I came from an XFX 7970 Black Edition because at the time of building my rig (April 2012) the GTX 680's were all sold out everywhere. I "settled" for the 7970 and was perfectly content for the first couple of months. It maxed everything out and ran flawlessly. Then the card died on me, and after about 2 months of dealing with XFX and 4 RMA's later I'm eating the bullet and just switching over to this 680. Amazon had this on sale for $399 so that was a STEAL at $70 off the retail price.
PROS:
This card legitimately maxes everything out. Games that I could max settings on my 7970 run on average 10-15fps higher with this GTX 680. Metro 2033 with ALL settings up runs smoothly now. Crysis 2 with DX11 and High Res packs is nothing for this card. BF3 was beyond smooth on my 7970, so this 680 is overkill. Those are the 3 most demanding games that I have that I can think of.
The design of the card is beautiful as well. I loved the design of it. People complaining about the size of the card just boggle me. What were you actually expecting? The covers for the DVI ports and the SLI port that you're not using is a nice little touch too.
It overclocked pretty well for a reference card with a blower style cooler. +150 on the GPU clock and +455 on the memory clock. And after about 3-5 hours of gaming last night the card didn't go over 75'C in my Coolermaster 922.
The drivers, my God the drivers. I LOVE that I have the latest and most stable drivers from Nvidia. No more having to deal with ATI. I never really understood the whole war on ATI's drivers until I finally left their camp for Nvidia and realized that these drivers improve game performance more dramatically, routinely, and most importantly more often. The EVGA Precision X Software is very intuitive and I preferred that to MSI Afterburner. That came bundled with the disc.
This card uses less power than my 7970, overclocks and performs better overall, is quieter, and I bought it for $100 cheaper than I got my 7970. At $500 I would have hesitated to buy this and just get the GTX 670, but at $400 that puts a flagship GPU under the price of the step down model.
Cons:
I seriously am trying to think of a con right now and can only think of one: It doesn't come with an SLI bridge. I don't understand why GPU manufacturers expect the MOBO mfr's to include this with THEIR products, so I don't get it. Build:
EVGA GTX 680
AMD FX 6200 (4.4GHZ) w/ Coolermaster 212 Hyper Evo Cooler
Coolermaster 922 HAF case w/ 4 fans
Corsair HX850 PSU
Corsair Vengeance 8GB Ram (1600mhz)
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX
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