ASUS Brings DirectCU EAH5000 Cards for Overclocking

ASUS has been quite active on the graphics card front recently, having created laptops based on NVIDIA's Optimus technology and even being found to be working on a 4GB GDDR5 HD 5970 ultra-high-end graphics adapter, codenamed Ares. Now, the company itself unveiled yet another series of graphics adapters that are specifically designed to provide hard-core gamers, overclockers and speed enthusiast with something to work with.

The new product lineup unveiled by ASUS is known as the EAH5000 series of graphics adapters. This family is made up of custom-designed ATI Radeon HD 5000 models, namely modified versions of HD 5950, HD 5830 and HD 5870 adapters. These cards are built with partially similar specifications, but their clock speeds differ, as do the cooling technologies they make use of.

Essentially, there are multiple versions of the above cards, some CUcore models, others featuring the DirectCU treatment. As such, there are six cards in total, each with 1GB of GDDR5 memory. The EAH5770 comes with the CUcore cooling technology, which uses a distinct copper rod within the fan assembly in order to better disperse heat. This rod can weigh up to 5.8oz. The EAH5770 CUcore has a GPU clock of 850MHz, a memory clock of 4800MHz and a 128-bit interface.

Unlike this 5770 model, most of the new cards come with the DirectCU cooling mechanism. This cooler has flattened copper heatpipes that disperse heat up to 20% more efficiently when under heavy load. Also, when in idle mode, the cooler is 35% more quiet. The ASUS EAH5850 DirectCU TOP/2DIS/1GD5 is the one that best merges both performance and thermal efficiency. This card has a GPU clock of 725MHz, a memory frequency of 4000MHz and a 256-bit interface.

Overclocking enthusiasts will be pleased to know that all new products feature Voltage Tweak, which enables GPU clock modifications through the SmartDoctor software. By use of this application, performance can be increased by up to 50%.

For detailed specifications of all the cards, end-users may visit the company's official website.