The “Kepler” Rides Out.
admin | March 24th, 2012 - 1:41 amEnough Suspense, let us Examine the Fruit!
For those wanting to view further amd higher quality photos, The 680’s gallery can be viewed here.
Outer Packaging.
Zotac’s interpretation of the GTX 680 bears the vendor’s typcal, stylish black and gold livery and a highly tempting, albeit cliched slogan on the box.
Outer/inner packaging (like Russian Dolls?!)
It should be noted that Zotac offers an extended 5 year guarantee with their card, two years more than any rival manufacturer I’ve come across.
Inside the box.
Well, there is is. After such a long wait one could be forgiven for anticipating a radical departure from the norm in terms of physical appearance but here, the magic lies under the bonnet.
The card itself.
It was in 2006 that ATI first introduced the front intake fan as part of the stock cooling solution for their x1950. Nvidia swiftly followed suit and refined the design for the 8800gtx. Such vivid memories make its continued presence strangely reassuring. As an air cooling system in traditional ATX cases, it could still be said to work far more efficiently than any non-standard or after market alternative, including many of the dual fan solutions found on factory overclocked cards which tend to be louder and exhaust a large portion of hot air inside the case.
The combination of a “squirrel cage” type fan, a shroud that completely covers the card’s heat sink and a large vented area on the backplate has always been extremely effective in immediately drawing on cool air supplied by a case’s front intake fans whilst simultaneously “pushing” any hot air generated by the GPU and memory directly out of the case before it has the chance to rise inside it and heat up other components. Until we see fundamental alterations to motherboard or case designs, it’s difficult to imagine AMD or Nvidia will deviate from a system that “ain’t broke”.
Tags: 1920x1200, 2560x1600, 3.0, 680, 6990, AA, AF, amd, amps, cards, fermi, graphics, gtx680, hd, kepler, nvidia, pci-e, performance, review, speed, x16, zotac
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