ASUS GTX780 Direct CU II OC Review

Everyone loves the Nvidia GTX Titan but sadly few can afford the high price of ownership. Right now the best price is around £830, from Overclockers UK. While gaming is only one of the strengths of this particular solution very few gamers will be able to budget £800-£900 just for the graphics card.

This is why the GTX780 has proven popular with the wealthy enthusiast gamer. It offers 90% of the GTX Titan gaming performance and is generally priced around £300 less. The ASUS GTX780 Direct CU II OC which we reviewed today costs £629.99 on pre-order from Overclockers UK, so you are saving around £200 over a GTX Titan.

There is no doubt that this Direct CU II is one of the best coolers that ASUS have ever designed. Noise emissions are lower than some of the custom GTX760 coolers we have tested in the last month, and when gaming the core peaked at only 65c, which is 3c better than the eVGA GTX660 ti superclocked card. These really are remarkable results for ASUS.

A standard clocked GTX780 can handle the latest Direct X 11 titles at 2560×1600 and this Asus model is marginally faster out of the box, due to a slight core clock enhancement.

This is only part of the story however.

There is incredible headroom on this core, undoubtedly supplemented by the custom 6 phase power design. While every sample will give slightly different results, our review sample delivered almost 25 percent core clock headroom, finally stable at 1,100mhz. This pushed in game performance past the GTX Titan, and we documented a 2,000 point increase in 3DMark 11, from 13,000 points to just over 15,000 points.

If you have around £600 to spend on a graphics card and want it predominately for gaming, then the Asus GTX780 Direct CU II OC sets a new benchmark in this sector, especially when factoring in the incredible core clock headroom.

You can buy it from Overclockers UK on this page.

Pros:

• cooler design is class leading.
• huge core clock headroom for overclocking.
• £200 cheaper than a basic GTX Titan.
• very quiet under load.
• built to last, including a backplate on PCB.
• 6 phase power delivery.

Cons:

• very modest core clock speeds out of the box.
• still a lot of money.

Kitguru says: Dont want to shell out over £800 for a Titan? this is as close as it gets for £200 less.

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