GIGABYTE GV-N680OC-4GD GeForce GTX 680 4GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Pros: I am thoroughly impressed with the performance this card has to offer.

I put it to the test with Skyrim and close to 200 mods running with most, if not all High Res Texture packs out there (punish your machine editions).

I am also using an ENB, K ENB to be exact. I find this to be the most punishing for performance but easily the most beautiful looking ENB for Skyrim, in my opinion.

Outdoors with heavy action (civil war style battle mod) I am sitting at no less than 30fps. I sit between 31.5-38fps outdoors and 50fps indoors.

With my previous card (Sapphire 7870 HD) I would sit at 22-25fps outdoors and drop to 12-17 with the same civil war mod action on screen.

Cons: Price, I guess... If you're on a strict budget.

Other Thoughts: I am running the card single with:

i5 2500k cpu
8GB Ram
SSD (Skyrim located on SSD)

Pros: loved it for BF3 and other games will play with ultra settings, Cool even under load and when I get the card back I would love to see how it runs in SLI mode as this is reason I bought two of these cards.

Cons: Price, size (need a very large case and Mobo to fit side by side. I listed it as owning for 1month-1yr but the truth is I had it for 34 days and now it's Dead!!! Real disappointing as I wanted to run SLI and I have had one already and it is running great but this one is just over 30days by a few days (3) and now it’s dead. So now I will have to dread the RMA process and send the card out for replacement or repair and we really know how fun that is. I just want to say that a price as steep as this is I would have hoped for a better time frame on a card going out but let’s be fair as far as Nivida goes this is the first one that has failed on me so I really should not to mad other than spending a lot of cash and having to send it back.

Other Thoughts: I wish I had the ability to do water cooling on this card but I can't find a model that will work with a non ref. design.

Pros: - 4GB of memory will give you an amazing experience with extremely high resolutions (read: 2560x1600 or multi-monitor gaming)
I upgraded from 2 GTX 280's in SLI to this card. (Running on a 30" Dell Ultrasharp - 2560x1600 resolution) I'm literally seeing 3-4 times more fps in games and running them at higher (actually maximum now) settings. Check 'other thoughts' for a little more on the memory.
- Despite the enourmous increase in perforance, this card uses about 30 watts less power then just one of my 280's and produces significantly less heat. Imagine coming from 2!
- The cooling design used not only keeps temps down but even under full load this card is QUIET. It actually produces less noise under load then one of my old cards did idle. Kudos to Gigabyte with this cooling solution.
- While you can look up plenty of benchmarks yourself, this is how I look at the performance of this card: (keep in mind the 1600p resolution; 4x AA)
Skyrim, max settings, high-res texture pack - Never drops below 60fps.
CS:GO, max settings - Never drops below 150fps.
DayZ, max settings - Never drops below 60fps.
BFBC2, max settings - Never drops below 60fps.
Fallout New Vegas, max settings - Never drops below 70fps
Metro2033, max settings - The only game I've tried so far that challenged this card. FPS still stayed above 45 at all times which is about 40fps more then my last setup at these settings!

This list could go on and on and the results would be the same. For a single card/single GPU solution it's incredible what it can do. I'm yet to experience anything close to choppy or laggy game play because of a GPU that can't render fast enough or the lack of available memory in the GPU causing constant swaps of texture files.

Cons: - There's only one con to this beast of a video card and it's size. The card not only takes up 3 slots but it is extremely long and fairly heavy.
Don't even consider a mid-tower. I have all but an extra inch of clearance from the hard drive bays in an Antec 1200 full tower and I never thought I'd see a day where that case felt tight.
Because of its length, pick up the card from both ends when removing it from the box. You'll see why that's a smart move once you do.

Other Thoughts: Please make a note that the 4GB of memory plays a huge part once you blow past that 1080p zone. And two 2GB cards in SLI do NOT equal 4GB of available memory; it's still 2GB. The world of GPU memory is one of the few places where 2+2 ='s 2. And 2GB just won't cut it for this scenario.
Another thing is that this card did not pair nicely with a Q6600. Even with an OC I found that quite a few games held this card back because of that processor. (So obviously anything slower would be worse.) After a few quick tests before pairing it with an i7, it's like night and day. I would consider an upgrade to an i5/i7 or AMD equivalent if you're purchasing this video card. I take that back. Please pair this video card with a processor that won't hamstring it!

Best advise I can give you here is if you're at 1080p or lower, get a single 2GB version of this card and spend the money on more memory or a better CPU. It'll be more then enough and be just as much of a pleasure to own. If you are an ultra high-res/multi-monitor user (and want the best gaming experience you can get at this price range) follow these 3 steps:
1. Get this card.
2. Install this card.
3. Giggle like a little kid the first time you play one of your favorite games.

This GPU is the most expensive piece of hardware I've ever purchased to stick in a PC in my entire life. But you know what?
Worth
Every
Penny.

Pros: Very nice card, very well constructed. This card is also very silent and stays cool. 27c to 29c idle and the highest I saw when I was playing BF3 maxed out was 49c. And the 4gb will come in handy one day

Cons: I think a con would be the size for some people a little big and would be a tight fit for some cases but I have mine on a test bench

Other Thoughts: Buy this card it is amazing you won't be disappointed

Pros: runs everything on 3 1080p monitors maxed out...will CS6 as well...very cool under load... sould be able to game for at least 5 years with just 1 of these cards

Cons: takes 3 slots....very hard to sli 2 of them and cant run 3 way sli with cutting the i/o plate

Pros: If I had the money I would of bought a 690 but heck this card is awesome. You wouldn't need a 690 for what this card does/ On my monitor it makes everything look crisp, clear and life like. All the time I found myself doing double takes because I think I'm actually there in my gamming or watching films. Maybe down the road I'll buy another for SLI configuration but no need for it right now. Glad I got this on a promo with a 30$ mail in rebate. The pictures on Newegg also doesn't give this 680 enough credit. When I received it came in a nice box and package very well. The 680 was inside an ESD bad, another plus! When I took it out of the bag and held it to the light it gave off sparkles. I swear I was holding a diamond. The fans on this thing are so quite and the temp stays around 20 Celsius. This graphics card was worth every penny.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: My PC:
1 x WD Black WD5003AZEX
Corsair M65 Gaming Mouse
Cooler Master Storm Trigger keyboard
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional
RAID 0 Samsung 840 Pro SSD’s 500GB
Rosewill 40-in-1 Card Reader
ASUS PA248Q Monitor
LG UH12NS29 Combo Drive
Zalman CNPS9500A CPU Cooler
AMD FX-8350
GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD7
GIGABYTE GV-N680Oc-4GD
Corsair AX1200i
G. Skill Ripjaws X Series 32 GB
Linksys E2500
Rosewill THOR ATX Full Tower Case
Monster HDMI Cable
BOSE Companion 2 Series Speakers

Pros: IT's a good graphics card. Plenty of fans; once you snap it in it won't move (like some graphic cards), that's a plus to me.

Cons: It's huge and I had trouble fitting it in. Probably won't be able to run dual video cards.

Other Thoughts: This was my first computer build in 5 years, so if all graphic cards are this big, it won't be a fair con.

Also, if you want to do dual set up you'll need a large tower (not medium) do to it's massive size.

Pros: This card... I went from a 5970 hemlock to this beast and the difference has been great. I went to nVidia this time around to see what was so great about CUDA because one of my customers told me about abode after effects would work better than Sony Vegas 12. This difference was amazing in all sorts of way. Combined with 32gb of ram this card renders video like a monster and runs cool n' quiet.

Cons: There are a few cons. For one, the price. I could've gone out and bought 2 7870's or even 2 660 ti's for this price. And they may have performed much better than this card. It's a shame that there are cheaper version that don't come with as much ram but thats the way it is. 4gb is still a ton of ram and I couldn't be happier.

Other Thoughts: This card worked out great in my system. Despite being an ATI fan all my life nVidia has made a promising effect on my business, life, and even gaming from time to time. Thank you nVidia, and gigabyte.

Pros: Sleek design, quiet, excellent temps and great performance. Everything you'd expect from a GTX680.

Cons: Randomly I get driver crashes with this card (no overclocking beyond what the card shipped as). Never got any with my previous card (a GTX670). After doing some research I suspect I've got a lemon, unfortunately I didn't follow up with Newegg within 30 days of the order (totally my fault) so now I'm dealing with Gigabyte support. Not impressed with them so far, not sure I'd recommend another Gigabyte card, wish I'd gone with another vendor.

Pros: Very fast, coming from two 6950's crossifire with horrible drivers.

Cons: Absolutely None

Other Thoughts: 3dmark 11 gave a higher score with my old setup 2x hd6950s
But this card is a much better experience and does not barely stutter.

Maybe its not all about frame rate, how about a good experience
Set to ultra and play. Thanks you!