EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Classified Graphics Card

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680 was the ruler of the single-GPU add-in-board market for a while, but the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition and custom-made versions have hurled the title of strongest graphics card into uncertainty.

At this point, there is no clear-cut winner, regardless of what both sides say. As such, prospective customers will have to more closely, and individually, examine each company's inventions. The product we are going to look at today is the EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Classified. According to AnandTech, it was brought to Computex 2012, the trade show that took place in Taipei, Taiwan last week. It is implied to be EVGA's best GTX 680 graphics adapter to date, with a non-reference PCB, tough cooling and, of course, the fastest clock speeds among its kind. Unfortunately, we can neither confirm nor dismiss the last of these claims, due to the distinct lack of frequency mentions.

The reference card drives the Kepler GK104 GPU to 1,006 MHz (base speed) and 1,058 MHz (GPU Boost), while the 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM work at 6 GHz. Since the Classified will be EVGA's fastest, we suspect it will aim to match, or maybe even surpass, the likes of Point of View GTX 680 UltraCharged (1,176 MHz / 1,228 MHz GPU Boost). EVGA's model does not have as large and strong a cooler as the UltraCharged, but the report did say there would be a water block option in addition to the air one. Not only that, but the card brought to Computex was just a prototype, so there might be a different fansink on the final version.

As for the rest of the specs, the custom PCB bears a 14-phase power design and a pair of custom headers at the top, one for direct access to voltage readings and a second one for the EVBot tool (grants direct control over voltages).

Posted in: Hardware, Preview