KFA2 Geforce GTX680 EX OC review

KFA2 box art is very appealing and different. If you don't buy their hardware then a group of ‘hoodies' will be paying a visit. Yes, its dramatic license.

The bundle contains literature on the product, including an installation guide. They supply a software disc and several video converters. According to the Overclockers store page, they also bundle an Nvidia GPU Keyring, although our sample box didn't contain this for the shot above.

The KFA2 GTX 680 is built around a blue PCB with a silver and black dual fan cooler taking centerstage.

‘GTX 600 Series' is highlighted at the far end of the cooler in blue print.

The GTX680 is SLI capable in 2,3 and 4 way configurations. If you want a quad configuration of these cards then be prepared to pay close to £2,000.

The reference design GTX680 takes power from two 6 pin PCI E power connectors. The KFA2 GTX680 EX OC swaps out one of the 6 pin connectors for an 8 pin connector. We will look at the power demand later in the review.

The card has ports for two DVI connectors, dual link. There is also a full sized HDMI port (1.4a compatible) and a full sized DisplayPort connector. You can use all of the outputs at the same time meaning that Nvidia are finally competitive with AMD.

We are glad we removed the cooler before testing as the GPU core was covered with excessive thermal paste. We cleaned the core and applied some high grade Noctua thermal paste.

The cooler is removed with only four screws around the GPU. The cooler is hefty, based around a copper core. There are four thick heatpipes leading into two separate racks of aluminum fins. KFA2 have designed this PCB to accept two fan headers from either fan, rather than run them together into a single header. The board uses high quality Hynix GDDR5 memory, model H5GQ2H24MFR rated to run at 1,500mhz (6,000mhz effective).

A GPUz overview of the hardware. This card runs faster, with the core clocked @ 1110mhz (1111mhz according to GPUz). Memory is set to 1,500mhz (6Gbps effective). Boost speed is set to a maximum of 1176mhz. This GTX680 has 2GB of memory which is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. KFA2 also make a 4GB version of this card, but it is considerably more expensive.

Become a Patron!