Asus Radeon HD 7970 Direct CU II is coming

[Tha Last Meal]

ere are the first pictures of ASUS' premium DirectCu II graphics card designed around AMD's Radeon HD 7970 GPU. The design is based on giving the GPU a powerful cooling solution, backed by a custom-design PCB. Since its cooling solution spans across three expansion slots, one of the three expansion slot brackets is productively used to provide additional display connectivity. To begin with, the PCB uses a 10+1+1 ASUS Digi+ VRM that draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. It supports heavy overclocking, and provides several voltage tuning features.

A common metal heatsink spans along the length of the card, making contact with VRM and memory components. On top of this sits the DirectCu II heatsink. This heatsink uses a large aluminum fin-stack heatsink to which heat from the GPU is conveyed by six heat-pipes, which make direct contact with it. The heatsink itself isn't very thick, but what makes the card span across three slots are its two 100 mm fans. The GPU is clocked out of the box at 1000 MHz (vs. 925 MHz reference), and 5.60 GHz/1400 MHz actual memory (vs. 5.50 GHz/1375 MHz actual reference).

Some pictures:








For more information and details

[FlanK3r]

sweet baby .

[paulbagz]

Wonder what warranty they will provide if people "miss-solder" those points on the back?

-PB

[PatRaceTin]

wow this card look good!!!

[xman01]

Liking what I'm seeing

about 650usd? won't buy that!

[bill_d]

stop with the bigger and bigger turboprops and just put a waterblock on that thing

[Lanek]

stop with the bigger and bigger turboprops and just put a waterblock on that thing

Different purpose and customers, im not a fan of 3 slots coolers, but they just target consumers who want install 1 card and stay on air cooling, without buying 3th party aircoolers ... hopefully a lot of motherboard offfer 3slots spacing now for CFX too... ( but forget to install 3 or 4 gpus )... When thoses 3 slots have appears, i was really dubitative, but after seen some posts on different forums and where peoples with 3x 500dollars cards, respond they are affraid to install a 3th party coolers and broke something. i start to understand there's customers for this.

Its allways problematic, i watercool all my hardware ( at least cpu and gpu's ), so i dont care about a "aircooler " but im interested on some other features can bring the card ( direct sensors access and hardmod )... But i dont want pay 100dollars more fore a cooler who will lay somewhere.

[WangChung]

Could always sell the cooler I guess. Pretty cool hardware features!

[Lanek]

Well on a certain sense, its better to keep it, if you need to return the card, you better to have it somewhere ...

[K404]

If the PCB had front and rear heatsinking/ component protection plates, I guess there's no reason for nV and ATI to not ship cards without coolers- buyer supplies their own. Intel and AMD have trusted us to install a heatsink for 10 years now.

Factory shipping weight for 1000 cards drops by easily half, takes up half the space.

[Lanek]

If the PCB had front and rear heatsinking/ component protection plates, I guess there's no reason for nV and ATI to not ship cards without coolers- buyer supplies their own. Intel and AMD have trusted us to install a heatsink for 10 years now.

Factory shipping weight for 1000 cards drops by easily half, takes up half the space.

There's at least one problem, and this is the warranty. The first things who will be returned to you, is the fact, the cooler you have installed could have been the cause of the problem.
Specially when it come to cooling. a lot of RMA are offtly due to bad memory chips or VRM ( rarely the core itself ), who have degrade on time due to the "normal" heat, voltage.

If they sell only pcb, they will not put any warranty on it.

[matose]

As mentioned here, this is the DirectCU II TOP model and will come in limited supply due to AMD GPU shortage

[ClockZ]

Had a 580 with that cooler, while big it was the best air cooler I have ever used. Handled temps very good and was very quiet. Card looks good to me.

[dasa]

ah nice that 7970 should go well with a universal gpu block

[bill_d]

There's at least one problem, and this is the warranty. The first things who will be returned to you, is the fact, the cooler you have installed could have been the cause of the problem.
Specially when it come to cooling. a lot of RMA are offtly due to bad memory chips or VRM ( rarely the core itself ), who have degrade on time due to the "normal" heat, voltage.

If they sell only pcb, they will not put any warranty on it.

i just would like more than just powercolor to have a watercooled version with a warranty, with just the powercolor LCS they are just too hard find

and now with xfx getting picky about cooler change out

[Silver Bullet]

Listed on newegg - http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16814121499

$599, but oos.

Price is pretty high, IMO waiting till Nv shows their cards is probably the best move at this point.

[Aberration]

I like it! Easy to pop off the heatsink and add a water block

[masterg]

maybe amd and nv should sell un-cooler-ed gpus too :P >_>

[SKYMTL]

As mentioned here, this is the DirectCU II TOP model and will come in limited supply due to AMD GPU shortage

Since when are the TOP versions NOT a limited edition, regardless of a "GPU shortage"?

[M.Beier]

I sense alot of RMA issues inbound.
But I am happy that ASUS has the balls to pull this one.

[Rattle]

I sense alot of RMA issues inbound.
But I am happy that ASUS has the balls to pull this one.

Why do you say that? They are beefed up in every respect from the components on the pcb to basically the best air cooling available.

[MaddMuppet]

Why do you say that? They are beefed up in every respect from the components on the pcb to basically the best air cooling available.

That and 1000 mhz on the core is far from it's limits. Even on the stock cards, I have seen much higher clocks than that.

[M.Beier]

Why do you say that? They are beefed up in every respect from the components on the pcb to basically the best air cooling available.

Wuhuuuu, a question I can answer with a couple of pictures;






They are suggesting people to mod, it can give quite some headache with RMA - as an overclocker I think this is cool, and a great move, but, I am suprised that they have the guts to pull this one.

[solofly]

Those things take up too much room...

[Dalten]

Had a 580 with that cooler, while big it was the best air cooler I have ever used. Handled temps very good and was very quiet. Card looks good to me.

How did you have it mounted, was the fan pointing up or down? I have a 580 with this cooler and it's pretty nice, but it does a pretty nasty flaw. The heatsink isn't attached very well to the PCB because on mine, my PCIE cables actually drag the entire card downward, bending it a decent amount. You'd think it would be built so that the 3 slot backplate would support the card, but there's hardly any structural integrity on mine to keep it from bending. After a month of using it, all of a sudden i started getting artifacts in games, and soon after crashes non stop... I decided i'd RMA, but before I sent it in to Asus, i reseated it and the problems went away 100%. Wierd. It started happening again a month later. Reseated, presto, good as new. Anyway, I found out what's causing it is how much the card droops inside the case. My PCIE cables put a little drag on the card, bending it downward on the end a little bit. Overtime, i guess some contacts start getting shakey and it becomes unstable. I solved by simply using a ziptie to keep it straight by tying it to the top my case, but I wouldn't buy a card like this again knowing i'd have to jury rig it to keep it working properly.