ASUS GTX 670 Direct CU Mini Review

In the world of high performance hardware it is refreshing to see diminutive, yet powerful components. The Asus GTX670 Direct CU Mini certainly falls into this category – delivering smooth frame rates in the latest Direct X 11 games at 1080p resolution.

More and more people are moving to an mATX or Mini ITX build, to save space and to fit in beside a high definition television set without taking up masses of space. I have always owned a media center system, used in the living room for general gaming duties and for playback of bluray discs and MKV files. In this regard, the ASUS GTX670 Direct CU Mini is ideal as it will easily fit into a wide cross section of smaller chassis designs.

There is plenty of power on tap to run demanding games such as Max Payne 3, Tomb Raider and Sleeping Dogs and the redesigned, compressed Direct CU cooler is very capable. ASUS have balanced the fan profile to deliver modest noise levels under load, while maintaining a <80c thermal curve. Considering the cooler is only 17cm long, this is an impressive feat. Your chassis will need decent airflow however, or you can expect the Direct CU fan to work harder.

The card is supplied with a minor overclock, although we found that our review sample had plenty of headroom available. We were able to get another 16% core clock speed, peaking at 1,077mhz. This pushed the performance levels ahead of an overclocked HD7950, but behind the Sapphire HD7970 3GB Boost OC Edition.

This leads us into the biggest concern we have. The price.

You can currently pick this card up on Overclockers UK for around £325 inc vat. There can be no argument that this card is outperformed by the overclocked HD7970's currently available.  Sadly for ASUS, these cards are available for only £5 more – this Sapphire HD7970 3GB Boost OC Edition is available for £329 inc vat for instance. Further challenges also come from the Nvidia stable – many of the GTX770's are available for around £330 inc vat, including this overclocked dual fan model from KFA2.

There is no doubt that we admire the engineering prowess of ASUS. They consistently release some of the finest hardware known to the enthusiast audience. Sadly, it is difficult for us to wholeheartedly recommend the GTX 670 Direct CU Mini, when you can get a significantly more powerful solution from AMD and Nvidia for close to the same price.

If this card ever drops to around £280- £299.99 inc vat then it would be a fantastic purchase. We are actually hoping with the recent release of the GTX770 that ASUS may indeed be considering a price reduction. Today it earns our Worth Buying award, but it comes with a reservation, based around the slightly over the odds pricing.

If you need a small, powerful graphics card, then this should certainly be top of your shortlist. Just be prepared to pay top dollar.

Pros:

• tiny, tiny tiny!
• excellent all round performance.
• not too loud.
• plenty of overclocking headroom.
• ideal for a powerful media center system build.

Cons:

• not very cost effective when compared to high performance HD7970's and GTX770's.

Kitguru says: A marvellous little card and very capable of handling the latest Direct X games at 1080p resolution. The price needs to come down though.

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