Gigabyte GTX680 Windforce Review

Test Setup

Gigabyte GTX680 Windforce
ForceWare 300.99
Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.6GHz
ASUS Rampage IV Extreme
Corsair AX1200W
Corsair GTX8
Corsair H100
Noctua NF-F12 Fans
Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Overclocking

Of course with all this power available to us, and the cooling power of the Windforce keeping everything stable, we can really see what the card is capable of. Despite having a mild overclock out of the box we increased it all the way up to 1139MHz base clock and 1204MHz boost clock. Only a shade lower than the Zotac AMP! and certainly enough to hopefully give us some good results.

Temperatures

The $64000 question though is, does that cooler really keep things frosty? When the card is idle it certainly does, being right down at 24°C, but once the card is stressed the temperatures do creep up, ending up 5° and 10° warmer than the Zotac AMP!. It's worth noting that by any yardstick the card is phenomenally quiet. Ridiculously so considering the amount of fans whirring away. You're very much balancing heat and noise at all times and the Gigabyte falls clearly on the quiet side of the fence.