ASUS GTX 780 Ti DirectCU II OC 3 GB Review

Name: ASUS GTX 780 Ti DirectCU II OC 3 GB
Brand: ASUS

W1zzard

on Dec 30th, 2013,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: ASUS

(22 Comments) »

Introduction

NVIDIA's latest addition to their lineup is the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. Built around a fully unlocked GK110 Kepler GPU, it comes with 2880 shaders, which boosts the card's performance beyond that of the GTX Titan. Unlike the GTX Titan, which has 6 GB, the GTX 780 Ti comes with 3 GB, but that difference won't have an effect on even the latest titles.

The GeForce GTX 780 Ti is designed to be a gamer's card throughout. It has all the muscle any game could possibly need and has another thing going its way: better thermals. Despite the "GK110" featuring more transistors than "Hawaii" (7.08 billion vs. 6.20 billion) and, hence, a bigger die (561 mm² vs. 438 mm²), GK110-based products are inherently cooler because of higher "Kepler" micro-architecture performance-per-watt figures than AMD's "Graphics CoreNext," which translates into lower thermal density and, in turn, lower temperatures and less noise. Energy efficiency and fan noise are really the only tethers NVIDIA's high-end pricing is holding on to.

ASUS not only revamped the GTX 780 Ti board design, but also placed the latest variant of their dual-fan DirectCU cooler on the card. The ASUS GTX 780 Ti DirectCU II is also overclocked to a base clock of 954 MHz out of the box, which is a good increase over stock, but not the highest we've seen on custom GTX 780 Ti cards.

At $730, Asus's card is priced just a little bit higher than the reference design, which makes it an interesting option compared to a pure reference design card, while still being cheaper than more expensive custom variants.

GeForce GTX 780 Ti Market Segment Analysis
	GeForce GTX 680	GeForce GTX 780	Radeon R9 290	Radeon R9 290X	Radeon HD 7990	GeForce GTX Titan	GeForce GTX 780 Ti	ASUS GTX 780 Ti DC II OC	GeForce GTX 690
Shader Units	1536	2304	2560	2816	2x 2048	2688	2880	2880	2x 1536
ROPs	32	48	64	64	2x 32	48	48	48	2x 32
Graphics Processor	GK104	GK110	Hawaii	Hawaii	2x Tahiti	GK110	GK110	GK110	2x GK104
Transistors	3500M	7100M	6200M	6200M	2x 4310M	7100M	7100M	7100M	2x 3500M
Memory Size	2048 MB	3072 MB	4096 MB	4096 MB	2x 3072 MB	6144 MB	3072 MB	3072 MB	2x 2048 MB
Memory Bus Width	256 bit	384 bit	512 bit	512 bit	2x 384 bit	384 bit	384 bit	384 bit	2x 256 bit
Core Clock	1006 MHz+	863 MHz+	947 MHz	1000 MHz	1000 MHz	837 MHz+	876 MHz+	954 MHz+	915 MHz+
Memory Clock	1502 MHz	1502 MHz	1250 MHz	1250 MHz	1500 MHz	1502 MHz	1750 MHz	1750 MHz	1502 MHz
Price	$390	$500	$500	$600	$770	$1000	$700	$730	$1000

Packaging

You will receive:

Graphics card
Driver CD + documentation
PCI-Express power cable
Stickers in red and gold to match your color theme

The Card

The ASUS GTX 780 Ti DC II OC comes in a singular color, black, but you can customize its look by using either the red or golden stickers that are included in the box. I personally like its clean black cooler, but these stickers basically give you three different color choices. Dimensions of the card are 29 x 15 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include two DVI ports, one DisplayPort, and one HDMI port. You may use all outputs at the same time, so triple-monitor surround gaming is possible with one card.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support.

Two SLI connectors let you combine up to four GTX 780 Ti cards in a multi-GPU SLI configuration. Note how its SLI fingers are place higher on the card than is normally the case, so there are no clearance issues due to the taller DirectCU cooler.