KFA2 GTX 680 EX OC 2GB Graphics Card Review
Andy Ruffell / 12 years ago
The GTX 680 EX OC is certainly one of the better looking cards we’ve had through our labs, with KFA2 deciding to take a more professional design and style with a twin fan cooling solution with a black and silver shrouding around it.
The card includes a few blue accents to compliment the blue PCB including some GTX 600 series lettering which glows an attractive blue colour which pulsates when the card is in use.
The bulk of the cooler is taken up by two KFA2 branded fans with smoked translucent blades that sit over the top of the aluminium heatsink which includes four heatpipes which pass through the base plate to best dissipate heat.
With KFA2 being part of Galaxy, as they are known outside of the UK, it was quite interesting to see a Galaxy logo upon the top of the card, though we can only assume with this being a production sample, this may not be the way the final product looks.
A stock, reference GTX 680 comes with two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors, though the KFA2 EX OC edition comes with a single 6-pin while the other 6-pin gets traded in for an 8-pin connector to give some extra juice to this factory overclocked card.
Moving along the top of the card, we find a total of two SLI bridge connectors for those wanting to utilise up to 4-way SLI for some extreme performance, though for the most part, this can work out very pricey and may cost you your marriage.
Lastly, taking a look at the rear I/O of the graphics card, and we find a typical reference layout when it comes to the connectors with a full-size DisplayPort connector, HDMI, and two DVI ports, of which one is DVI-I while the other is DVI-D.
Taking a look at GPU-Z to see how things compare against a reference GTX 680, we can see that the GPU clock has been increased from 1006MHz to 1110MHz though GPU-Z reports 1111MHz, while the memory speed has remained the same at 1502MHz (6Gbps Effective).
Due to the GPU clock speed being increased, we also find that the boost speed has increased alongside it from 1059MHz to 1176MHz. Other specifications remain the same with a 28nm GK104 GPU at the heart of the card, utilising 2GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256 Bit memory interface. In terms of memory, a 4GB model of this card is also available, but expect to pay an even higher price for this added amount of GDDR5.
