Asus GTX760 Direct CU Mini and HD7850 Direct CU II V2 Review

1. Introduction2. Asus GTX760 Direct CU Mini3. Asus GTX760 Direct CU Mini (Super High Res Gallery)4. Asus HD7850 Direct CU II V25. Asus HD7850 Direct CU II V2 (Super High Res Gallery)6. Testing Methodology7. Unigine Heaven Benchmark8. Unigine Valley Benchmark9. 3DMark Vantage10. 3DMark 1111. 3DMark12. Alien V Predator13. Sleeping Dogs14. Total War: ROME 215. Dirt Showdown16. Tomb Raider17. Metro Last Light18. GRID 219. Splinter Cell: Blacklist20. Thermal Dynamics21. Acoustics Performance22. Power Consumption23. Overclocking24. Closing Thoughts25. View All Pages

Today we are taking a look at two interesting graphics cards from ASUS – the GTX760 Direct CU Mini and the HD7850 Direct CU II. The GTX760 Direct CU Mini is specifically designed for use in mini ITX builds, measuring only 170mm. The HD7850 Direct CU II is going to target a large gaming audience as it is currently available in the United Kingdom at a very competitive £149.99 inc vat.

We have reviewed many ASUS graphics cards in the last year featuring their proprietary Direct CU coolers and they perform very well. ASUS don't tend to skimp on component selection so you can be generally guaranteed a high quality product.

The GTX 760 Direct CU Mini is only 170mm long, or around 70mm shorter than a reference Nvidia GTX760, which measures 240mm. Asus have not only managed to fit their GTX760 Mini onto a super small PCB but they have also overclocked the core to 1,072mhz.

Such a clever, diminutive design will demand a price premium and it is currently available from SCAN in the United Kingdom for £227.71 inc vat.

The Direct CU Mini  adopts a single Cooltech fan which delivers a wider airflow under the components underneath. This Direct CU cooler features a vapor chamber which Asus claim reduces the temperatures by 9c under load.

The Asus HD7850 Direct CU II V2 is remarkable due to the competitive pricing right now in the United Kingdom. It is available from OCUK for £149.99 inc vat, sporting the latest Direct CU II cooler. This twin fan cooling system adopts direct contact heatpipes to improve cooling performance.

To make the review more interesting we managed to get hold of two of the Asus HD7850 Direct CU II V2 cards, so we could show performance in Crossfire. After all, if you are short on funds you could pick a single card up now, and add another a later date. For reference we throw in some comparisons against a Palit GTX760 JetStream, a VTX3D HD7870 Tahiti LE and a Sapphire HD7950.


The box holding the Asus GTX760 Direct CU Mini is tiny. There is a depiction of the cooling system on the front of the box.

The bundle includes a software disc, a power converter cable and some literature on the product. Always best ensuring you download the latest drivers direct from the Nvidia website however.

The dual slot Asus GTX760 Direct CU Mini is built on a 170mm black PCB. The single fan rests at the right of the card and the CoolTech fan is designed to force a wide span of air across the components underneath and out the rear of the case.

The card has two DVI ports, a single HDMI port and a DisplayPort. All outputs can be used simultaneously so triple monitor is possible. There is audio supported via HDMI 1.4a.

There are two SLi connectors, to allow for 2,3 and 4 way configurations.

The GTX760 Direct CU Mini takes power from a single 8 pin connector rather than two 6 pin connectors. This can support up to 225Watts of power.

The cooler uses a vapor chamber baseplate. The cooler has dedicated support for the memory chips and VRM components. The GDDR5 memory chips are by SK Hynix and are specified to run at 1,500mhz (6Gbps effective).

The Nvidia GK104 core is built on the 28nm process. There are 32 ROPS, 96 TMU's and 1,152 Cuda Cores. The 2GB of GDDR5 memory is connected via a 256 bit memory interface. The GPU clock is set to 1,006mhz with a turbo boost of 1,072mhz. The reference GTX760 is clocked at 980mhz core.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.







The artwork is instantly recognisable as Asus have used this ‘claw design' on many of their boxes over the last 18 months.

The bundle includes a Crossfire cable, video converter and software disc, with literature. We always grab the latest drivers direct from the AMD download site.

The cooler adopts the traditional red and black colour scheme that Asus frequently use. The cooler overhangs the PCB by a noticeable margin.

If you are paying attention you will see that the two fans are actually different. The fan on the right has 11 smaller blades, and the fan on the left has 9 thick blades. The idea is that the air will be forced across from the fan on the right while the fan on the left will enhance the flow across the components and out the rear of the case, while reducing air flow noise between the fans.

The Asus HD7850 Direct CU II V2 features two DVI connectors alongside a full sized HDMI and Displayport connector. This card has full Eyefinity support for multi monitor gaming.

The card takes power from only a single 6 pin power connector.

The HD7850 is Crossfire capable in a 2 way configuration. AMD only support 3 or 4 way Crossfire capabilities with more expensive cards in the range.

The Asus HD7850 cooler is a Direct contact design, with three heatpipes running into a rack of aluminum fins.

The Asus HD7850 is clocked at 860mhz, and the memory runs at 1,200mhz (4.8Gbps effective). The Pitcairn Core has 32 ROPS, 64 TMU's and 1,024 shaders. The 2 GB of GDDR5 memory is connected via a 256 bit memory interface.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.






For our review today we are using the ForceWare 326.80 and Catalyst 13.10 Beta Drivers. These drivers have the latest fixes and performance enhancements, although just as we finished the review  Nvidia released their latest 327.23 driver. We didn't have time to retest for this review, but we will look at the latest Nvidia driver in our next review.

We test against a handful of other AMD and Nvidia solutions today,



We are using one of our brand new test rigs supplied by PCSPECIALIST and built to our specifications. If you want to read more about this, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page.

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Sleeping Dogs
Total War: Rome 2
Dirt Showdown
Tomb Raider
Metro Last Light
GRID 2
Alien V Predator
Splinter Cell Blacklist

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset.

A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the settings shown above at 1920×1080.



Performance from both cards is good. In Crossfire, HD7850 scaling is almost double, from 42 frames per second to 82 frames per second.

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

We test with the settings above both at 1920×1080.



Performance is good again all round from all cards on test.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.



The Asus GTX760 Direct CU Mini scores well, just behind the full sized, overclocked Palit GTX760 Jetstream solution. The single HD7850 scores 22,235 points and Crossfire scaling is impressive, hitting 40,330 points.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.



Not a surprise to see the ASUS HD7850 Crossfire configuration leading the pack, with 10,548 points which is pretty good scaling over the single card score of 5,836 points. The Asus GTX760 Direct CU Mini scores 8,511 points, just behind the Sapphire HD7950.

3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”



The Crossfired HD7850 cards score 8,322 points which is significantly ahead of the HD7950 in second place. The Asus GTX760 Direct CU Mini scores 6,108 points, just ahead of the VTX3D HD7870 Tahiti LE GPU.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1920×1080 resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on.

All of the cards can handle this game at 1920×1080 without dropping below 30 frames per second at any time. The Asus HD7850 scales well in Crossfire, jumping from an average of 56fps to 110 fps. The Asus GTX760 Direct CU Mini averages 91 frames per second for super smooth gameplay.
Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series. As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

This game is still a system killer at these maximised settings. We test at 1920×1080.

Good results in this demanding engine with very high image quality settings. The single HD7850 card averages 28 frames per second, jumping to 54 frames per second in Crossfire. The GTX760 Mini averages 42 frames per second although the minimum frame rate did drop to 25 frames per second once during our test environment – which is borderline for smooth gameplay.
Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time. Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city. This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

To test the cards today we use the ULTRA profile settings shown above at 1920×1080.

The latest Directx X 11 real time strategy game in the Total War Series is demanding. All cards are playable at these high image quality settings, even the single HD7850 which averages 40 frames per second. When two cards are in Crossfire, the average frame rate jumps from 40 to 59.
Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

Today we test the hardware at 1920×1080 with the Ultra profile and 8 x MSAA.

This engine has always favoured AMD drivers/hardware, but all cards are perfectly playable at 1080p, even with 8x MSAA enabled in the control panel. The HD7850 averages 50 frames per second, jumping to 91 frames per second when two cards are configured in Crossfire. The Asus GTX760 Mini averages 61 frames per second.
After a delayed release from late 2012 to March 2013, the game received much anticipation and hype. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.

We use the ULTIMATE profile shown above and test at 1920×1080.

The single Asus HD7850 struggles to hold a frame rate above the sweet spot of 25, at all times. The GTX760 Mini on the other hand generates around 5-8 frames per second more, meaning smooth frame rates throughout. In Crossfire however, the HD7850 cards produce an average of 62 frames per second.
Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike.

4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.

We test this game with the built in benchmark with very high quality settings at 1920×1080 – details shown in the image above.

These settings are higher than those we would use in real life situations, but they do show worst case results when the image quality is cranked high.
Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid.  It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.

We test at 1920×1080 with the Ultra image quality preset, as shown above. 8x MSAA was enabled to improve image quality.

The Asus GTX760 Mini is very closely matched with the Sapphire HD7950 solution, only a couple of frames per second slower. The Asus HD7850 scores an average of 51 frames per second – which increases to 95 when two cards are configured in Crossfire.
Splinter Cell Blacklist is the sixth installment in the series.

The game begins with Sam Fisher and his old friend Victor Coste who are about to depart from Andersen AFB in Guam when an unknown enemy force destroys the entire base. Assisted by hacker specialist Charlie Cole, Sam and Vic manage to escape, although Vic is injured after protecting Sam from a grenade. Soon after, a terrorist group calling itself “The Engineers” assumes responsibility for the attack and announce that it was the first of a deadly countdown of escalating attacks (called “The Blacklist”) on United States assets, declaring that they will halt the attacks only after the U.S. government accomplish the demand of calling back all American troops deployed abroad.

Blacklist had some performance issues until Nvidia released the 326.80 beta driver, which we are using today.

We test with a series of high image quality settings as shown above and with 4x MSAA and 16 x Anisotropic filtering enabled.

These are demanding settings for the hardware on test today. The single HD7850 struggles to maintain smooth frame rates, and the image quality settings would need to be reduced to compensate. In Crossfire however the results are improved substantially, with the average frame rate increasing from 25 to 50.

A single GTX760 Mini produces smooth frame rates throughout, averaging 40 and dropping only 5 in more intensive sections of the environment.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes.Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature.

We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.


The Asus GTX760 Mini does a good job considering the tiny size, but it does have to work hard to maintain good temperatures. When gaming, the card peaks around 75c. This rises to just over 80c under the synthetic Furmark load.

The Direct CU II cooler on the HD7850 does a great job, holding temperatures at 64c under gaming load.
We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide

10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The Asus GTX760 Direct CU Mini disappointed me a little in regards to the acoustics performance. It was the loudest card on test today, peaking around 36-37dBA under heavy, extended load. The Asus HD7850 and Sapphire HD7950 on the other hand were very quiet.
To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and the synthetic stress test Furmark and record both results.

The results are interesting because the ASUS GTX760 Mini has clearly received some power tweaks, evident by the Furmark result of 224 watts. We would imagine that Asus have increased the power limit of the card so the clock speeds can be maintained.
For our overclocking tests today we used the latest version of MSI Afterburner, which is based around Rivatuner.


There is plenty of headroom on the HD7850 core, stable at 1050mhz, a 22% overclock over the out of the box figures. The memory also overclocked well, rising to 1,450mhz. There is also some headroom on the GTX760 Mini, overclocking from 1,006mhz to 1,113mhz. This translates to a 10.6% overclock, which is very good.


The overclocks on both cards translate into some tangible real world benefits, especially for the HD7850 solution.
The Asus GTX760 Direct CU Mini may be a tiny little graphics card, but it packs plenty of performance if you are building a new system inside a diminutive case such as the Lian Li PC Q11, Q25 or Q30.

The GTX760 Direct CU Mini is around 7cm smaller than the reference Nvidia GTX760 solution, however Asus have still managed to overclock the card a little higher to improve performance at high resolutions. There is no doubt that the GTX760 Mini will handle the latest Direct X 11 games at 1080p with image quality set at high levels, ideal for a compact system connected to a large high definition television located in a bedroom or living room.

The compact cooler does an impressive job, holding load temperatures between 70-75c under load, although it does emit a fair share of noise doing so. There are obviously compromises to be made when the engineers are designing such a tiny board, but it did get a little louder than we would have liked. It was even audible at idle, although not too intrusive.

Further overclocking on the GTX760 Mini was not too bad – we managed between 10% and 8% on the core and memory respectively to boost performance above the full sized, overclocked Palit GTX760 JetStream used as a comparison today.

You can pick the Asus GTX760 Direct CU Mini up from Scan in the United Kingdom for £227.71 inc vat.

Pros:

• tiny, and ideal for Mini ITX cases.
• great performance.
• pre-overclocked
• additional 10% headroom on core.

Cons:

• no overclock on memory.
• gets a little noisy.

Kitguru says: A tiny card designed for restrictive cases and packing plenty of power for the latest Direct X 11 games.

The Asus HD7850 Direct CU II graphics card is well priced in the UK today, on sale now for around the £150 inc vat mark in the United Kingdom.

The Direct CU II cooler is class leading for this solution, holding load temperature in the low to mid 60's when gaming. It is also a very quiet cooling system, inaudible when idle and unobtrusive when placed under gaming load. The unique dual fan design discussed earlier in the review helps to ensure that the fans work in cooperation rather than forcing air flow against each other and raising noise levels.

Asus modestly clock this card at 860mhz out of the box, although we were able to push the core 22% higher, to around 1,050mhz. This translated into noticeable real world benefits when gaming, and increased our 3dMark 11 score from 5,836 to over 7,000. The Direct CU II cooler is more than capable of handling the core increases, so we are a little surprised that Asus didn't opt for a modest 950mhz overclock out of the box.

The HD7850 may not get serious attention for hard core gamers, but it can handle many of the latest games at 1080p resolution without causing too much of a problem. Overclocking the core to 1ghz would certainly help improve the minimum frame rates, smoothing out some of the more intensive games.

For those with a limited budget, buying one card now for £150, then adding another at a later date for Crossfire, seems like a good way to stay competitive.

Pros:

• quiet
• excellent cooler.
• massive 20% overclocking headroom.
• decent performance
• good in Crossfire.

Cons:

• Asus should give the card a core clock bump.
• HD7870 isn't much more expensive now.

Kitguru says: A card with massive overclocking headroom and one of the best coolers in the price range.

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