14 DAY TRIAL // Shortly after AMD’s announcements of the Radeon HD 7950 and HD 7970 graphics cards, Asus has introduced two new solutions based on these GPUs that feature the company’s proprietary DirectCU II design in order to work at higher than stock frequencies.
This design relies on a beefy dual-slot cooler that comprises four copper heatpipes and a large aluminum heatsink topped by two high-airflow fans.
The four heatpipes installed make direct contact with the GPU core, hence the DirectCU II name, which should help Asus’ video cards deliver better thermal and acoustic performance than other solutions based on AMD’s reference design.
The advanced cooling system employed also allowed Asus to overclock the Pitcairn graphics cores of its two DirectCU II models, the HD 7870 running at 1100MHz, while the HD 7850 is clocked at 975MHz.
The 2GB of GDDDR5 memory is clocked at 1250MHz (5GHz effective) for both the Asus Radeon HD 7870 and HD 7850.
To put things in perspective, AMD’s recommended frequencies for the Pitcairn XT and Pro cores are set at 1000MHz and 860MHz, respectively, while the memory runs at 1.2GHz (4.8GHz data rate).
Despite the different GPUs used, both Asus HD 7800-series graphics cards feature the same video output configuration which includes one DVI-I and one HDMI output, as well as two Mini-DP ports.
For those of you still stuck with a VGA monitor, a DVI to D-Sub adaptor is also included in the retail box.
Sadly, Asus hasn’t provided us with any details regarding the prices of these two Radeon HD 7800-series graphics cards and a quick online search also hasn’t returned anything regarding their MSRP.
However, taking into consideration their improved specs, the Asus Radeon HD 7870 and HD 7850 DirectCU II are expected to surpass AMD’s recommended $350 and $250 (265 and 190 EUR) price tags.
