Introduction

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680 was introduced just weeks ago and has taken the enthusiast market by storm. It offers great performance at significantly reduced power consumption. NVIDIA's dynamic overclocking algorithm works well and provides a nice speed boost for the card. We are now seeing the first custom GTX 680 board designs pop up, the ASUS GTX 680 Direct CU II is the first to reach our labs.



ASUS has chosen to go triple slot with their GTX 680 Direct CU II TOP. The triple slot DirectCU concept has been introduced a while ago and has been very successful with users who have large cases and want to focus on better thermal performance and reduced noise levels.

In addition to the new cooling solution, ASUS has increased the clock speeds of the card significantly. Base clock is now at 1058 MHz, and the card will ramp up to 1280 MHz when conditions allow. Pricing is increased by a reasonable amount, ASUS is asking $520 for their card.

Packaging

Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Driver CD (not pictured) + Documentation
• Long SLI Bridge
• PCI-E power cable

The Card

ASUS is using their famous Direct CU cooler on their card. We have seen this design on my other cards from the company. Total length of the card (including the cooler) is 30 cm.


The back of the card is covered by a protective foil, which can't be easily removed due to it being stuck below the slot metal piece. ASUS has informed us that this will be fixed in the retail version of the card.


The card requires three slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include two DVI ports, one full size HDMI port and one full size DisplayPort. You may use all the outputs at the same time, thanks to NVIDIA Kepler's new display output controller.

An HDMI sound device is included in the GPU, too. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible which includes HD audio and support for Blu-ray 3D movies. The DisplayPort outputs are version 1.2 which enables the use of hubs and Multi-Stream transport.


You may combine up to four GTX 680 cards from any vendor in a multi-GPU SLI configuration for higher framerates or better image quality settings.


Pictured above are photos of the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc., please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.