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- Date:
- Monday , March 11, 2013
- Author:
- David Schroth
- Editor:
- Brent Justice
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ASUS HD 7970 DirectCU II Video Card Review
Today we have the ASUS HD 7970 DirectCU II strapped to our test bench for your reading pleasure. We will compare it to the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition and to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 to determine whether the custom VRMs and DirectCU II cooling solution are the droids you are looking for in your next graphics card purchase.
Introduction
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. is one of the largest and most successful computer hardware manufacturers in the world. A Taiwan-based company, it manufactures a wide variety of computer hardware, including motherboards, video cards, optical drives, notebooks, networking equipment, barebones desktop, and server systems, among many others.
On our test bench today is the ASUS HD 7970 DirectCU II (HD7970-DC2-3GD5) video card.
AMD Radeon HD 7970
AMD released its first of the next generation GPU with the Radeon HD 7970 on December 22nd, 2011, codenamed "Tahiti." This released ruled the market in both performance and price until NVIDIA released the GeForce GTX 680 which had better performance and a lower price. AMD continued its release of the Radeon HD 7950 on January 30th, 2012 and later on with the Radeon HD 7870 and 7850 video cards on March 4th, 2012, codenamed "Pitcairn."
Although AMD released the Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition cards, they did not replace the original Radeon HD 7970 within their lineup. Instead, they offered the cards at a lower price point between that of the Radeon HD 7950 and the Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition. The reference design of the original 7970 has the GPU running at 925MHz and the memory running at 1375MHz or 5.5GHz GDDR5. The GPU has 128 Texture Units, 32 ROP's, 128 Z/Stencils, and 3GB of GDDR5 memory on a 384-bit bus. The typical board power for each video card is 250 Watts.
ASUS HD 7970 DirectCU II
The ASUS HD 7970 DirectCU II is clocked at reference Radeon HD 7970 speeds and sports ASUS’s DirectCU II cooling solution. It is configured with 3GB of GDDR5 memory running at a 5.5GHz effective rate and the GPU is clocked at 925MHz. The cooling system is comprised of six heat pipes that carry heat away from the GPU to aluminum fins that are cooled by a pair of fans. The entire cooling solution is enclosed in a sturdy metal shroud that ducts air out the back of the case.
The card features ASUS’s DIGI+ VRM with a 12-phase Super Allow Power technology as an upgrade from the reference Radeon HD 7970 VRM configuration. ASUS also included the VGA Hotwire functionality, which provides for easy access pads to measure core voltage, memory voltage and PLL voltage with a voltmeter. The card also supports up to 6 concurrent displays via its two DVI ports and four display ports. That means this card is an Eyefinity 6-way card out-of-the-box. It will also support one dual link DVI monitor at the expense of one of the display ports.
The ASUS HD 7970 DirectCU II comes with a 3 year factory warranty and is currently rather difficult to find in stock. It was last seen going for $524.99 with 2 in stock at time of writing, however, stock appears to be running very low and some retailers have marked it as discontinued. We reached out to ASUS about this shortage and ASUS's official response on the shortage is explained as such: "The shortage was due to the an adjustment we had for the new year and AMD adjusted roadmap strategy."
We have learned that the SKU is still in full production and more inventory is coming. ASUS says that on the part of Newegg, when a product has gone out of inventory for 2 weeks it goes into auto discontinued status on their website, but this does not mean the 7970 DCII is discontinued. The 7970 DCII is an active product, and ASUS claims we should see inventory start to fill up in a week to a week and a half. By April ASUS should be back up to full production and are seeing strong supply for the coming months.
ASUS HD 7970 DirectCU II Images
The ASUS HD 7970 DirectCU II is packaged in a black box complete with a warrior mounted on a horse. The front of the box highlights some of the features of the card including the 3GB of RAM, Eyefinity Multi-Display Technology, DIGI+ VRM and GPU Tweak. The box also claims that the DirectCU II solution is 20% cooler and 14dB quieter. The back of the box further clarifies the performance claims by specifying that the reduction in heat and noise is in relation to a "Generic Radeon HD 7970". Inside the box, ASUS included a quick start guide, a driver CD, 2x PCI-E 6 pin power to PCI-e 8 pin adapter, a CrossFire bridge, a DVI to HDMI adapter and a MOSFET heatsink for use when LN2 cooling.
The front of the ASUS HD 7970 DirectCU II features a matte black fan shroud covering the heat pipe assembly and fans. The back of the card is also covered in a thin black metal assembly that appears to further dissipate heat generated from the card. The cooling assembly is huge and needs three slots worth of space within your rig in addition to a bit more head room than the average card, as it extends about an inch above the back plate bracket.
On the I/O panel there are six ports. These include four DP ports and two DVI-I connectors.. The power connectors are on top of the video card and require two 8-pin PCI-e connections. There is a switch on the card next to the CrossFire connectors that switches the card between 6 single link displays and 5 displays (with one being dual link capable). The video card’s measurements are 11 inches in Length, 2.1 inches Wide, and 5.1 inches in Height.
Display Issue
We started the review process on this card quite a while ago after receiving the review sample from ASUS and began to put it through the usual paces. We noticed immediately that it did not cooperate well with our Dell 3007WFP monitor, where it produced a corrupted BIOS screen and green speckled artifacts within Windows. We went through basic troubleshooting steps before sending it back for replacement as we believed the card to be defective at that time. Of course, prior to sending the card back, we could not resist disassembling it and taking additional pictures for your viewing pleasure.
Fast forward a few months later after receiving a replacement card from ASUS, with assurances that the video card worked fine. We plugged it in and fired it up to be met with the same issues that the prior card had. We tried a second Dell 3007WFP monitor and even a completely different system with a different motherboard, to rule that out. We believe there is some sort of compatibility issue specifically between the Dell 3007WFP monitor and this card, specifically when running via the dual-link DVI port at 2560x1600. Resolutions that only required a single link of bandwidth (whether over DVI or DP) did not cause any issues with our test equipment.
This is an extremely specific kind of comparability issue that only occurred with the Dell 3007WFP in dual-link mode at 2560x1600. Other displays worked fine, and the on board Display Port connectors also worked fine. Also, the DVI ports in single-link resolutions, 1920x1080 and downward also worked fine. So if you specifically have a Dell 3007WFP and are going to run it on this card at 2560x1600, you will have a problem with screen corruption. However, if you run on the Display Ports, or less than 2560x1600 on the DVI port, it will also work fine. We confirmed it is a display issue because when we took screenshots within Windows, there was no corruption at all, meaning the GPU was fine, it is strictly something after the RAMDAC that is causing interference in the display in that specific scenario.
We were still able to move forward with our evaluation and play games at 2560x1600.
This is a photograph of the corruption you will see in that scenario when the computer is booting up.
We contacted ASUS again about the issue, and got a pleasant reply that ASUS is going to fine tune its custom design of its output configuration in future models which should resolve the issue we experienced.
We have been internally looking into the issue since you originally reported it. It has been difficult to duplicate as it looks to be sensitivity related and can be even impacted by variance in shielding of the cable and other factors. We have been able to resolve the issue with different cables. That being noted we have we worked and fine tuned the custom design of our output configuration. HQ is communicating the new design will resolve the issue you are experiencing with the current usage environment and cables you are using now. This new design will be the same one coming in next week.
When we get one of these cards we will test it and follow-up with confirmation that it is working fine on these displays.