ASUS ROG Poseidon GTX 780 Graphics Card Review

Features, Layout and Accessories, and Applications

Features

Courtesy of ASUS

• 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: let you share on-screen action in real time – so others can watch live as games are played.

Graphics Card Layout

The ASUS ROG Poseidon GTX 780 graphics card features a flat black and red color scheme with chrome highlights via the rear panel plate, aluminum radiator fins, and nickel-plated heat pipes and water ports. ASUS paired the unit with two 90mm fans, larger 8mm heat pipes embedded in the air-cooled radiator, and liquid cooling inlet and outlet ports.

The back of the PCB is protected with an aluminum back plate held to the card via seven screws. The four screws directly in back of the GPU hold the copper cold plate to the GPU. The back plate also acts as a secondary cooling surface, dissipating heat effectively to the case. ASUS branded the back plate with the Poseidon branding, placed so that it is readable with the card sitting in a board within a tower case.

THe following ports are integrated into the Poseidon GTX 780's rear plate assembly: dual DVI digital video ports (DVI-D and DVI-I ports), DisplayPort digital video port, and HDMI digital video port. The DVI-I port is located just under the HDMI port with the DVI-D port located to the right of the DVI-I port.

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The unit's fans sit in an aluminum shroud that fit on top of the aluminum radiator sitting atop the copper base plate. ASUS includes two 90mm fans, each with 9 curved blades to reduce dust accumulation on the fan blades and radiator. The fans are oriented to blow air over the radiator with air expelled via ports in the rear plate. There are a total of three large heat pipes redirecting heat from the copper plate to the right side fan to equal out the unit's cooling potential. The fans plug directly into PCB headers in the bottom right of the card.

The two integrated SLI connectors and nickel-plates liquid inlet and outlet ports are located along the top left of the unit. ASUS ships the card with plastic caps screwed into the liquid ports to keep dust and particulates out of the liquid channel. The SLI connectors are fully accessible and are not blocked by the fan overlay plate or the pcb back plate. The ROG logo along the top panel of the fan shroud, directly in front of the SLI connectors, contains pulsing red LEDs for some added bling.

To power the Poseidon GTX 780, ASUS integrated two PCIe power headers into the upper left corner of the board. The board includes an 8-pin power connector to the inside of the PCB and a 6-pin power connector to the outside of the PCB. Just below the power connectors on the back of the PCB are port specific status LEDs. The LED for each port glows red if a power connector is not plugged into the port and green with an active power cable connected.

Included Accessories

ASUS includes a minimal amount of accessories needed to get the card up and running.

ASUS includes a multi-lingual quick-start guide, a driver and utility disc, as well as a metallic ROG-branded case badge. The manual and disc are enclosed in an ASUS-branded black envelope to give the package a classy feel. The manual itself is simplistic, giving only the minimal instructions for setting up the card with air cooling in your system. It would have been nice to have some detailed information on setting up the card for liquid cooling, but the users that are interested in liquid cooling the card probably know how to integrate the card into their loop already.

For use with the 8-pin connector, ASUS includes an 8-pin to dual 6-pin converter cable for use with power supplies that do not have an 8-pin PCIe power connect available. It would have been a nice touch for ASUS to include a 6-pin to MOLEX power cable as well as an SLI cable.

Included Applications

• NVIDIA GeForce graphics card display driver
• ASUS GPU Tweak
• ASUS APRP
• ASUS GPU Tweak Streaming

ASUS includes several utilities on the Poseidon GTX 780's driver disk including ASUS GPUTweak, ASUS APRP, and ASUS GPU Tweaking Streaming. The ASUS GPUTweak utility is used to monitor and overclock the settings for your Poseidon graphics adapter. The ASUS APRP utility provides as method to register your card directly with ASUS to take advantage of the warranty and advanced replacement programs that you are entitled to by purchasing a ROG-branded product. The ASUS CPU Tweak Streaming application allows you to create a streaming server from your local system using an attached webcam and network connection.

ASUS GPU Tweak

The ASUS GPU Tweak application provides monitoring capability for card speed settings and temperatures as well as performance enhancement capabilities. In advanced mode, the GPU boost clock, voltage, memory clock, fan speed, and refresh rate settings can be manually set via mouse controlled slider bars with the resulting speed shown in the box to the right of the field. Additionally, ASUS provides the ability to set upper limits for power, GPU temperature, frame rate using a slider interface as well. These settings can be used to customize performance of the card based on target values rather than having to manually tweak clock and voltage settings for the card. The utility also provides a GPU-Z style interface for detailed card information and a monitoring screen displaying card device and fan speeds, as well as card temperatures. The settings menu allows for interface customization, as well as the ability to setup application update interval and hot keys tied to pre-configured profile settings. The interface has a total of six profiles, four that are user customizable, a default profile, and an ASUS configured gaming profile.

Tuning page, Standard mode

Tuning page, Advanced mode

Tuning page, Advanced mode continued

Settings page, Main tab

Settings page, Tuning tab

Settings page, LiveUpdate tab

Settings page, Hotkey tab