ASUS has taken the already great NVIDIA GTX 680 reference design and put some work into improving it. The company is a leader in triple slot cooling solutions, so it is only natural that releasing a GTX 680 Direct CU II was one of their top priorities. A triple slot cooler promises lower temperatures, lower noise and better overclocking at the cost of increased space consumption and potential issues with multi-GPU configurations.
I am happy to report that the GTX 680 DC II TOP is a worthy successor to the GTX 580 Direct CU II. The card offers 7% increased real-life performance over the NVIDIA GTX 680 reference design, thanks to a healthy overclock out of the box. Manual overclocking worked well, we got an extra 50 MHz out of the card compared to the reference design. Memory overclocking wasn't impressive, but still reached over 1750 MHz.
Temperatures are super low, which provides an additional small speed boost, as NVIDIA's dynamic overclocking algorithm takes into account temperatures. Fan noise in idle is very low too, under load the card is quieter than the NVIDIA reference design, but to be honest I expected a bit more. For me the unique selling point of a triple slot design is the reduced noise potential - everybody can do low temperatures with a noisy dual slot design, but low temperatures and low noise is a challenge. Given the temperatures we've seen on the GTX 680 DC II TOP, it would be safe in my opinion to allow higher temps in return for reduced fan noise. NVIDIA's dynamic OC reduces clock only at 70°C and 80°C. The DC II runs at 70°C under load already, so the next step would be at 80°C, which means there is a 10°C potential for noise reduction without affecting performance. Nevertheless, the ASUS GTX 680 DC II is one of the quietest high-end cards on the market today - paired with GTX 680 monster performance.
Price-wise ASUS is asking a $20 price increased over the NVIDIA reference design, which I find extremely reasonable. Taking into account our performance per Dollar figures, the performance increase from the overclock out of the box is worth more than $20 alone. On top of that you get an improved cooler, better overclocking and software voltage control. The only major drawback of this card is also what makes it unique. The large triple slot cooler might be too big for some cases, and users who want to run a multi-GPU setup will have to ensure the proper slot spacing on their motherboard. If you have no plans for SLI and are looking for a high-end card that goes beyond what NVIDIA's reference design offers, the ASUS GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II TOP must be on your short list.