ASUS HD 6970 DirectCU II: Some Junk in its Trunk

Introduction

Literally Built Like a Tank

Hailed as one of the best single-core graphics cards, AMD's Radeon HD 6970 didn't really generate much hype when it was launched almost three months back. So when we got our hands on the very new (and very robust) ASUS HD6970 Direct CU II, we were rather excited to see whether it was able to defy expectations and come out on top of the single-core manufacturer’s graphics card pile.

As far as aesthetics go, the new ASUS HD6970 Direct CU II is built like a tank and feels substantially weighty. The single-GPU card also sports a massive chassis that bulks up the unit to a size almost 1.5 times thicker than stock cards. Utilizing the AMD Radeon HD 6970 graphics engine, the unit also comes equipped with a PCI Express 2.1 bus interface.

The heavyweight size of this graphics card is not just for display, as ASUS actually designed this card based on heat dissipation technologies. Not only does the card feature a special alloy formula in critical power delivery components for a 15% performance boost and 35 degrees Celsius cooler operation, but the most visibly obvious is the massive heat dissipation fins, as well as copper pipes topped of with two 100mm fans, which according to ASUS, delivers a 600% increase in airflow.

One thing we did like was the connectivity options available on this unit. Thanks to the larger size of the PCB, the designers at ASUS managed to fit in two DVI and four DisplayPort connectors, allowing users to connect up to six monitors with Eyefinity technology for one immersive, panoramic computing experience.

On the box, it says 890MHz overclocked but considering the amount of thermal solutions on the device, and keeping in mind that the original core clock was already at 880MHz, a 10MHz increase isn't really front-of-the-box material (if you catch our drift).