ZOTAC GeForce GTX 680 Extreme Edition Pictured

[btarunr]

ZOTAC is flexing its engineering muscle. First, it was talk of a 2 GHz GeForce GTX 680 by one of its senior executives, and now this, ZOTAC GeForce GTX 680 Extreme Edition. Pictured below, the card's design is reminiscent of the crazy engineering endeavors ZOTAC China undertakes, to come up with some extremely powerful designs, which seldom get out of the APAC region (to EMEAI and NA regions).

ZOTAC took a top-tier binned GK104 GPU, 2 GB of high-grade Hynix GDDR5 memory chips, and paired them with a 12-phase VRM power supply. Apart from bleeding-edge International Rectifier GaNpowIR driver-MOSFETs, the VRM uses server-grade tantalum capacitors, and FPCAP multi-phase capacitors. To drive it all, ZOTAC used CHiL CHL8318 VRM controller.



Apart from consolidated voltage measurement points, the card also features a special native logic that takes input from a USB control module. Called OC+, ZOTAC will bundle the card with a front-panel OC module that probably fits into a 5.25" or 3.5" exposed drive bay, gives you hardware control, and real-time diagnostic information about clock speeds, fan speeds, and voltages. The card ships with a swanky-looking air-cooler, which uses two fans to ventilate a dense aluminum fin array, which draws heat using copper heat pipes.

ZOTAC claims world-records will be set, and broken, using this card, although it did not give out details of its out-of-the-box clock speeds.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[INSTG8R]

Well it may not hit 2Ghz but it's certainly got some beefy parts that should make for some pretty good overclocks.

 

[Scatler]

Well damn, this thing sure looks like a beast to me. 6+8 power, how much tdp this thing has now?

 

[DarkOCean]

Well damn, this thing sure looks like a beast to me. 6+8 power, how much tdp this thing has now?

Tdp is not measured by how many power conectors a card has, they are there for increased oc limits and safety.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Well damn, this thing sure looks like a beast to me. 6+8 power, how much tdp this thing has now?

Well id think its still 195. The 6+8 power just allows for more power overhead for overclocks.

 

[babash*t]

The smaller companies are where to look for beautiful cards(zotac n palit) if I were to switch sides completely to nvidia, I take this(or the palit jetstream) over anything gigabyte/asus...just by aesthetics alone

 

[JATownes]

This has some amazing components on it...and on top of that I think that has to be the sweetest looking cooler I have seen in a VERY long time.

 

[1c3d0g]

LOVE the "industrial" looks of this card! Seems to be pretty hardcore too, with the server-grade components and all, which is awesome for those of us running BOINC/Folding@Home 24/7 on their GPU's.

 

[sanadanosa]

this card looks amazing

 

[hhumas]

amazing this front panel is kind of sexy

 

[adulaamin]

Awesome looks and awesome components... I hope our dear leader gets one for review...

 

[theonedub]

Its as if they beat MSI to creating a 'Lightning' class of card. Well done, Zotac.

 

[Ikaruga]

Looks like a very nice and clean card. You can tell it was designed with passion and care.
(Except the fans, and I'm a bit worried about the noise output of those tbh.)

 

[WhoDecidedThat]

Give it more memory bandwidth! And give us the GK110/GK100 with 4 GB of 512-bit wide memory!

 

[micropage7]

its interesting how they add more pcb area on the top of it and it makes the card looks pretty extreme,
i guess we need some benchmark to figure it out

 

[SetsunaFZero]

this card is begging to be overclocked O___O

 

[LifeOnMars]

Card looks fugly to myself but I'm interested to see how far people can clock these

 

[sic_doni]

seems like MSI Lighting board

 

[Hayder_Master]

i can't expect 2Ghz GPU core speed, but i hope

 

[WhoDecidedThat]

Edit your post bta!

Dear Mr. Kwai,

Yesterday we sent out a memo which inadvertently stated 2Ghz rather than the intended value 1.2Ghz for the overclocked GTX 680 speed. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Sincerely,
Zotac Engineering

 

[N3M3515]

Edit your post bta!

Ha! i knew it!

 

[m1dg3t]

Interesting design, i don't understand the purpose of the board layout and think it may actually cause some installation problem's in certain system's. Nice to see implementation of better component's

 

[Steven B]

it has IR powerstages too! that Chil PWm is a pure 8+0 phase PWM, and i guess they are using 4 phase for memory power? That is an expensive VRM, so gorgeous.

 

[TheGuruStud]

high binned or not, it's not like it's going to OC amazing without extreme cooling

 

[NHKS]

More pics of the card here