ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP 2GB Review

[siopao1984]

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Quick recap on the GTX 670As we can see from this block diagram of the GK104 die, the GTX 670 has one of eight SMX units disabled, which is a common way of putting crocked ASICs that do not meet full binning standards to good use instead of throwing them away. As a result, the GTX 670 has 12.5% less fillrate/pixel pushing performance and lower TDP than the GTX 680, much like how the HD 7950 Tahiti Pro is to the HD 7970 Taihiti XT. Given that everything else remains the same (number of ROPs, memory bus bandwidth, fancy AA algorithms and other technologies), do the loss of shaders really matter for most use cases? We find out in the following pages..
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The red slash marks box design of the ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP is similar to the GTX 680 we reviewed a while ago, which is not too surprising given their common heritage.

Most of the recent graphics cards with the DirectCU II coolers that we've seen recently from ASUS have reverted back to the more practical 2-slot design (rather than obtuse 3-slot), allowing for better motherboard compatibility and quad-GPU setups. Having said that, ASUS opted for their own custom PCB which is longer than the surprisingly short 7-inch board from Nvidia, presumably to accomodate the extra power circuitry.

No changes at the I/O panel from the reference GTX670/GTX680 offerings (1 x HDMI, 1 x DP, 2 x DVI).

There is also a metal backplate at the back spanning across the whole card, adding to the impression that it is a premium product. A beefy four micro-capacitors can be found behind the GPU core, which can give it more instantaneous power as opposed to two on the regular board.

Two 6-pin PCIe power inputs add 150W of power on top of the 75W supplied by the slot (GTX 670 has a 170W TDP). There are red/green LEDs to indicate if the connectors are plugged in correctly.

Read more: ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP 2GB Review by VR-Zone.com

[siopao1984]

When we popped the heatsink off, we found a radically reworked PCB.



6+2 phase power with Super Alloy chokes





ASUS's propietary DIGI+ VRM controller that is also found on their other boards





Implacable quality of the resistors and soldering





Eight of Hynix's H5GQ1H24AFR-R0C GDDR5 memory chips clocked at 1.5GHz make up the 2GB of frame buffer.





The 28nm TSMC made GK104 Kepler, although not as GP compute friendly (dismal 1/32 DP ratio) as its direct AMD Taihiti competitor, is an efficiency monster when it comes to 3D benchmarks and gaming. Actual frequency headroom varies with voltage and the quality of the ASIC, but generally we should be able to hit 1.2-1.35GHz with conventional cooling and near 2GHz with subzero.





ASUS have deployed their DirectCU II coolers in their non-reference offerings for quite some time now, albeit with slight variations. They all incorporate Heatpipe Direct Touch (HDT) technology and PWM enabled fans to ramp up the airflow when neccessary.

[siopao1984]

Software

ASUS's GPU Tweak software initially debuted with the HD 7970 at the start of this year and since then it has gone from a buggy mess to a usable and polished tool for overclocking GPUs. Curiously, the latest 2.1.7.1 version still interfaces with the Nvidia driver API, providing only regular GPU Boost parameters and locking out actual access to the GPU voltages above 1.175v. The power cap on this board can be raised to a meagre 117% which sadly is not going to be breaking any world records.



Thermals

With the fans set at 100% and using the very unforgiving Furmark 1.101 stress test, we registered an acceptable temperature of 59 degrees celcius at stock and 64 degrees celcius when overclocked, which is below the 70 degrees throttling threshold enforced by GPU Boost. Normal games and applications should run way cooler this this.







Overclocking

By default, the ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP comes factory overclocked an impressive 157MHz higher than the default core boost clock of 980MHz. Unfortunately, we were only able to maintain stability with +20MHz more after that and also a marginal +75MHz on the memory clocks. Note that the card we had was from a local retailer's stock and not a cherry-picked media sample.

[siopao1984]

Test Setup

CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4817MHz 1.52v

Motherboard: ASUS Rampage IV Extreme (Bios 001

Memory: G.Skills ARES 2133MHz DDR3 16GB Kit

Power Supply: Antec True Quattro Pro 1200W

Storage: Intel 520 series 240GB SSD

Graphics Cards / Drivers:
304.79 (PCIe 3.0 fix applied)
ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP

304.48
Nvidia GTX 680 2GB

Catalyst 12.7 Beta
AMD Radeon HD7970 GHz Edition
AMD Radeon HD7970 3GB



To prevent GPU Boost (NVIDIA's adaptive throttling mechanism) from interfering with the clocks, we need to change this setting in the Nvidia Control Panel.





Benchmarks











As we can see from the above benchmarks, the ASUS 670 DirectCU II actually is head to head and sometimes ahead of its more prestigious competition at stock and when overclocked. Having said that, the other cards still have significant overclocking headroom though, but they cost more.

[siopao1984]

Conclusion



Price: USD$429 / SGD $659 (Cybermind)

Priced slightly more than the reference GTX 670, the ASUS GTX 670 DCII TOP actually makes good value for money considering that it is able to hang with cards costing almost US$100 more, proof that raw fill rate and shaders count ain't everything.

Pros
High Factory Overclock
Quiet and efficient cooling solution
PCIe 3.0 support (including on SB-E)
Good power circuitry

Cons
Not much core overclocking headroom
Still no true software voltage control
Only 2GB of RAM





Image credits to Chinese VR-Zone

[ryan101@yahoo.com]

nice card nindot sad ang backplate pila kaha ni...........

[akomao]

i dont know. i dont like the 6 series direct cu ii.

nag change unta sila.

[jimmy128]

im inlove.....