VIDEOCARD

Before anyone get's carried away or excited by the title, I have to disappoint you, no nudity here, only hardware pron here lads... Removing the plastic coverage is as easy as on the stock reference cards, just unscrew the backplane, remove the 2 screws from the mounting plate, gently pull the top off and voila you got access to the innards. This without having to risk breaking of some tabs or such like in the GTX 280 days. And between us, if I can do it, so can you!




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On the rear we find the infamous Fujitsu PLC chip, which we first encountered on the magic Rampage Extreme motherboard. This time 6+2 and 6 pin power connectors are required to feed the hungry mosfets. ASUS' 8 + 2 Phase power design is designed to reduce GPU power noise. The Matrix logo lights up in a specific color depending on the load of the card, really a nice gadget for the case modders.


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The Winbond chip is the one that allows the monitoring and control over timings, voltages,... at the top you clearly see the 2 SLI connectors (note the plastic cover ; trés chique) and the wiring leading to the Vbios crash recovery button (in case you were that little too enthusiastic with ya OC settings). Rams are the Hynix H5RS5223CFR N3C series which are rated for 1300mhz. You can read the specs here : H5RS5223CFR Tech sheet


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Asus claims on the box that the Matrix card runs up to 12% cooler as they have revised the cooler. By implementing thicker heatpipes, they improve heat transfer and good thermal conductivity between the cooler and GPU is warranted by this huge copper block (its size reminds me of the GTX 280 blocks)