Technical Data / Specifications

With the ASUS GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II OC you get a card which features a custom PCB as well as a custom cooler. The ASIC quality measured on our sample was 80.4 % which is high considering the average being at 73 % on the cards we had at hands.
About ASIC quality:



ASUS' GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II OC is based on NVIDIA's massive Kepler GK110 chip, which is manufactured by TSMC using the latest 28 nanometer process technology. With the GeForce GTX 780 you get twelve SMX units which results in 2'304 CUDA cores. Following the specs further, there are 192 TMUs, 48 ROPs, a 384 bit wide memory interface and 3 Gigabyte of GDDR5 memory, which is clocked at 1'502 MHz (effective 6'008 MHz). In the end there is a memory bandwidth of 288 Gigabyte per second. Concerning the GPU's clock speeds it runs at a base clock of 889 MHz and a boost clock of 941 MHz. During our tests the highest boost clock we measured was 1'045 MHz and the average boost clock was also 1'045 MHz.

The ASUS GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II OC also supports GPU Boost 2.0. The first version of GPU Boost stopped overclocking the GPU when a certain power target was hit. This new second version of GPU Boost stops overclocking the card, when a certain temperature is being reached. This makes sense since the temperature is the bigger inhibitor than the power target in most cases. In this case the temperature target is 80 degrees Celsius. In other words, as long as the GPU runs at less than 80°C it will keep overclocking until the maximum frequency has been reached. This is why in our case the average boost clock was 104 MHz higher than the typical boost clock NVIDIA advertises.

nVidia GeForce	GeForce GTX Titan	ASUS GTX 780 DCU 2 OC	GeForce GTX 780	GeForce GTX 770
Chip	GK110	GK110	GK110	GK104-425-A2
Process	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm
Transistors	7.10 Billion	7.10 billion	7.10 billion	3.54 billion
GPU clock	837 MHz	889 MHz	863 MHz	1'046 MHz
GPU Boost clock	876 MHz	941 MHz	900 MHz	1'085 MHz
Memory	6'144 MB GDDR5	3'072 MB GDDR5	3'072 MB GDDR5	2'048 MB GDDR5
Memory clock	1'502 MHz (6'008 MHz)	1'502 MHz (6'008 MHz)	1'502 MHz (6'008 MHz)	1'750 MHz (7'000 MHz)
Memory interface	384 Bit	384 Bit	384 Bit	256 Bit
Memory bandwidth	288'400 MB/s	288'400 MB/s	288'400 MB/s	224'400 MB/s
TMUs	224	192	192	128
Shader Cores	2'688 (14 SMX)	2'304 (12 SMX)	2'304 (12 SMX)	1'536 (8 SMX)
ROPs	48	48	48	32
Maximum board power	250 Watt	XXX Watt	250 Watt	230 Watt
PCB Type	Reference Design	Custom Design	Reference Design	Reference Design
Lenght (PCB - Total)	27.0 - 27.0 cm	26.7 - 28.7 cm	27.0 - 27.0 cm	26.7 - 26.7 cm
Height (PCB - Total)	11.0 - 11.0 cm	12.0 - 14.2 cm	11.0 - 11.0 cm	11.0 - 11.0 cm
Slots	2	2	2	2
Cooler	NVIDIA Reference	ASUS DirectCU II	NVIDIA Reference	NVIDIA Reference
MSRP	$999	$XXX	$649	$399

ASUS decided to equip the GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II OC with a new version of their famous DirectCU II cooler. In case of this card you get no less than five heatpipes, two six millimeter, two eight millimeter and one massive ten millimeter. Soldered to the heatpipes you find the fin stack which is being provided with fresh air via two fans. The fan closer to the I/O shield as a new "CoolTech" unit from ASUS. They claim that this fan is able to provide a higher airflow than standard axial or radial fans at the same noise level. In case of the second fan you find a standard axial fan. Overall this version of the DirectCU II cooler was able to impress. In 2D the fans are very silent and in 3D the card is still silent.



A closer look at the PCB shows that ASUS equipped this card with a digital ten phase power design. The GPU gets its current from eight phases and the two phases left take good care of the memory. Once more ASUS is using high quality super allow chokes and on the backside of the GPU you find dedicated SAP CAP's to maximize overclocking headroom. 

Checking the voltage regulation chip we find a digital multi-phase buck controller ASP1212 from IR (International Rectifier). Furthermore there is an unidentified Richtek 2-phase PWM labelled 02=FA F2B taking care of a stable current supply for the the memory.

The memory chips used are made by Samsung and carry the model number K4G20325FD-FC03. They are specified to run at 1'500 MHz (6'000 MHz effective).

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 13 - DIRT Showdown
Page 2 - Technical Data / Specifications	Page 14 - Far Cry 3
Page 3 - Preview & Delivery	Page 15 - Max Payne 3
Page 4 - Test Setup	Page 16 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 5 - 3DMark 11	Page 17 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Page 6 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 18 - Metro: Last Light
Page 7 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 19 - Power Consumption
Page 8 - BattleField 3	Page 20 - Fan Speed / Noise Level
Page 9 - Borderlands 2	Page 21 - Temps - Idle / FurMark / BF3
Page 10 - Bioshock Infinite	Page 22 - Performance/Price & Performance/Watt
Page 11 - Crysis 3	Page 23 - Conclusion
Page 12 - Call of Duty Black Ops 2

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