14 DAY TRIAL // The increased power consumption of the current generation GPUs has kept graphics cards makers from developing too many passively cooled solutions, but Asus has somehow managed to break free of these restrictions and has recently released a passively cooled AMD Radeon HD 6670 video card.
The Radeon HD 6670 is AMD's latest mainstream card and is based on the Turks core which packs 480 streaming units, 24 texturing units, 8 ROP units and a 128-bit memory bus.
Its low TDP of just 66W makes it well suited for being passively cooled, so Asus has opted for pairing the card with a DirectCU cooling solution, which manages to keep the GPU temperatures in check without using any fans.
In order to achieve this feat, the cooling solution uses a pair of copper heatpipes to draw the heat away from the core and into an aluminum heatsink that makes the card occupy two slots inside the system case.
While this certainly isn't unusual for a modern day graphics cards, when purchasing the Radeon EAH6670 DC Silent users will have to keep in mind that the two heatpipes protrude over the top edge of the PCB, so a tall chassis is a must for fitting this card.
As far as the operating clocks of Asus's latest creation are concerned, the GPU is working at AMD's recommended 800MHz, while the 1GB of DDR3 video buffer memory is run at 900MHz (1800MHz data rate).
The reference design of the Radeon HD 6670 asks for the card to be paired with 1GHz GDDR5 memory (4GHz data rate), but Asus most probably wanted to keep heat output and prices in check when it designed the EAH6670 DC Silent.
Sadly, this decision also has an impact on performance making Asus' implementation of the HD 6670 slower than its GDDR5 counterparts
Asus has already started selling the EAH6670 DC Silent in Sweden, where it retails for approximately SEK 800 including VAT. This translates into roughly $101 without taxes. (via SweClockers)