The ASUS GTX 770 Direct CU II is a COMPLETELY non-reference GTX 770, which is usual right at launch when a high end GPU is released. Normally the "non-reference" cards we see for a while are just reference cards with a different cooler. In this case ASUS is using beefier components, stronger design, and a beastly cooler to set their GTX 770 apart from the pretenders!