Technical Data / Specifications

With the ASUS GeForce GTX 760 DirectCU Mini 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 78.3 % which is a bit higher than average but nothing really special.
About ASIC quality:



ASUS' GeForce GTX 760 DirectCU Mini 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 GB of GDDR5 memory.
Frequency wise, since ASUS didn't bother overclocking the memory, the latter stays clocked at 1'502 MHz (effective 6'008 MHz). On the GPU you find a little factory overclock with a base clock of 1'006 MHz and a typical boost clock of 1'072 MHz. That's shy considering that's only 39 MHz on top of the reference boost clock. However, things get interesting when looking at the actual working frequencies, during our tests the highest boost clock we measured was 1'149 MHz and the average boost clock was also 1'149 MHz.

The card 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 lower 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 the manufacturer advertises.

	EVGA SC ACX	ASUS DC Mini OC	ASUS DC2 OC	GeForce GTX 760
Chip	GK104-225-A2	GK104-225-A2	GK104-225-A2	GK104-225-A2
Process	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm
Transistors	3.54 billion	3.54 billion	3.54 billion	3.54 billion
GPU clock	1'072 MHz	1'006 MHz	1'006 MHz	980 MHz
GPU Boost clock	1'137 MHz	1'072 MHz	1'072 MHz	1'033 MHz
Memory GDDR5	2'048 MB	2'048 MB	2'048 MB	2'048 MB
Memory clock	1'502 (6'008) MHz	1'502 (6'008) MHz	1'502 (6'008) MHz	1'502 (6'008) MHz
Memory interface	256 Bit	256 Bit	256 Bit	256 Bit
Memory bandwidth	192'300 MB/s	192'300 MB/s	192'300 MB/s	192'300 MB/s
TMUs	96	96	96	96
Shader Cores	1'152 (6 SMX)	1'152 (6 SMX)	1'152 (6 SMX)	1'152 (6 SMX)
ROPs	32	32	32	32
TDP	170 Watt	xxx Watt	xxx Watt	170 Watt
PCB Type	Custom Design	Custom Design	Custom Design	Reference Design
Lenght (PCB - Total)	24.3 - 24.3 cm	17.5 - 17.5 cm	17.5 - 21.7 cm	17.5 - 24.1 cm
Height (PCB - Total)	11.0 - 11.0 cm	12.1 - 12.1 cm	12.1 - 12.3 cm	11.0 - 11.0 cm
Slots	2	2	2	2
Cooler	EVGA ACX	ASUS DirectCU Mini	ASUS DirectCU II	NVIDIA Reference
MSRP	$XXX	$XXX	$XXX	$249

No surprise here, for its GTX 760 Mini, ASUS makes us of the DirectCU Mini cooler that was first introduced with the GTX 670 Mini. No modifications have been made since the cooling performance were good already on the GTX 670 and the PCB is also the same.
We have to say we like the card much more without the plastic cover like on the picture below. It has some kind of archaic, industrial appeals.



 

A closer look at the PCB shows that ASUS makes use of the exact same PCB you find on the GTX 760 DirectCU II series and the GTX 670 DC Mini. In this case you get an analog five phase power design. The GPU gets its current from four phases and the memory from one. In comparison, nVidia's reference design features four plus two phases, which means that the memory gets two and not only one. 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 for the GPU. On the memory side we find a single phase APW7165 controller from Anpec. In comparison, the reference card from nVidia makes use of a NCP5392P from ON Semiconductor for the GPU and a Richtek 2-phase analog PWM for the memory.
Also, ASUS decided to equip its card with a single 8pin PCIe (150W) power connector instead of two 6pin PCIe (2x 75W) power connectors like on the reference card.

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