Hardware Reviews

VERDICT: Mammoth with an out of the world cooler !

FOR: Excellent cooler,quiet even under full load, amazing performance.

AGAINST: Bulky Design.

The Asus GTX 680 Direct CU II TOP is the first GTX 680 graphics card featuring a custom cooler on a GTX 680.A striking feature of this cooler is that it has FIVE heatpipes drawing heat from the GPU. According to Asus this design helps in acheiving 20 percent better cooling than the reference design.

Both heatsinks are cooled by 92 mm fans and the entire setup is covered by metal shell which give this card its bulky design. Also the base of the card is covered by thick metal plate and might worry people that it might damage the damage the motherboard but this mammosth satys firmly in place .

The rear panel sports two DVI ports , an HDMI port, a Display Prot and air vents.

Base speed of the core is 1006 MHz and can go upto 1058 MHz. The suffix 'TOP' suggests that this card is a factory overclocked one. Base boost speeds of this card are 1137 MHz and 1201 MHz respectively. Also there is 2 GB GDDR5 RAM which runs at 6008 MHz and connects the GPU(graphics processing unit) via a 256-bit wide bus.

With slight overclock the frame rates are 5 to 10 fps( frames per second) higher than the reference design in Metro 2033 and Batman Arkham City.

SAIM'S TAKE :

The Asus GTX 680 Direct CU II TOP costs around Rs.2500 more than a regular GTX 680 and this increase is pretty justified due to the amazing cooler. If you have pockets deep enough for a GTX 680 then i would strongly recommend to go for this one.

SPECIFICATIONS:

GPU:Nvidia GeForce GTX 680;Core speed:1137MHz;Memory:2048 MB GDDR5;Memory Speed:3800 Mhz;Stream processors: 1536;Video ports: 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DP.

VERDICT: Good performance, great bang for your buck !

FOR: Excellent performance, effective cooling, factory overclocked.

AGAINST: Big size, no bundled game.

Asus has stuck to Nvidia's reference PCB (printed circuit board) but thaey have used a custom cooler on this one. This card measures 10.7 inches on length which is definitely BIG.

Moving on to technical aspects;
The cooler uses copper pipes to direct heat from the core effectively. The aluminium fins help dissipate the heat, which is then cooled by the two fans.
For connectivity, this card boasts two Dual-link DVI conectors, one HDMI and a full sized DisplayPort.

Asus has also pushed the clock speed of the card a bit : the core is clocked at 1059 MHz while 2GB GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1052 MHz.
Besides a DVI-VGA adapter and a PCIe to Molex power adapter Asus commits a sin for not bundling
any game with the card.

SAIM'S TAKE:

Priced at Rs. 20,500 this card provides excellent performance despite of no bundled games or its huge size. This card can easily handle all latest games with all eye candy maxed out. This a great bang for your buck.