A Closer Look

ASUS has done away with cheap NVIDIA's reference design cooler and implemented their highly successful DirectCu cooling solution. We see three heatipes, two of which are double the length, that connect all sections of the heatsink with the GPU core.


Once the main heatsink is removed you can see that the voltage regulation circuitry has its own dedicated heatsink which ensures those components stay cool. Please also note that the metal backplate provides a foam cushioned area on the right side for the main cooler to rest on, to improve its stability.


The card requires two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors. This configuration is good for up to 225 W of power draw. Below the power connectors you can see a metal tab sticking out, looks like someone forgot to put a screw there. To the bottom left of it you see a black metal piece, which this makes it a bit more difficult to unplug the cables, but it's no big deal.


For voltage control the card uses a rebranded CHiL 8318. It offers extensive software voltage control and monitoring features, but is quite new, so support in overclocking software is limited. ASUS' own VGA software supports it of course, the maximum voltage is 1.175 V. It's the same controller as on the GTX 680 Direct CU II.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ2H24AFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


NVIDIA's new GK104 graphics processor introduces the company's brand-new Kepler architecture. It is NVIDIA's first chip to be produced on a 28 nanometer process, at TSMC Taiwan. The transistor count is 3.54 billion.