The Hydro Copper 16 is an overclocked and water cooled GeForce GTX 280 card partly named by the large copper block that replaced reference cooling. Water cooling is the most efficient way to cool the GPU chip, and we all know that appropriate cooling will lengthen your card's life. However, due to complexity of production water cooling isn't at all cheap, so water cooled cards were always something special. The EVGA Hydro Copper 16 isn't an exception to that rule, as it costs $629. Since a water block for the GeForce GTX 280 will set you back $125, and the Hydro Copper 16's price is not too high compared to their EVGA e-GeForce GTX 280 FTW version card with reference cooling. - FudZilla

EVGA GeForce GTX 280 Hydro Copper Board Review

The FTW edition card is overclocked to 670MHz and priced at $519. If this is all too much for you EVGA also offers reference GeForce GTX 280 at $44. On their Hydro Copper 16 card however, EVGA guarantees stability up to 691MHz. So what we have with the Hydro Copper is a core which is overclocked by 89MHz, memory by 216MHz and the shaders are up from 1296MHz to 1458MHz speed. The GeForce GTX 280 board has a full 1GB frame buffer using 512-bit memory interface, coupled with fast GDDR3 memory running at 2214MHz, though EVGA is running it all the way up to 2430MHz effective memory clock speed.

The GT200 chip, the heart of the GeForce GTX 200 series is built in 65nm, packs 240 stream processors and is the largest chip NVIDIA has ever made. Compared to the last generation, the GT200 brings more threads, stream processors, better shading and texturing, more memory and memory bandwidth. Let us remind you that the last generation of cards had 128 stream processors so the current number of 240 stream processors on the GeForce GTX 280 speaks for itself. The card features PCI Express 2.0 interface and PhysX acceleration. Also CUDA is also supported, and its purpose is to communicate with the GPU data.

The Hydro Copper 16 is a dual slot design, and just like the reference cards, it features two power connectors at the end of the card. You'll need one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connector to power this card, as two 6-pin connectors won't do the trick. The water block is elongated in order to touch the heatsink on top of the PCB. These two components aren't physically connected but rather linked with thermal paste. The heatpipe is a bit hidden from view, both from the front and the back. The block features water valves located on top, in order to enable hassle free chaining of one or two more Hydro Copper 16 cards in SLI mode.

The GeForce GTX 280 is the fastest single GPU card and EVGA most certainly pushed it even further with their overclocking. In order to make sure your card lasts for a long time, EVGA decided that water cooling is the way to go. So, they've made their own water block design made of pure copper, but also a bit heavy. The card is not heavy enough to damage your PCI Express slot, but you should still make sure it's screwed to the case nice and tightly. The water block is designed to also enable additional cards in SLI or 3-way SLI mode, once the cards get cheaper or we start getting better deals on two or three cards.

Priced at $629 this card is not the cheapest of the lot, but it will be the quietest and probably longer lasting. EVGA carefully picks the best cores to use on their top models, so we were able to overclock this beast all the way up to 740MHz for the GPU whereas EVGA guarantees stable operation up to 691MHz speed. The GeForce GTX 280 has other nice features such as PhysX and CUDA support. These features are also available to other G80 and G92 owners, but the sheer strength of the GeForce GTX 280 will make this the best choice. And that is simply due to more raw power and a greater memory interface.

You'll have 240 stream processors at your disposal, capable to handle anything you may dish out at your GeForce GTX 280. The overclocked EVGA e-GeForce GTX 280 Hydro Copper card version will provide even more raw power, and we sincerely recommend it because, although it's pricey its performance is simply excellent.