A Closer Look

The ASUS heatsink is relatively simple, using three heatpipes that make direct contact with the GPU's surface for maximum heat transfer.


Once the main cooler is removed, you can see a small secondary heatsink, which cools the VRM circuitry.


Power delivery requires two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors. This configuration is specified for up to 225 W power draw.


ASUS is using their own rebranded voltage controller, which probably supports voltage control and monitoring through ASUS software.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Elpida and carry the model number W4032BABG-60-F. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


AMD's Tonga graphics processor is produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC, Taiwan, with roughly 5 billion transistors. I measured its die size to be 17.5 x 20.9 mm = 366 mm², which makes the GPU bigger than Tahiti and, most probably, more expensive to produce.