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The Asus HD6970 Direct CU II arrives in a large box with another fantasy style warrior riding a battlehorse. Its all very tongue in cheek, but more importantly there is information on the cooler, clearly displayed at the front.
The bundle includes a folder which contains literature and software, including SmartDoctor, which we will use for overclocking later. Asus also bundle a power converter cable, video adapter and a crossfire cable.
On quick inspection, the card looks identical to the GTX580 we reviewed last week, because they are both using the Direct CU II cooler, which is a metal design. This HD6970 has been redesigned from stratch by the Asus engineers and features a dual fan cooling solution. Just like the GTX580, it weighs a ton. The 80mm fans rest over heatpipes and a parallel aluminum fin array, directly cooling the hardware below. Five copper heatpipes transfer heat to either side of the cooler design ensuring wide cooling coverage.
Asus are also using a ‘Super Alloy Power’ system which is a total overhaul and upgrade of all system components on the PCB. Asus claim a 15% performance increase over the reference board with a 2.5 x life span improvement with 35c cooler operation. We will test some of these claims later.
This board supports CrossfireX in 2, 3 and 4 way configurations. While the reference card demands a 6 pin and an 8 pin power feed, this card requires two 8 pin power connectors, hinting at potential high overclocking capabilities.
The output configuration has again been completely overhauled when compared to the reference design. There are two DVI outputs and four full size displayport connectors for up to 6 screen support.
As we mentioned in the introduction, Asus have opted for a very minor clock increase, leaving the memory at reference figures of 1375mhz (5.5 GBps effective). The core clock has seen a tiny 10mhz increase to 890mhz.
