Best Graphics Card On The Planet
Pros: Incredible Power, Low Noise, Beautifully Engineered
Cons: High Price
Although I bought my GTX 690 OEM since the cards are all essentially the same the EVGA card will serve as the subject of my review. When I set about building my new rig in November my initial intention was to keep as many components as possible from the old rig including the GPU - an XFX Radeon 7950 - but one by one they disappeared! The 7950 was a great card and achieved 37 FPS on Unigine Heaven benchmark but about this time an OEM GTX 690 appeared on Ebay from a reputable seller for £630 "Buy It Now". I knew that at that price it would quickly be sold if I hesitated so I did some money calculations, had a couple of stiff drinks and bought it. It came in a plain cardboard box and when I opened it - OMG - how beautiful is this thing? Nvidia spared no effort in making this card not only uber powerful but a piece of industrial art; there is virtually no plastic anywhere , just Trivalent Chrome plated metal.
As such it has a fair bit of weight to it and was supplied with an extender support bracket which I initially used but later removed, Bearing in mind that it is more powerful than the 7950 a nice feature is that it only obscures 2 PCI-E slots whereas the 7950 covered 3 slots.
It does get pretty toasty when running a benchmark such as Unigine Valley (80 degrees C!) or a game like Far Cry 3 but I have never had any instability issues.
Lastly I bought the EK Backplate which is advertised as "not a standalone unit" (ie it has to be used with an EK waterblock) but in fact it CAN be used without a waterblock - you need to buy six M2.5 X 7 screws though, as the supplied ones won't fit the native GTX 690 PCB.
I am pretty sure this GPU is a sound investment as in the 4 months I have had it, it has lost none of its value - I could sell it "used" for more than I paid for it new!
As such it has a fair bit of weight to it and was supplied with an extender support bracket which I initially used but later removed, Bearing in mind that it is more powerful than the 7950 a nice feature is that it only obscures 2 PCI-E slots whereas the 7950 covered 3 slots.
It does get pretty toasty when running a benchmark such as Unigine Valley (80 degrees C!) or a game like Far Cry 3 but I have never had any instability issues.
Lastly I bought the EK Backplate which is advertised as "not a standalone unit" (ie it has to be used with an EK waterblock) but in fact it CAN be used without a waterblock - you need to buy six M2.5 X 7 screws though, as the supplied ones won't fit the native GTX 690 PCB.
I am pretty sure this GPU is a sound investment as in the 4 months I have had it, it has lost none of its value - I could sell it "used" for more than I paid for it new!
