Gainward GeForce GTX 680 Phantom Pro Reviews

Gainward has brought a really strong NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 680 based video card to the table that stands out from the reference model with more performance, stronger cooling numbers and lower noise levels. There's very little to complain about when it comes to the Phantom, if we had to pick on anything though, it would be the bundle. Like most companies these days, though, Gainward has opted for smaller bundles and instead let the video card do all of the talking. It doesn't really bother us and it helps keep the price down slightly, which is always a good thing. If we had to pick something, though, to complain about, it would be the smaller bundle. From a performance point of view the strong overclock that Gainward has bought to the core and memory helps give a real boost in performance. I think what's more important, though, is the fact that often times we see that the overclock helps push the average FPS to that magical 60 FPS mark that we consider provides a solid gaming experience.

Although the GTX 680 was unveiled over a month ago, finding one is still difficult. The lack of availability has somewhat spoiled Kepler's debut and we hope it's corrected shortly. Overall, Nvidia has been very disorganized with the GTX 680's release and as a result, many tech sites (us included) didn't receive review units. AMD has kept Nvidia on its toes in recent generations. The Radeon HD 4000 series spurred a war that saw the GTX 200 series receive numerous price cuts, the HD 5000 series had full run of the market for half a year before GTX 400 cards arrived, and this time around, AMD was almost three months ahead with the HD 7970.

Gainward GTX 680 Phantom is a factory overclocked card with custom cooling that’s quieter and has better cooling performanse that the reference version. The factory overclock will provide you with about 6-7 percent better results than the reference card but Phantom cooling is definitely what sets it apart from the pack. Gainward continued its tradition so the new Phantom is still dual slot, but we think most users won’t mind. We can’t pick hairs as the cooler does its job really good and it remains quiet all the time. When playing less demanding games, users can limit frame rates, which will result in lower consumption and thermals. The reference card already boasts great consumption/performance ratio and Gainward’s GTX 680 Phantom consumes almost the same. Power consumption and the two-display limit were a thorn in Nvidia’s backside for a while now. However, Nvidia finally addressed these issues and the GTX 680 allows for using all four video outs simultaneously.