ASUS GeForce GTX 780 Ti Matrix review - Product Showcase

Product Showcase

At the backside you can spot a thing or two, the Molex connector can be used to get a little more juice into the card. That or it is powering up the memory defroster. Either options however is specific for LN2 pro-overclockers. It is not required to use that connector. A little to the right is a small micro-switch, which allows you to heat up the memory (Instant defrost for LN2 overclockers. Say goodbye to cold bugs) and then there is a safe mode button that functions as a single press VBIOS restore. BTW if you look to the far right then you'll see little gaps in the PCB. These are VGA monitor Hotwire terminals to the solder points on compatible ROG motherboards. 

If we look at the PCB a little closer we can see two SLI connectors, four cards in quad-SLI GPU mode are supported. Quad SLI however is difficult and often a maze of driver problems. Nvidia has never really recommended or actively supported quad-SLI. But for a handful of benchmarks and sheer e-peen, it will work OK'ish. We really recommend going with a maximum of 2, maybe three cards. To the left of the SLI fingers is a small micro-switch, this will allow you to select normal or an LN2 mode BIOS.

ASUS tucked 3 GB of graphics memory on this card, 3GB we feel is a sweet spot for high-end single monitor gaming anno 2014, but with Ultra HD gaming in mind, I do feel that 4 GB is more tasty. ASUS delivers a backplate with the card, so the backside is nicely protected. Good to see are ventilation holes over the VRM and GPU area. The back of the PCB comes with specialized CAPs which increase the overclocking headroom while the custom concrete alloy chokes help reduce the buzzing noise produced on reference variants. You'll spot that the card was designed for ASUS ROG features as well, with voltage read points at the back which are visible through the backplate.

For this GeForce GTX 780 Ti article we'll look at performance based on high-end yet more moderate processors and then on the X79 platform with an overclocked Core i7 3960X running at 4600 MHz. Above the two 8-pin PEG headers I mentioned on the previous page. The PCB itself custom and is based on ASUS’s Super Alloy Power technology and comes with a multi-Phase DIGI+ VRM power delivery which gives the core enough power to overclock and run with maximum stability. The GPU gets 14 power dedicated phases BTW.

I really need to find me one of these CSI rulers for sheer coolness factor :) . The card is 10.7 inches in length which is 28 cm. The cooler extends that to almost 29/30cm though.

On the edge you can spot the ROG logo, which is reactive to GPU load and displays a GPU load level.

That's it for this photo-shoot though. We need to tell you a tale or two about the GPU and the architecture of course. pretty cool looking card though eh ?