14 DAY TRIAL // Eagerly awaited by many, Asus' DirectCU II line of graphics cards has finally become official, the lineup including no less than five new graphics cards, two of them based on AMD's Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 GPUs while the remaining three are powered by Nvidia's GeForce GTX 580, GTX 570, and GTX 560 Ti cores.
All these new models feature the company's trademark DirectCU II design, that uses custom coolers as well as higher quality PCBs in order to deliver improved performances and overclockability.
DirectCU II technology comes as a refinement of the original DirectCU and packs the same copper heat pipes that make direct contact with the GPU as well as a custom cooler which is equipped with twin 100mm fans.
The only exception to this rule is the GTX 560 Ti DirectCU II TOP that packs dual 80mm fans.
In addition, the DirectCU II product family is designed to include high-quality chokes, capacitors, POSCAPs and MOSFETs, Asus promising a 15% performance boost, 35°C cooler operation and 2.5 times longer lifespan when compared to reference designs.
Much of the performance increase is due to the high factory overclocks that usually accompany DirectCU II GPUs.
For example, the GeForce GTX 560 DirectCu II Top, Asus' latest graphics card to get the DirectCU II treatment has the core clocked at 900MHz and the memory at 1050Mhz compared to the regular 822/1000MHz used by Nvidia for its reference design.
In addition, early tests have shown that the card's frequencies can be raised even more, one reviewer managing to push the GPU to an impressive 1060MHz with the memory running at 1150MHz.
All the cards are bundled together with Asus' Voltage Tweak overvolting utility as well as with various other goodies, depending on the model.
The new DirectCU II line should be available for purchase as we speak, but, unfortunately, Asus didn't provide us with any details regarding pricing.
