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Design/Layout

Now the time has come to open up the huge box the card ships in, and see what is what. The box comes with some dark, ominous colours and with some sort of warrior at the front. Some of the most important features of the card are also shown at the front as well.



At the rear of the box you will find more information about the product.



Upon opening the box, you will see Asus has made an effort to make the interior special. The entire interior is split up into smaller compartments with the card itself separated from CDs and cables which is a nice little detail, and not something you see other companies do.



The graphics card is found at the bottom of the box, and this is what it looks like in all its glory.



If we turn it around a bit, the first thing of note is that the entire posterior is covered by a black plate. At the bottom left are the two crossfire bridge connectors.



On the side of the card you find the two 6-pin PCI-E jacks.



The card follows the reference design from ATI and comes with a very large cooler to keep the card cold. The guys who designed the cooler probably watched a lot of Batman movies, because the cooler looks an awful lot like a Batmobile.
At the rear of the card are the two large air ducts which the fan uses to draw in the cold air and blow it over the cooling profile.  



At the front of the card are three different ports as well as another air duct which is used to expel the hot air.



If we take off the cooler, we can see how big it actually is. It is not really an easy task – first you have to take out a lot of screws located in the strangest of places; it is quite annoying but hey, how often will you have to do it?
First you have to take off the plate that covers the entire posterior of the card, after which you can unscrew the screws keeping the cooler in place. After that you can loosen the four screws around the GPU.