Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Windforce 5X Super Overclock 2GB GDDR5 - Quintuple Cooling

Meet The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Windforce 5X Super Overclock 2GB GDDR5

In March this year, we reviewed NVIDIA's latest flagship graphics card, the GeForce GTX 680. As the first Kepler-based 28nm fabrication process card from NVIDIA, the GTX 680 was the first card to show off Kepler's capabilities, which included NVIDIA's GPU Boost technology, a unique technology that dynamically adjusts a GPU's clock speed according to its current operating environment. This consists of many components, including power consumption, GPU temperature, GPU utilization, and memory utilization, and is one of the main reasons NVIDIA holds the technological lead  over AMD in this current series of graphics cards. 

We also reviewed two custom models from MSI and Palit which showed that there's still plenty of performance to be squeezed out of the GTX 680.

Today we're looking at a very interesting entry into the custom GTX 680 market, Gigabyte's massive GeForce GTX 680 Windforce 5X Super Overclock.

First spotted at Computex 2012, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Windforce 5X Super Overclock is a triple-slot graphics card boasting the highest factory overclock available on a custom GTX 680. Core clock speeds have been ramped up from 1006MHz to 1137MHz, and memory has been boosted from 6008MHz DDR to 6200MHz DDR. This card retails in Singapore for $845, and comes with a 3-year warranty period.

To keep the card running cool at such high clock speeds, Gigabyte has fitted the Super OC with the radical and unique Windforce 5X custom cooler, which sports, you guessed it, an unheard of five fans! Unlike traditional coolers, these 40mm fans are mounted perpendicular to the heatsink and blow cool air across its entire breadth. The heatsink itself has an unusual design, using a vapor chamber cooling system that results in the card requiring three expansion slots.

As expected, the result is an absolutely massive card, measuring 303 x 148 x 64mm and weighing a motherboard-breaking 1.6kg (that's heavier than some notebooks!). If you're planning on using this card, we definitely advise that you ensure the card is seated correctly in its slot and screwed down securely into the bracket (and yes, this applies to all three of its slots). For peace of mind, you might want to consider an additional GPU support bracket, or failing that a horizontal system setup.

Test Setup

As usual, the following are the specs of our trusty graphics card test bed system:-

• Intel Core i7-975 (3.33GHz)
• Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard
• 3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 G.Skill memory in triple channel mode
• Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

We have included NVIDIA's dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690 due to a comment made to us at Computex 2012 that the Gigabyte Super OC GTX 680 would be able to compete with and, on certain benchmarks, even beat the GTX 690. Obviously, we were skeptical that any single GPU card could compete with a dual-GPU one, but perhaps Gigabyte has something special up their sleeve? We'll find out in the next few pages.

The list of cards tested and the drivers used:

• Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Windforce 5X Super OC 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 301.10)
• MSI GeForce GTX 680 Twin Frozr III OC 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 301.10)
• Palit GeForce GTX 680 Jetstream OC 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 301.10)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 300.99)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 301.33)
• AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 12.3)

The list of benchmarks used:

• Futuremark 3DMark 11
• Unigine Heaven v2.1
• Far Cry 2
• Battlefield: Bad Company 2
• Crysis Warhead
• Crysis 2
• Batman: Arkham City
• Dirt 3

For easy reference, here's a comparison of all the custom GeForce GTX 680 cards tested, as well as the NVIDIA reference card.

Performance Results

At Computex 2012, we were told that the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Windforce 5X Super OC would be able to perform close to NVIDIA's dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690, and could even beat it in certain benchmarks. Unfortunately, this turned out not to be the case, as you can see below from our 3DMark 11 benchmark, with the GTX 690 outperforming the Gigabyte GTX 680 by as much as 33%. Presumably, this boast was more likely due to an over-enthusiastic product marketer rather than any extensive internal testing. As such we have removed the GTX 690 from comparisons beyond the initial 3DMark11 benchmark. If you want a GTX 690 level of performance, you'll still need two GPUs.

Compared to our other GTX 680s, as expected, the Gigabyte Super OC was able to outperform its competitors on every benchmark. However, its lead was not as massive as one might expect, given its clock speeds and 'Super OC' designation, and it only beat our next best competitor, the Palit GTX 680 JetStream OC by about 2-4% on average. While the difference is small, this is about the expected norm. Against the reference design, it was about 15% better in general. This advantage is the reason you'll be paying a premium out of the box.

GPU Boost Performance

Part of the reason for Gigabyte's slightly subpar score may be due to its underwhelming GPU Boost performance. Our other custom cards, as well as NVIDIA's reference card, average a peak of about 100MHz extra core clock speed due to GPU Boost. On the other hand, Gigabyte's GPU Boost capped out at 1215MHz, which is only 78MHz above its default clock speed. This may be due to the high power draw required by the card's custom cooler, which would then reduce the excess power available to be utilized by GPU Boost. 

Performance Results

Performance Results (contd.)

Overclocking Results

For our overclocking efforts, we were able to attain a stable maximum overclock of 1210MHz on the core, with memory ramped up to a massive 6800MHz DDR. Unfortunately, this wasn't that much higher than the final clock speeds we achieved with MSI, and as a result, the Gigabyte Super OC only scored about 2% better than MSI on both the Performance and Extreme presets. While the difference in capabilities between pre-overclocked cards is small, it's still a decent differentiation given that it's based on the same GPU. In this day and age, the results could have been worse, but at least the Gigabyte card managed to outgun its competition by a small degree. Compared against a stock reference card that was overclocked, the Gigabyte had a 14% overclock performance advantage.

Temperature Results

Considering its high core and memory clock speeds, Gigabyte's Windforce 5X cooler was quite impressive, registering a full 11 degrees cooler temperature than the Palit overclocked card and was even a little cooler than the reference card operating at reference speeds. While MSI's cooler was even better, it also has much lower clock speeds, consistently scoring about 5-6% worse than Gigabyte in our benchmarks.

One thing to note is that the Windforce 5X is quite loud. Even at low fan RPM, there's a high-pitched whining sound from the 40mm fans. Individually, we suspect the fans are fairly average in terms of noise levels, but five of them spinning at the same time does add up. This is probably the card's main pitfall as using smaller fans generally does lead to higher noise levels as they have to spin faster to ensure they are able to move the same amount of air as a larger cooler. Of course the design choice was obviously to keep the card within reasonable dimensions and yet overpower the competition, thus leading to the overall design of the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Windforce 5X Super OC graphics card. This is a choice you'll have to make in advance if you're all out for performance, no matter the cost, or prefer something more reasonably acceptable but conventionally designed.

Power Consumption Results

As expected, Gigabyte was the worst performer in terms of power consumption, drawing 25% more power than the reference design at load. As we saw in our benchmark results, the extra power requirement seemed to stem from its highly overclocked GPU and its many cooling fans as we didn't register a higher GPU Boost.

Conclusion

So does the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 680 Windforce 5X Super OC live up to its intimidating appearance, or is it all bark and no bite? While its performance scores were indeed higher than any other custom GTX 680 we have tested, they weren't significantly higher than its competitors, and we felt that it wasn't achieving its full potential based on its factory overclock settings. While Gigabyte has done an excellent job overclocking this model, the nature of Kepler-based graphics cards is such that simply ramping up core and memory clock speeds is not enough to achieve the best possible performance.

Due to the way Kepler-based cards handle GPU Boost, power consumption also factors into card performance. In this area, while the Gigabyte Super OC does indeed draw more power than its competitors, this failed to translate into a higher GPU Boost. Effectively, the lead it held in raw core clock speed was eroded by the better GPU boost scores the other cards were achieving. In the end, Gigabyte's raw basic performance still held the lead but we reckon that it could easily have managed even better results with a more elastic upper-end GPU boost clock.

Unfortunately, the massive cooler with its quintuple fan cooling system may have also hurt Gigabyte's scores due to its presumably high power requirements, leaving less overhead for GPU boost performance, which led to its lackluster performance scores. This may also be the reason why its overclocking potential was only slightly better than MSI's.

Overall, if you're looking for the best single-GPU out there, the Gigabyte GTX 680 Windforce 5X Super OC must certainly be considered. Its huge size and quintuple fan design also gives it a unique and intimidating appearance for those that like to show off their rig. However, at S$845, it's quite a bit more expensive than other GTX 680 cards for a fairly insignificant performance gain. Its massive size and weight also rules out SLI configurations for most people, and extra care will need to be taken when installing it in your case. Truly, the Gigabyte GTX 680 Windforce 5X Super OC is a niche card and would perhaps be best tamed by those who've the patience and know-how to coax even more out of the card by BIOS modding or other unconventional tweaks.

If you're after pure performance and don't game at resolutions higher than 1920 x 1080 pixels, for as little as S$33 more than the Gigabyte GTX 680, we would recommend a pair of GeForce GTX 660 Ti in 2-way SLI configuration instead, which will provide you with much better performance.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.