Introduction

Introduction

Big and beefy are the two keywords that describe any DirectCU II product from ASUS. Today they released their GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II TOP. An all customized PCB, extra features, the fastest pre-clock we have seen to date on a GTX 680 and that massive three slot cooler are bound to make the Kepler GPU empowered ASUS GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II TOP very interesting.

Kepler my friends is the codename for the architecture behind the GeForce series 600 graphics cards.  The GeForce GTX 680 2 GB is a fact and selling in the stores as we speak. The all new product has some interesting new features which we'll happily discuss with you.

The end result is an impressive looking beast, the customized GTX 680 has a big two fan cooler applied to it. And it's not just two fans, the cooler makes the graphics card three slots wide -- eating away a good chunk of space inside your chassis.

The benefits of that big cooler are plentiful though, this is a product that you will not hear whilst retaining really good temperatures, yeah it works pretty darn well in both performance and silence really.

The card's base clock frequency is set higher at default for you, at 1137 MHz with a dynamic turbo that clocks up-to 1267 MHz. ASUS actually advertises 1201 Mhz on the packaging, but yeah 1267 MHz it is. The memory runs stock at 6000 MHz though.

Not only will we show the performance of the GeForce GTX 680 ASUS DCU II TOP -- we'll throw in the results for the NV GeForce GTX 680, GeForce GTX 680 GBT OC, GeForce GTX 680 MSI TwinFrz III OC and GeForce GTX 680 Palit JetStream as well.

Obviously with such cooling we'll up that a notch in an overclocking session but have a quick peek at the product after which we'll dive into the GPU architecture, photo shoot and benchmarks. All hail the beast -- next page please.