ASUS GTX 770 Direct CU II Unboxing & Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,205 words · ~6 min read
0:00
this video is brought to you by the Corsair Vengeance k70 and k95 these
0:04
fully mechanical keyboards are designed for performance gaming visit Corsair.com
0:08
vengance gaming to learn more welcome to what amounts to basically an unboxing
0:13
and second look at the GeForce gtx770
0:16
direct to you to from ASUS now I call it a second look because I've already had
0:21
this card out of the box and I have
0:25
actually already had a chance to Benchmark it so okay I'm going to spoil
0:31
the surprise a little bit it's a GeForce GTX 770 which means it's based on the
0:35
same GK 104 core as the gtx680 a fully
0:39
enabled core to be more clear so okay so
0:44
it's a GTX 680 no because it's clocked
0:47
higher this one in particularly because it's an OC level card and it also has 7
0:53
GHz gddr5 memory as opposed to the 6 GHz
0:57
gddr5 memory that we found on the original GTX 680 now the first things we
1:02
find inside are a nice black ASUS box with some gold printing on it as well as
1:08
a bunch of accessories that we didn't get with our reference card that came
1:12
direct from NVIDIA so it's interesting to see what ASUS includes so they've got
1:16
a quick start guide as well as some drivers and GPU tweak software that
1:21
you'd do well to download directly from the ASUS website and finally last but
1:26
not least a dual six pin to single eight
1:30
pin PCI Express power adapter next up is
1:34
the card itself now the first thing you're going to notice about it in all
1:39
likelihood is going to be the cooler the
1:42
direct CU 2's cooler gets its name from The Copper heat pipes as well as the
1:47
direct contact that they make with the GPU itself this improves thermal
1:52
efficiency as well as improving overall performance of the card especially in an
1:56
overclocked environment there are two fans on it Each of which is sealed
2:01
against dust making it dust proof and adding to the longevity of the card and
2:06
allowing them to cover a wider area of
2:09
the card itself providing more air flow not only to cool the GPU itself because
2:14
it's connected with these nice fat heat pipes to all of these fins but also the
2:19
other components under the heat sink fins all over the entire PCB of the
2:25
graphics card on the back of it we find not a whole lot that you can see except
2:31
for a back plate this contributes to the rigidity of the card which is especially
2:36
important when cards are get longer and heavier and they're installed in chassis
2:40
that only really fasten them at the screws at the top here as well as the
2:44
PCI Express slot and the last thing that we see are a couple of diagnostic LEDs
2:50
right under the six pin and 8 Pin PCI Express connectors that tell us if
2:54
there's any kind of a power problem causing the card to be nonfunctional
2:58
direct cu2 cooler are also well regarded for their quiet operation and we did
3:04
indeed have the same experience with this card so I can happily say that it
3:08
sits proudly with the other direct cu2 cards that we've had the opportunity to
3:12
play with here's a cool feature for liquid coolers and Tweakers and just
3:17
generally guys who are willing to push the limits of their Hardware sort of no
3:22
matter what the uh no matter what the risk by simply removing four screws on
3:27
the back of the card you can remove the entire direct cu2 cooler this allows it
3:32
to be cleaned or just completely removed and replaced with something else should
3:37
you see fit although most people
3:40
probably aren't going to bother with that you will have to break a seal in
3:44
order to get the cooler off
3:48
however that risk is entirely up to each
3:51
individual user and check that out it comes apart just like that to reveal the
3:56
way that the card is cooled so we get thermal go on the GPU itself no thermal
4:02
pads present on the memory because of what I mentioned before the way that the
4:07
direct2 cooler provides so much air flow to the rest of the card you don't really
4:11
have to worry too much about that we can see the entire 8 plus 2phase power
4:16
design this is compared to okay so 8 plus 2phase digital power design
4:20
compared to the 5+ one phase analog power design that you're going to find
4:24
on a reference card and a dedicated heat sink for the mosfets themselves that
4:29
allows that that's the hottest part of the power delivery that allows them to
4:33
stay cool now there's more to a custom PCB design than just designing the PCB
4:38
you also have to use higher quality components if you're going to get any
4:42
benefit out of it whatsoever so that's where isus is sap or super alloy power
4:47
components come in most of the power
4:50
delivery circuitry actually is comprised of these specially designed components
4:55
that ASUS has engineered in order to deliver better over clocking better
5:00
efficiency cooler operation longer Lifetime and this is sort of this hits
5:06
pretty close to home for me less coil wine because coil wine is just annoying
5:12
and then mind you so are dead cards and cards that consume more power for no
5:15
reason but that was the rationale behind
5:18
redesigning it in order to use their own components it was to achieve all of
5:22
those things but how did it all work out in the end my final word on this card is
5:28
going to be about GPU tweak and the actual results that we were able to
5:32
achieve because all of this is fine in theory but what does it yield in the
5:37
real world our direct cu2 card
5:40
overclocked higher than our reference card take that for what it is this is a
5:44
very small sampling but in our experience we did manage to get a
5:49
slightly higher sustainable boost clock
5:53
okay so it was only 35 or so some odd
5:56
megahertz higher than this particular card but there you go higher is higher
6:02
and we did get better performance out of a direct cu2 card than we did out of a
6:06
reference card also using GPU tweak was
6:09
a fairly good experience I've never used it before at least not extensively but
6:15
it does have some special features that allows it to work better with ASUS cards
6:19
particularly the ones that use their custom vrm designs that are pretty
6:23
different from all the other things that are out there on the market and with the
6:27
integrated GPU Z utility as as well as the ability to set up monitoring as a
6:31
widget it's pretty handy thanks for checking out my unboxing and first look
6:35
at the gtx770 direct to YouTu from ASUS
6:39
don't forget to subscribe to lonus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and
6:44
other computer videos