Conclusion

General		+	-
With the HD 7970 DirectCU II Top ASUS has a very powerful version of AMDs Radeon HD 7970 in its portfolio. The factory overclocking, which is 75 MHz, is well measurable and increases the performance noticeably. This cards performance is very close to a reference GeForce GTX 680 and definitely one of the fastest HD 7970 you can buy. Furthermore there is ASUS' DirectCU II cooler which once more did an awesome job. When running Furmark Burn-In the GPU didn't get hotter than 65 °C. Furthermore the noise leve, even under load, we describe as subjectively silent.		- 2D silent - Noise Level in 3D mode
Performance		+	-
Regarding performance the ASUS HD 7970 Direct CU II Top can almost be compared with a reference GeForce GTX 680 from NVIDIA. On average HD 7970 Direct CU II is a bit slower than the new NVIDIA high-end model but generally the Tahiti based card comes very close to the GK104. It also doens't matter wether you look at synthetic Futuremark performance or real life gaming benchmarks, the performance of this card is on a highly competitive level.		- Performance in general
Overclocking		+	-
Included in the bundle you get the software ASUS GPU Tweak, which allows to adjust the GPU voltage as well as memory frequencies. It has been possible to run 3DMark 11 with 1'080 MHz on the GPU and 6'300 MHz on the memory. Therefore overclockig this card really was fun. Especially the core is remarcable.		- Overclocking GPU 1'200 MHz / Mem 6'400 MHz - Max. 1.25 Volt
Recommendation		+	-
If you should be looking for a very powerful graphics card which comes with a factory overclocking then the ASUS HD 7970 DirectCU II Top definitely can be recommended. Especially for extreme overclockers it will be a great addition that the hot wire feature, which can be found on the Rampage IV Extreme boards from ASUS, can be used quite easily.		- High-End Gaming	- Desktop PC
The ASUS HD 7950 DirectCU II Top gets very good five out of five stars. You can get this card for about CHF 666.- (est. EUR 555.-).

Author: Christian Ney, c.ney@ocaholic.ch Edition and translation: Christian Ney, c.ney@ocaholic.ch Marc Büchel, m.buechel@ocaholic.ch

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 8 - Stone Giant
Page 2 - Technical Data / Specifications	Page 9 - World in Conflict
Page 3 - Preview / Delivery	Page 10 - Resident Evil 5
Page 4 - Testing conditions	Page 11 - Call of Juarez
Page 5 - 3D Mark 11	Page 12 - Far Cry 2
Page 6 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 13 - Overclocking
Page 7 - Unigine Heaven	Page 14 - Conclusion

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