EVGA NVIDIA GTX680 OVERCLOCKING

[k|ngp|n]

New green cards out. IMO the most impressive GPU's NVIDIA ever produced. They are marketing it as the fastest GPU ever built. After benching it this past week with my lab mate TiN, I think I have to agree. These cards are monsters and have really insane overclocking potential on both air and extreme cooling. I think for most common end user of high end discrete gpus, you will be EXTREMELY happy with what they have done for your high end gaming system. You will also get a glimpse of what these sick cores are capable of with extreme LN2 cooling and PROPER voltage/modding/tuning. We invited our good friends over at VR-ZONE to stop by the lab in TAIWAN for a pre-launch visit to give a LIVE demo of how high the cores can overclock on LN2


Here we have the new EVGA GTX680's in both single and quad sli setups being tested fully overclocked on air using STOCK VRM/REFERENCE fan sink design to showcase what kind of potential there is for high end HW enthusiasts. I am using the most demanding 3dmark apps to fully load the cards. 3DMARK 11, 3DMARK VANTAGE, and HEAVEN. I will also be using EVGA's brand new VGA overclocking utility PRECISION X that was designed around and made to work perfectly with GTX680.

Lab test setup:
EVGA GTX680 (single and quad sli)
EVGA X79 CLASSIFIED + 3930K / 3960X
EVGA SR2- CLASSIFIED + X5690
16GB GSKILL RIPJAWS memory
EVGA CLASSIFIED 1200W psus

I manage to overclock this card to nearly 1420mhz on air with fans running @full speed. Crazy job NVIDIA!! Easy 4.6ghz on 3960X.

When comparing my GTX 680 or really any results with those of 7970, always keep in mind that all scores here are done with FULL TESSELATION and not using any sort of driver cheats that reduce it in TESSELATION heavy benchmarks as AMD drivers do.
3DMARK 11 (all 3 presets)






3DMARK VANTAGE (P and X presets)




DX11 HEAVEN


Now for quad numbers I was really impressed that I nearly hit the the same clocks for 3DMARK 11 in 4-way as I did single due to the great thermals on the card. 1388mhz core frequency in QUAD SLI not bad for reference air cooling and stock vrm:

3DMARK11 (all 3 presets)






TiN is really sick guys and I am so lucky to have this guy working by my side @EVGA labs. A lot of hard work was put in here to show you guys what these GTX680 cores are capable of when they are given the proper tuning, modding, and overclocked without limits. As I said at the top, we invited the guys from VR-zone to come by the lab and check out what this new gpu core from nvidia is capable of on extreme cooling.
How about 1850mhz? Just a little little bit short of current 15k single card 3D11 WR using only 5.5ghz 3930K and slower gpu memory speed here, and again that is with full tesselation running 3dMARK 11 the way it is meant to be used, the score would be nearly 1k higher with a huge boost in GT4 if the same driver hacks that AMD is using were used.
Setup is capable of 16k single card regardless when pushed all the way and today we got 1900 stable, we think 2ghz is possible with more tuning. Just need more time. Tried 2 cards on Ln2 to obtain this result so far...its all modding that makes this frequency possible. TEK-9 FAT 6.0 GPU container used for LN2 extreme cooling.





More in the coming weeks

[TiN]

Some actual photos of cards we used for airtesting results and later LN2.

2560x1600 wallpaper clickable





Hints and tricks, voltage modifications for overclocking 680 cards - practical thread

[Massman]

Any way to get rid of the GPU boost for overclocking? Or, more specifically, does 1850 mean you're running 1850 in some parts and 1900 in others (+50MHz gpu boost)

[TiN]

You can see in performance graphs, that overclocked frequency is kept stready from start to end of benchmark (excluding toggling during loading screens idle, physics etc).

As soon as your power monitoring and temperature are below limits you will have similar overclocking concept as was before on older-gen GPUs.

[Massman]

Right.

Kudos on testing the EPower before launch, by the way. Gives a nice insight in what is to be expected from future releases. Any word on the Classified card? Will it be available before the other custom pcbs hit retail?

[BenchZowner]

Nice work Vintin

The front page of the book is changed, overclocking remains as is after the necessary modding + software, don't be afraid ppl

[Stelaras]

Green is back !!!!

What about the coldboot issue Shammy wrote ? Is there a mod to bypass it ?

Great job with the EPOWER module !

[rbuass]

Loved the Tin Zoombie...
Always a great job Vince... I heard not good things about GTX 680, but I think they will kill all scores

[chispy]

Great job Vincy and TiN , Green goblins taking over again

[fuzz3l]

Nice scores Buddies!

Really looking forward to test one of these monsters.