Reviews - Pro-Clockers! PC Reviews One MegaHertz At A Time

Introduction to the ASUS Radeon HD 6850 DirectCU V2

We have reviewed several ASUS motherboards over the past couple of months. Which, if you have tuned into any tech site as of late you might think that is all they make, but that is far from the case. ASUS has their hands in many different ventures ranging from motherboard, laptops, high quality sound cards, monitors, networking products and many others. Second to motherboards though, their video cards are best sellers.

Of the many different classes of graphic cards, we typically see ASUS releasing high powered pre-overclocked models. As of late, said high powered model's title would be DirectCU. The overview of this DirectCU technology is that the Copper (Cu) heat pipes that help to form the graphics card's cooling system, come in direct contact with the GPU for a significant improvement of thermal transfer. According to ASUS this makes for a 20% increase cooling performance, and lower noise at idle due to the fan not having to spin as fast.

We have seen many retailers’ sites featuring this line of cards and we have the opportunity to look at one today. The ASUS Radeon EAH6850 boasts this DirectCU cooling technology, as well as a 790MHz overclocked Barts GPU up from the default 775MHz. Based on AMD’s latest TSMC 40nm processing, the HD6850 tops out at a mere 127 watts for power consumption. Meaning a good 500W power supply should be good enough to power one of these beauties.