Graphics GTX 680 watercooled.. was it worth it for you?

For those of you running liquid cooled 680, was it worth it in terms of overclocking?

We know the temperature benefits brought by liquid cooling, that doesn't automatically guarantee increased overclock over air though.

The Zotac 680 I have will OC to 1285 core and 500mhz on vram on air. I generally detest air cooling so in general I would buy a waterblock when one is available. 680 has no problem in that area. EK have the blocks. I could quite happily run my zotac on air without overclock. BF3 on ultra at 1080 seems to run fine. What I need to do is measure the performance increase in game between default 680 speed versus the 1285 + 500mhz I can get overclocked. If the difference is small, why bother OCing? I realise GPU OCing is generally limited compared to CPU but I am evaluating the situation. I would probably get a full cover block purely because I like having low temps but I am interested to hear your experiences and gains running liquid cooled 680?

 

1400 clock stable and 750 on ram

Using ek blocks

400+ above stock guess I got lucky on card

 

That was furmark stable 0 artifects

Enough the cards will be declocked to stock

Till a game warrants the extra speed

 

Which brand?

 

Due to been in sli could not push on air no was I willing

Hit 1150 and + 300 on mem that was furmark stable also

 

Evga feathers don't buy another brand

 

Do you mean the furmark that comes with EVGA OC scanner?

 

Too late for that. Only 1 shop in the UK had 680 last week and EVGA wasn't in stock.

 

No furmark as in furmark itself with prime 95 loop also as I stress the entire system

Did not know evga scanner had a version lol

For me yes even before overclocking as the temps are 40c under load under water so I'm pretty happy

 

Well just a bit concerned cos the EVGA scanner version is crap. I mean it loads the GPU fine (unlike Heaven 3) and shows "artifacts". It doesn't show if your GPU overclock is stable. I had it running for sometime on OC scanner test and showed no artifact errors. Run Heaven 3 or any game and the overclock would crash after some minutes. Problem is Heaven doesn't load the GPU properly. Kombustor does.

I have gone back to MSI Kombustor in DX11 for testing.

 

Have played bf3 64 multi for 6 hrs at those settings for actual game testing never been a fan of these benchmarks

But I'd consider it stable and I still test CPU overclocked in 24 hr

And my system is still on at those settings now

Played Diablo 3 beta
Star wars tor
Dungeun defenders
Fable 3
Crysis 2

So quiet a wide range of games since I set it up

 

Does msi combustor support none msi gpus?

If so I can install and run it

 

Yeah it's just a rebranded version of Furmark

 

You don't need waterblocks for the 680's. Obviously they pretty much cut temps in half, but they don't seem to effect overclocking potential and the stock coolers aren't loud.

Rollo, can you please post some benchmarks with 1400mhz on the core. I'm thinking 3Dmark11, Heaven etc. Cheers.

 

Sure once I'm home been on phone responding to this topic lol

 

I am thinking the same. Have just been playing BF3 64 player 1080 at 1260mhz core + 500mhz vram and I can't really see much difference. I think come the day a GPU overclocks 1ghz+ like a cpu then we will start to see some real improvements.

On default speed my Zotac is very quiet in game. Not keen on air temps compared to water but nevertheless I question whether there is any significant gain in performance overclocking the 680.

 

Found a link to somebody hitting 1400 on air lol

Kingpin forums

Can't copy and paste on phone

 

Yeh, tbh unless you have cash burning a hole in your pocket then I wouldn't recommend it.

 

Yeh that's kingpin. I posted the link in another thread.