Shootouts

Overclocked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Duel - Palit vs. MSI

By James Lu - 2 Jun 2012

Conclusion

Conclusion

We were somewhat underwhelmed by the results of our overclocked GTX 680 graphics cards with neither card really standing out as a clear winner from a performance perspective. From our reference card review, we knew that overclocking the GTX 680 can be somewhat temperamental, due to NVIDIA's GPU Boost providing higher clock speeds depending on power consumption. While our overclocked cards also drew more power than the reference card, this didn't translate straight into tangible performance gains.

Palit's model drew about 15% more power than a reference card, but only provided, on average, a 4-6% performance gain, while MSI drew about 6% more, with a roughly 2-4% performance gain. It's possible that GPU Boost doesn't scale well with power consumption and, as such, we're seeing lower net gains than predicted.

Overall, despite its slightly lower performance scores in our benchmarks, we've chosen MSI's GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr as the winner in this duel. While its scores are lower, some moderate tweaking should produce similar results to Palit's model, as seen in our Overclocking scores, in which it actually pulled slightly ahead.

Compared to Palit's GeForce GTX 680 Jetstream, out of the box, MSI's model was much cooler, quieter and had better power consumption. Having said that, our recommendation would be to go with NVIDIA's reference card design and overclock it yourself to suit your needs as neither card provides a significant enough improvement over the reference design to warrant the extra cost. However, if you do want a much cooler operating graphics card at any point of time, the MSI GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr 2GB GDDR5 graphics card has proven its mettle and is your ideal choice.

Despite its lower performance scores (which can equal Palit's with some minor overclocking), MSI's GTX 680 is our winner due to its far better cooling system and lower power consumption out of the box.

 

Final Ratings

MSI GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr 2GB GDDR5

Click for detailed results break-down

Palit GeForce GTX 680 Jetstream 2GB GDDR5

Click for detailed results break-down

 

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