Asus GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 670 was meant to be a more affordable alternative to the GeForce GTX 680, but ASUS didn't see any problem with increasing the tag a little, not it if meant it could heavily overclock the GPU and toss a beast of a cooler on top of it.

For those who haven't read our article on the original GeForce GTX 670, the card is priced at $399 / 379-399 Euro. ASUS's GeForce GTX 670 Direct CU II TOP wants $419 in exchange for its services, and probably just as many Euro in Europe.

The name comes from the well-known DirectCU II cooler, with two fans and a large, long heatsink. This cooling module is as much a deliberate addition on ASUS's part as it is a necessity: the company used a custom PCB and factory-overclocked GPU, which means that there is extra heat to deal with, heat that the reference cooler might not so easily cope with.

Nickel-plated copper heatpipes come in direct contact with the GPU and take heat to the aluminum fins. The 90mm PWM fans disperse it afterwards. All in all, a 20% extra cooling prowess is achieved.

It doesn't hurt that DirectCU II is also much quieter than the alternative. And now we can finally say what those clocks are: 1,110 MHz during normal operation and 1,137 MHz when GPU Boost comes into play. For the sake of comparison, the normal speeds are 915 MHz and 980 MHz, respectively.

A final special perk is the ASUS Digi+ VRM, which lets owners fine-tune card voltage through the GPUTweak software. In addition to the GeForce GTX 670 DirectCu II TOP, ASUS is shipping the GTX 670 DirectCU II, which bears the custom cooler but no alterations to the performance. Consequently, the price is $399 / 399 Euro.

Like all GTX 670 models, ASUS' creations utilize 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 6 GHz, as well as dual-DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connectors.

Posted in: Hardware, Preview