- Article - Guide

Asus ROG GeForce GTX 780 Poseidon Platinum - Oh it's game on!

In this review we test the gorgeous looking ROG GeForce GTX 780 Poseidon Platinum edition from ASUS. The customized product is equipped with a massive cooler that can chill down the graphics card air-cooled, but you may also connect it to a liquid cooling loop. Yup, You get to decide how to use it. Even on air the card remains quiet and keeps temperatures under 70 Degrees C. This particular GeForce GTX 780 is part of the Republic of Gamers lineup and will feature DIGI+ VRM, highly-durable black metallic capacitors and the DirectCU H20 cooler which combines air and liquid cooling to allow for better performance and quieter operation.

Surprisingly, the Poseidon packs a GTX 780 GPU, unfortunately not a 780 Ti. So the more 'regular' GeForce GTX 780 is being used. This means it is based on the GK110 GPU and has a whopping 7.1 Billion transistors. That makes it a nice chunk faster opposed to the GeForce GTX 680 GPU. Just like Titan, the GTX 780 is based on the GK110 GPU with the distinctions that the Titan has a GK110-300 GPU and the GeForce GTX 780 a GK110-400 GPU. Same stuff, yet with some things disabled. The GK110 chip is BIG, and that makes it a difficult chip to bake, its recipe is refined though as the product has 2304 Shader Processing Units, 192 TMUs and 32 ROPs on a 384-bit memory interface of fast GDDR5. So yeah, NVIDIA trimmed down that 45 mm × 45 mm 2397-pin S-FCBGA Titan with its 2688 shader/stream/CUDA processors a bit, whereas the 780 Ti is unlocked. Memory wise you are looking at 3 GB over 6 GB, that is still huge (12 pieces of 64M ×16 GDDR5 SDRAM) of memory (384-bit) on there and started designing a bunch of new tricks at BIOS and driver level. Combined with GPU Boost 2.0 you will see this product boosting towards the 1100~1150 MHz range once you tweak it.

• DirectCU H2O: 7°C cooler on air. 24°C cooler with water.
• DIGI+ VRM with 10-phase Super Alloy Power: deliver 30% cleaner power noise and 2.5X greater durability.
• Japan-made black metallic capacitors: 20% better temperature endurance and 5X longer lifetime usage.
• ROG LED light: pulsate in glorious red when the card is active.
• GPU Tweak: modify clock speeds, voltage and more via an intuitive interface.
• GPU Tweak Streaming: lets you share on-screen action in real time – so others can watch live as games are played.

The reference clock for a GTX 780 is 863 MHz with a boost clock of 900 MHz, this card has a GPU clock of 954 MHz, it can boost to 1006 Mhz and the memory runs at reference clocks, 6008 MHz.
 

Looking at the specs you must think that this product must consume heaps of power, well it's not great, but definitely not bad at all. The maximum allowed board design power draw is roughly 240 Watts, which considering what this product is, is good. The ROG GTX 780 Poseidon Platinum edition comes with a factory overclock and that hybrid cooler called the DirectCU H20 which packs two dust-proof fans, three heatpipes, a large heatsink and a water block. This is the 3GB edition that comes factory clocked faster for you. But have a peek at the product we test today and then head onwards into the review.