Technical Data / Specifications

With the ASUS GeForce GTX 760 DirectCU II OC you get a factory overclocked card which features a custom PCB as well as a custom cooler. The ASIC quality measured on our sample was 76.7 % which is ok considering the average being at 73 % on the cards we had at hands.
About ASIC quality:



ASUS's GeForce GTX 760 DirectCU II OC is based on NVIDIA's Kepler GK104-225 A2 chip, which is manufactured by TSMC using the latest 28 nanometer process technology. With the GeForce GTX 760 you get six SMX units which results in 1'152 CUDA cores. Following the specs further, there are 96 TMUs, 32 ROPs, a 256 bit wide memory interface and 2 Gigabyte of GDDR5 memory, which is clocked at 1'500 MHz (effective 6'000 MHz). In the end there is a memory bandwidth of 192 Gigabyte per second. Concerning the GPU's clock speeds it runs at a base clock of 1'006 MHz and a boost clock of 1'072 MHz. During our tests the highest boost clock we measured was 1'149 MHz and the average boost clock was also 1'149 MHz.

The ASUS GeForce GTX 760 DirectCU II OC supports NVIDIA's 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 77 MHz higher than the typical boost clock NVIDIA advertises.

nVidia GeForce	GeForce GTX 770	ASUS GTX 760 DC II OC	EVGA GTX 760 SC ACX	GeForce GTX 760
Chip	GK104-425-A2	GK104-225-A2	GK104-225-A2	GK104-blah
Process	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm
Transistors	3.54 billion	3.54 billion	3.54 billion	3.54 billion
GPU clock	1'046 MHz	1'006 MHz	1'072 MHz	980 MHz
GPU Boost clock	1'085 MHz	1'072 MHz	1'137 MHz	1'033 MHz
Memory	2'048 MB GDDR5	2'048 MB GDDR5	2'048 MB GDDR5	2'048 MB GDDR5
Memory clock	1'750 MHz (7'000 MHz)	1'502 MHz (6'008 MHz)	1'502 MHz (6'008 MHz)	1'502 MHz (6'008 MHz)
Memory interface	256 Bit	256 Bit	256 Bit	256 Bit
Memory bandwidth	224'400 MB/s	192'300 MB/s	192'300 MB/s	192'300 MB/s
TMUs	128	96	96	96
Shader Cores	1'536 (8 SMX)	1'152 (6 SMX)	1'152 (6 SMX)	1'152 (6 SMX)
ROPs	32	32	32	32
Maximum board power	230 Watt	XXX Watt	XXX Watt	170 Watt
PCB Type	Reference Design	Custom Design	Custom Design	Reference Design
Lenght (PCB - Total)	26.7 - 26.7 cm	17.5 - 21.7 cm	24.3 - 24.3 cm	17.5 - 24.1 cm
Height (PCB - Total)	11.0 - 11.0 cm	12.1 - 12.3 cm	11.0 - 11.0 cm	11.0 - 11.0 cm
Slots	2	2	2	2
Cooler	NVIDIA Reference	ASUS DirectCU II	EVGA ACX	NVIDIA Reference
MSRP	$399	$xxx	$259	$249

ASUS decided to equip the GeForce GTX 760 DirectCU II OC with a slightly reworked version of the well known DirectCU II cooler. In this case you get four heatpipes, whereas the two in the center have a diameter of eight millimeter and the two on the outside have a diameter of six millimeter. The heatpipes itself have been nickel plated and they are soldered to the fin stack, that ofers 1'963 cm² of dissipation area. The reference cooler only offers 1'230 cm² of dissipation area. The heatpipes establish direct contact to the GPU. ASUS also thought about actively cooling the MOSFETs with an heatsink. Between the cooler and these chips there are thermalpads, which establish a direct contact. A closer look at the fans shows that they feature a diameter of 75 millimeter and they can draw up to 0.35A on 12 volt each.
Shifting focus to the PCB shows, that it has the same length like the reference design, but thanks to the fact, that the cooler is shorter, the entire card becomes shorter than the reference model. In total ASUS has been able to save 2.4 centimeter in length. On the other hand ASUS had to increase the height of the card by 1 centimeter to fit all the components on the PCB.



A closer look at the PCB shows that ASUS equipped this card with an analog five phase power design. The GPU gets its current from four phases and the one phases left takes care of the memory. NVIDIA's reference design features four plus two phases, which means that the memory get two and not only one phase on the later. Don't worry, ASUS' single phase is stronger than nVidia's two phases.   

Checking the voltage regulation chip we find a RT8867A 4/3 phase analog PWM controller from Richtek. The reference card from NVIDIA makes use of a NCP5392P from ON Semiconductor.
Furthermore there is an unidentified Richtek 1-phase PWM labelled 02=FA F0X taking care of a stable current supply for the the memory.

The memory chips used are made by Hynix and carry the model number H5GQ2H24AFR R0C. 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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