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The ROG team engineered the Poseidon with revolutionary DirectCU H2O to give you the best of air and liquid cooling and the flexibility to choose if/when you want to move to liquid cooling. Venturing into liquid cooling with the Poseidon reduces GPU temperatures by up to 24 degrees for ultra-stable overclocking!
25% Longer Graphics Card Lifespan
Unique fan design extends longevity by up to 25% by preventing dust & particle buildup on the heatsink, while efficiently dissipating heat for optimal performance.
20% Wider Range of Operating Temperatures
Poseidon GTX 780 features a 10-phase Super Alloy Power along with acclaimed DIGI+VRM (voltage -regulation module). DIGI+ VRM is a digital voltage regulation that provides ample room for overclocking and performance tuning while reducing power noise by 30%. Along with Super Alloy Power specially formulated concreted chokes and harden MOSFETs to withstand greater stress and heat, Poseidon GTX 780 also uses Japanese-made black metallic solid-state capacitors for 20% better temperature endurance and a five-time longer lifespan.
As the perfect fusion of form and function, the Poseidon GTX 780 leaves no stone unturned, incorporating a Republic of Gamers logo that pulses in red when the card is active, letting you know it's ready for action.
Boost 2.0 Technology intelligent monitors clock speed, ensuring that the GPU runs at its peak and the game is at its highest frame rate possible. It offers new levels of customization, including GPU temperature target, overclocking, and unlocked voltage.
NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync adjusts VSync to current frame rates for maximum playability
Dynamic visual effects like blazing explosions, reactive debris, realistic water, and lifelike characters.
Multi-GPU technology for extreme performance
Bring games to life with NVIDIA® Surround™ multi-monitor gaming on a single card
Delivers double the bandwidth per lane of PCIe Gen 2 for faster GPU–CPU communication
Bring new levels of visual realism to gaming on the PC and get top-notch performance
Pros: Very quiet and cool, even on air, at normal to mid-range loads. It has water cooling ability built in, which will cause temperatures and noise levels to drop greatly if used, especially at full loads, plus you don't have to spend money on an aftermarket water block or risk voiding your warranty. Extremely well-built, with a hefty back-plate to keep it rigid and help with component cooling. Easily outclasses my GTX 670 setup in the two benchmarks I tried (Unigine Valley and 3DMark Firestrike demo), scoring almost 50% higher in some areas. See Other Thoughts below for details and test results. Attractive appearance, with a slowly pulsating red ROG logo on the top edge. Green LEDs by auxiliary power sockets (8-pin and 6-pin) which turn red if your PCI-e cable is not plugged in correctly (a nice touch - the ASUS DirectCu II GTX 670 also has these). Streaming tool in the GPU Tweak software (I have not tried this yet). Came with free Watchdogs game coupon. Although my coupon had officially expired I was still able to redeem it and download the game. Stably powered in SLI by my 850W Seasonic PSU. Performed flawlessly in Kombustor stress testing and elsewhere, except for one glitch in one benchmark, which may be a driver issue (see next section).
Cons: There was a glitch when running the Unigine Valley benchmark, where occasional white flashes appeared on the screen - like lightning following the ground, as if it was trying, but failing, to paint a flat section of the landscape (not sure if this is a shader problem). Apparently other people have noticed this with 700 series cards, so perhaps it is a driver issue. Since it occurred with both of the Poseidons I tested, and they are unlikely to both be faulty, I hope this is the case. I never noticed it in the 3DMark tests, Kombustor, or any games. Price - All other GTX 780s cost less then the Poseidon (at time of writing), and some have faster clocks from the factory. Also, you could buy a GTX 780 Ti for less than $100 extra, although it might be of lesser build quality or cooling performance (even on air). You pay a premium for the Poseidon's extra features, and maybe the ROG branding.
Overall Review: It's quite a hefty, long card - check your case specs to see if it will fit, and make sure you screw it down securely at the case slot to avoid motherboard strain. Also be sure to plug in the auxiliary power connector to your motherboard if needed for running SLI. You'll definitely need it for more than 2-way. It's a shame the Poseidon doesn't come (as yet) in a Ti edition, but I think it was already in development before the 780 Ti was announced by nVidia. I was impressed by its performance compared to a fairly high end card from the previous generation (GTX 670, which performs close to a reference GTX 680 in some situations). Below are the results of the benchmark comparisons I mentioned earlier. [NOTE: I have 2 ASUS DirectCU II GTX 670s and tested them against 2 ASUS ROG Poseidon GTX 780s in both single and SLI mode. Resolution was set to 1920x1080, native for my monitor] In SLI, the Poseidon came in the top 3% of recorded scores for the 3DMark Firestrike demo. This was in a rig with an i5-3570K CPU, mildly overclocked to 4.2 GHz on a Gigabyte GA-77X-UD5H mobo, with 16GB of Mushkin Blackline 1600 RAM. The graphics cards were not overclocked, and the Poseidons were not water cooled (that will come later, as will a more powerful CPU/mobo combination). Firestrike demo scores: GTX 780 (1) 8224 - better than 83% of all results GTX 670 (1) 5850 - better than 57% of all results GTX 780 (SLI) 12532 - better than 97% of all results GTX 670 (SLI) 8617 - better than 83% of all results Unigine Valley scores (Extreme HD preset, 8xAA): GTX 780 (1) - 62.6 FPS, Score 2620 GTX 670 (1) - 42.6 FPS, Score 1782 GTX 780 (SLI) 102 FPS, Score 4266 GTX 670 (SLI) 77.3 FPS, Score 3233 Noise levels between the two models were roughly the same across all loads and. quiet up to mid-loads, with temperatures up to high 70's C in the stressful benchmark sections. Even at high loads, fan noise was not objectionable and there was no whining. CONCLUSION: In my opinion, this card only makes sense to buy if you intend to water cool it, otherwise you are wasting money on a feature that will never be used. On the other hand, assuming you have that intent, you get a factory installed, integrated water block (saving you a lot of hassle and possible warranty issues), and potentially the ability to overclock better than its lower priced competition. Plus, it will look very nice in an appropriately-themed build, especially in an ASUS ROG rig. Because of its build quality, features, and attractive design, and despite the one glitch I encountered -- which I attribute for now to a driver issue -- I believe the Poseidon is worthy of a 5-egg rating. Peter L. 06/05/14