Asus Radeon HD 6870 DirectCU Review
PrintAt just less than $250, the Asus variant of AMD’s Radeon HD 6870 delivers excellent performance. While it is somewhat overshadowed by its newer cousin, the HD 6950, it costs considerably less than that part. If you do most of your gaming on a single 1080p display, this card won’t disappoint.
Even though Asus only pushes the clock rate slightly—915MHZ versus the stock 900MHz— the finned backplate gets pretty warm after a stiff gaming session. This card also shows one of the key weaknesses of Asus’s DirectCU cooler—it’s noticeably more noisy than a standard HD 6870.
On the other hand, unlike cards built on AMD’s reference design, the HD 6870 DirectCU ships with two full-size DisplayPort connectors, plus one dual-link DVI and one single-link DVI port. And if you crave an HDMI connection, the card comes with a DVI-to-HDMI adapter. System idle power was 140W, while the full-throttle power draw was just slightly over 250W.
In the end, Asus delivers a unique take on the Radeon HD 6870 while keeping the price to a reasonable level. If you have a well-ventilated case, the feature-rich HD 6870 DirectCU is the clear winner in this matchup.
Asus Radeon HD 6870 DirectCU
DRACULA
Good gaming performance at a reasonable cost; low power draw.
EDWARD
It’s louder than we like; gets a little hot on the back of the card.
9
SPECS
| Asus Radeon HD 6870 DirectCU | |
|---|---|
| Shader Units* | 1,120 |
| Texture Units | 56 |
| ROPs | 32 |
| Power Connectors | 2 x 6-pin |
| Core Clock | 915MHz |
| Shader Clock | NA |
| GDDR5 Memory Clock | 1,050MHz |
| GDDR5 Frame Buffer | 1GB |
| Memory Interface | 256-bit |
Benchmarks
| Asus Radeon HD 6870 DirectCU | |
|---|---|
| 3DMark 2011 | 4,314 |
| 3DMark Vantage | 17,041 |
| Unigine Heaven 2.1 (fps) | 18 |
| Crysis (fps) | 29 |
| Battle Forge (fps) | 42 |
| Far Cry 2 (fps) | 78 |
| F1 2010 (fps) | 54 |
| HAWX 2 (fps) | 77 |
| Metro 2033 (fps) | 20 |
| STALKER: CoP (fps) | 34 |
| Just Cause 2 Concrete Jungle (fps) | 35 |
| Aliens vs. Predator (fps) | 26 |
| Power @ idle (W) | 140 |
| Power @ full throttle (W) | 252 |
Our test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7-975 Extreme Edition in an Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard with 6GB of DDR3/1333 and an 850TX Corsair PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows Ultimate. All games are run at 1920x1200 with 4x AA.
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