A Closer Look

The ASUS Direct CU II cooler uses three heatpipes, two of which are twice as long as the others, to cool the card.


A small heatsink sits on the VRM circuitry.


The metal backplate protects the card against accidental damage during handling and makes it look like a much more complete product.


The card requires one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCI-Express power cable for operation. This power configuration is good for up to 300 W of power draw.


ASUS is using a different voltage controller than the reference design. Since it has been rebranded, we are not exactly sure what model it is, but it looks like one from uPI.


On the back of the card, ASUS has placed three solder points for measuring and voltmodding.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Samsung and carry the model number K4G20325FD-FC28. They are specified to run at 1750 MHz (7000 MHz GDDR5 effective). Please note that this is the first time that 7 Gbps GDDR5 chips are used on a graphics card.


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