Zotac GTX 680 Extreme Edition to be clocked at 1.2GHz

Although speculation suggested Zotac would be making a 2GHz GTX 680, even the most tech savvy of readers would of realised that was a highly unlikely stable core speed to retail a card at. And here we are, the Zotac GTX 680 Extreme Edition has been shown off in China by Expreview and apparently the card comes with an out of the box clock speed of 1.2GHz up from 1006MHz stock. The memory retains a stock 6GHz configuration. The GPU core voltage used to maintain this 1.2GHz core clock is 1.212V although Zotac maintains the card can support up to a huge 1.5V on the core. Zotac also claimed that 2GHz might be possible providing you have extreme cooling (i.e. LN2) and a very good GTX 680 chip.

In addition to the expected strong VRM design which protrudes the top of the card Zotac has also included a whole number of other features for this overclocking rich graphics card, they include:

• Voltage measurement points
• An “Extreme Cooling Optimised” BIOS
• VRM-Specific cooling in addition to the dual fan card cooler
• USB overclock connection.

It seems Zotac is going with a USB overclock connection instead of using an overclock module. The USB connection on the Zotac GTX 680 plugs directly into the motherboard and the provided “Firestorm OC” software then allows you to tune and tweak your GTX 680 through that USB connection. The reason for this is Nvidia’s drivers have limitations which could get in the way of overclocking so by routing past the operating system directly to the card the end user is able to escape any potential restrictions, although this means you are more likely to damage your card.

Source: Expreview