ASUS Radeon 6970 DirectCU II review - Introduction

Very few names in the graphics card industry have the balls to take a GPU and then redesign a completely new infrastructure around it. Amongst them ASUS, as they took a Radeon HD 6970 GPU... and did just that. They designed a PCB around it, then used a rather sizable cooler and labeled the product EAH6970 DCII/2DI4S/2GD5.

Of course it doesn't stop there though, they made the card voltage tweakable with ASUS Smart Doctor software.

ASUS applied a very nifty selection in components, upgraded the memory, added a lot of extra features, armed it with the new DirectCU II cooler and factory overclocked the product for you (although near silly, a little 10 MHz). Then ASUS figures, hmm, what else can we do with the card? So they added 6 monitor outputs with the help of two DVI & four DisplayPort outputs. Once you take a look at that, it's nearly puzzling how they fitted that into the card really.

Anyway, the end result is a product that is thee slots (!) in size, but yeah, it's silent, cools well and armed with a little voltage tweaking you can take the card well over a full GHz.

Let's have a peek and then head onwards into the review.