkin 1866 MHz 9-11-9-27;
• Video card - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680;
• Power supply - Mushkin Joule 1000 watt;
• Hard drive - SATA Seagate 1 TB;
• Optical storage - Lite-On DVD-RW;
• Case - Corsair Graphite Series 600T;
• OS - Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

Video cards for comparison

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580;
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570;

Overclocking

As a result of overclocking, the final core and memory frequencies were 1305 MHz and 1628 MHz, respectively. It's worth noting here new opportunity- dynamic overclocking of the core of the GTX 680 video card. So the default core frequency is 1006 MHz. If the video card is 100% loaded with intensive calculations, the GPU frequency automatically increases. Dynamic overclocking is adjusted so that the power consumption of the video card does not go beyond the TDP. If the heat dissipation of the video card exceeds the established limits, the frequency is reduced to avoid overheating.

Overclocking was carried out using the EVGA Precision utility. To prevent the video card from resetting the set frequencies, the Power Target value was set to maximum. Apparently, this option changes the value of the maximum permissible power consumption, and this allows you to raise the overclocking ceiling. As a result, a 30 percent increase in core frequency was obtained.

The video card was tested for stability after overclocking using the Unigine Heaven 3.0 benchmark (30 minutes). Below are the results of overclocking the video cards participating in testing.

Metro 2033

In this very demanding game AMD cards provide a consistent advantage at both 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 resolutions.

Two cards at 5760x1080 resolution Radeon HD 7970 definitely faster than the competition. Interestingly, whether you use one card or two, enabling 4x MSAA has very little impact on the performance of high-end AMD graphics cards.

Overclocking

Very often we see comments that say that it would be fair to compare the overclocked GeForce GTX 680 with overclocked Radeon HD 7970. Considering that the GTX 680 uses GPU Boost technology, the card already demonstrates performance close to the limit, while the Tahiti GPUs have significant overclocking potential.

For this reason, we decided to customize our samples in a more targeted manner.

We started with Radeon HD 7970, which was purchased at retail on Newegg. For setup we use Catalyst 12.2. In the Overdrive menu, we brought all the settings to the maximum, raising the core frequency to 1125 MHz and the memory frequency to 1575 MHz. Attempts to hack CCC and latest version programs MSI Afterburner, using known registry and configuration file adjustments, were unsuccessful. In any case, we did not intend to turn off any functions in order to increase the frequency. Therefore, we settled on the highest AMD settings.

On GeForce card we managed to achieve almost the same results. EVGA's GTX 680 delivered consistent performance levels at 132% power and a 150 MHz core clock offset. The memory frequency turned out to be less flexible. We shifted the memory setting to +25 MHz, but performance suffered. Therefore, testing was carried out at the standard frequency of 1502 MHz.

Radeon HD 7970 noticeably increased speed in 3DMark 11. GeForce GTX 680 at higher power and frequency gave a smaller increase in this synthetic test.

GeForce GTX 680 again did not provide a noticeable increase in performance during overclocking. Meanwhile, at Radeon HD 7970 there is a significant improvement. According to the results of these tests, AMD comes out ahead.

Crysis 2 - a game with the nVidia TWIMTBP logo, saves the GeForce after the 3DMark and Battlefield 3 tests. At maximum settings in Overdrive, performance Radeon HD 7970 on average increases by about 6 FPS and reaches the performance level of the GTX 680 without overclocking.

Increasing the frequency by 200 MHz allows Radeon HD 7970 increase the result by 10 FPS in the game DiRT 3. However, this is not enough to catch up GeForce GTX 680, although the performance of this card only increased by 4 FPS.

Although Radeon HD 7970 again gains greater advantage from acceleration, she was unable to overtake GeForce GTX 680 in the 64-bit version of the World of Warcraft client.

In Metro 2033 with quadruple MSAA map Radeon HD 7970 even without overclocking it was faster than GeForce GTX 680. We see the same thing during overclocking.

Overall, it's pretty easy to understand that Radeon HD 7970 benefits much more from overclocking than GeForce GTX 680. It's a pity that the Catalyst Control Center driver gives a maximum of 1125/1575 MHz. We tried to disable Ultra-Low Power States and hack the registry to get more speed, but quickly realized that bypassing the positive aspects of the video card was too much. The company may change the limits in new driver versions in the future.

This suggests another conclusion: most of the power reserve GeForce GTX 680 is already used by GPU Boost technology, leaving little potential for overclocking. Because of this, it will be even more interesting to look at modifications made by suppliers such as EVGA. To stabilize GPU Boost interaction at higher frequencies, more aggressive air cooling or an integrated water block would likely be best.

Recently, overclocker Hazzan decided to try to overclock the GTX 680 card in 4-Way SLI mode and as a result set a new 3DMark 11 performance record in Performance mode.

According to data released by HWBOT, Hazzen used a GTX 680 4-Way SLI and was able to score P33190 in 3DMark 11, which is 39 points more than second place in the same test. The core and memory frequencies were respectively 1706 MHz (maximum card frequency in Boost mode) and 1800 MHz (7200 MHz effective).

Test platform includes Core processor i7-3930K (overclocked to 5784 MHz), 8 GB random access memory GSkill DDR3 in a four-channel configuration, overclocked to 2480 MHz, block Antec supply High Current Pro 1300W, motherboard ASUS Rampage IV Extreme and ASUS video cards GTX 680 DirectCU II. AND CPU and the video card were cooled with liquid nitrogen.

EVGA reaches 2 GHz on GeForce GTX 680 GPU

When NVIDIA released the GeForce GTX 680 in March of this year, the company refrained from overclocking and lowered the GPU clock to just over 1 GHz. Soon we saw different options for overclocked solutions on the market, but 100% overclocking was unattainable even for options with liquid nitrogen.

However, EVGA decided differently. Their team of engineers worked hard to create the GTX 680 Classified, a customized version of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 card.

The specifications are quite impressive, since this card is the fastest in the world, well, at least according to the developers. The board features 14 discrete power phases compared to the reference board's five, dual overclocking BIOS, EVBot support, and 4GB of GDDR5 memory running at 6GHz.

As follows from the number of phases, printed circuit board has been completely redesigned, specifically to improve overclocking capabilities.

We can expect the company to release its ultra-overclocked card in a few weeks, but this may not happen as EVGA wants to attract as much attention to its 2 GHz board as possible.

EVGA GeForce GTX 680 overclocked to 1842 MHz

The day before the official release of the GTX 680, the famous overclocker with the nickname kIngpIn managed to overclock the processor of the GTX 680 video card from EVGA to a brilliant 1842 MHz.

The result was achieved using a modified TiN PWM section, and with liquid nitrogen cooling (yes, standard PWM is not suitable for this). The core of the video card was cooled to -150° C. To overclock the system, a Core i7 3930K processor was used, overclocked to 5.5 GHz, and the memory frequency was 2400 MHz. For overclocking, the Precision X utility was used. In the 3DMark 11 test, the system scored 14912 points with the Performance preset.

As for performance, it is worth noting that kIngpIn did not break the record previously set by Elmor on the HD 7970 card with a frequency of 1800 MHz. This configuration scored P15035 in 3DMark 11. At the same time, of course, full tessellation was turned on, otherwise the test would have shown a thousand points more.

About this, kIngpIn wrote on the forum: “The rig is capable of scoring 16,000 points on one card if used to its fullest, and today we have reached a stable 1900 MHz, and we think that with further tuning we will reach 2 GHz. It just takes more time. Attempts to use two cards under liquid nitrogen are too far-fetched... these are all just modifications that allow you to achieve such a frequency.".