ASUS GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II Review & Gaming Benchmarks

Updated: August 1, 2013

Layout And Design

Many people are very hooked on color schemes when it come to their video cards, as PCs have become like Hot Rods now and everyone wants to show off their “Chrome” so to speak and increase their street cred and bragging rights.

This card features the R.O.G Republic Of Gamers color scheme, which is based on a red and black theme much like a Ferrari and favorite of many end users and modders alike. The top features 2 fans that are actually different sizes to create wind flow across the card and the ASUS name is clearly present as well.

You can see the card will take up 2 slots inside your case and along the bottom of the card you can clearly see one of the HeatPipes snaking its way along the card as well as the PCIe 3.0 interface. The cooling fans power connection is also located at the end of the card at the bottom.

At the end of the card you can see some of the aluminum heat-fins that also help dissipate the heat away from the card. ASUS chooses to embrace an open-air architecture for their design and this allows for the maximum heat to be removed from the card, but also necessitates the ability of your cases airflow to ensure a cool running environment.

Now when we flip the card over unto its back we are treated to a unique thing, a very strong and durable back plate that not only protects the cards circuit board, it protects you from getting damaged as well by sharp objects. The other side of the card offers the 2-SLI fingers that will allow Quad SLI configurations we also see yet again the HeatPipe peeking out.

Next up are the power connections, and the ASUS DirectCU II GTX780 requires both a 6-pin and 8-pin power cable to run efficiently as without them connected the card could burn out, or just not boot at all. The last thing we see on this side of the card is the ASUs DirectCU II name emblazoned on the side in bright silver.

Last up is the rear I/O that offers the same connectivity as almost every GTX780 I believe I have yet set my eyes upon, that being a Dual-Link /Single-Link DVI, a standard HDMI and a standard Display Port. The card can support 4 monitors right out of the box for NVIDIA’s 3D Vision or NVIDIA’s Surround with a maximum resolution of 4096X2160. The only concern here is that your case is large enough to accommodate the card, as it is a bit longer than a reference model.