EVGA GeForce GTX 680 Classified Pro Reviews

Wrapping things up, it’s hard not to find ourselves coming to two opinions on EVGA’s GeForce GTX 680 Classified. Treated like any other GTX 680, out of the box the GTX 680 is a very impressive card. EVGA’s various touches such as 4GB of RAM, a larger cooler, a factory overclock, and of course additional VRM circuitry that leads to a higher stock power target, all serve to make the GTX 680 Classified a clearly better card than the reference GTX 680. Furthermore thanks in large part to EVGA’s binning there’s even more overclocking headroom to play with, leading us to reach a 1211MHz core clock without ever increasing its voltage. It’s a very good – if very expensive – GTX 680. Of course the real draw with the GTX 680 Classified is with its overvolting support, and that’s where things don’t hold up quite as well. From an end-user perspective NVIDIA’s overvolting restrictions make the entire voltage manipulation process needlessly difficult. The fact that an external controller is required for voltage control and that it can’t easily be tied to overclocking settings is a considerable step back from what GTX 500 series cards could do. NVIDIA has purposely made overvolting more difficult, and while it’s not impossible it’s enough to give you pause as to whether the additional effort and the additional cost are worth it.

NVIDIA and its partners have steadfastly refused to move the price of its premium GPU, GeForce GTX 680, in the wake of arch-rival AMD's successive price cuts to the competing Radeon HD 7970 card. With the Radeon now available from £320, or £50 cheaper than the least-expensive GTX 680s, the pressure is on for NVIDIA's partners to deliver compelling solutions that offer manifest advantages over the reference card. GeForce GTX 680 is all about showing off the underlying Kepler architecture in its fullest, most unbridled form. EVGA's finest air-cooled example is the Classified 4GB, equipped with a fully-custom PCB, cooler, double-sized framebuffer, a decent dose of overclocking, and potential for hardware-based voltage adjustment. Cool, quiet and eminently fast in the out-of-the-box guise, Classified is a card whose potential can only truly be unlocked by serious enthusiasts; users who dally with the EVBot controller and dial-in obscene voltages while utilising the type of cooling any sane person would find crazy.

EVGA GTX 680 Classified is made and aimed at enthusiasts and overclockers. This is why the card boasts an EVBot connector, the name that symbolizes EVGA-flavored overclocking. In fact, EVBot allowed for lighting fast overvolting of the GPU and memory. The card boasts 14+3 VRM design with two 8-pin power connectors. The cooler is large as well and the entire package suggests great fun.