Asus HD 7950 DirectCU II TOP graphics card Review

While we still await the arrival of Nvidia’s Kepler GPU, we can occupy ourselves with AMD’s newly launched “Tahiti” chipset, in the form of the HD 7970 and the HD 7950 graphics cards. These are built on the new Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture using the 28nm fabrication process. Due to this, Tahiti-based graphics cards have almost twice the transistor count, as compared to AMD’s previous flagship Cayman graphics cards (HD 6970). They’ve also managed to squeeze in more shader units, though the ROPs remain the same. The memory bandwidth has also been bumped up, thanks to a 384-bit memory bus, same as the GTX 580. Overall, the new chip looks like a worthy upgrade, on paper at least, but how this power translates into the real world is what we’ll find out today.

This brings us to the Asus HD 7950 we’ll be reviewing, which is their flagship HD 7950, based on the DirectCU II custom cooler and is also their TOP edition, which means it’s factory overclocked. The HD7950-DC2T-3GD5 (we’ll just call it the Asus HD 7950, for simplicity sake) is priced similarly to last year's Nvidia GTX 580, so it’s not cheap by any means. Let’s see what Asus has done to sweeten the deal. 

Design and Build
Asus bundles the card in their usual packaging with the model name and other features clearly highlighted on the outside. The card is packaged extremely well, with the card cocooned in a strong Styrofoam mould. As part of the bundle, we get a CrossFire cable, two power cables, one miniDP to DVI converter, driver and utility disk and a manual. A word of warning, this card is not for meant for the average joe and by that I mean someone who has any run of the mill chassis, since this is a big card and I’m not exaggerating. Due to the DirectCU II cooler, it takes up expansion slots, so be prepared to move some things around before you install it. Also, if you happen to have a motherboard, where the SATA ports don’t face outwards, then this thing is going to block most of them. Despite being so monstrously big, it’s not very heavy, since it uses as aluminium heatsink.

A striking looking card

The rear ports include two miniDP ports, HDMI 1.4a and a DVI-I port. The card also supports Eyefinity up to 6 displays with the correct cables. The main USP of this card, however is the superior cooling ensemble fitted onto the GPU. DirectCU II uses copper heatpipes that come in contact directly with the GPU core, rather than having an extra piece of metal in between, which slows down the heat transfer. We’ve seen this type of technology being used in CPU heatsinks very often.

Good set of connectors

The heat is then spread across the two blocks of aluminium fins, which is eventually cooled by the two fans. This is a much simpler and cheaper solution, than using a vapor chamber. The metal shell covering the heatsink doesn’t cover the card entirely, so even though there are exhaust vents in the back, little hot air will escape into the cabinet. Asus have done a good job with the design and build of the card; we don’t have any complaints here.  

Features
Asus hasn’t messed around with the specifications too much and other than the bump in the core frequency by 100MHz, the rest of it remains the same as AMD’s reference card. The core clock is now 900MHz, while the 3GB DDR5 memory runs at 5000MHz (effective speed). The new series also supports PCIE 3.0 interface and is backwards compatible with PCIE 2.0 as well. Other features include full DX11 support, 4K resolution support via HDMI and DisplayPort 1.2, AMD HD3D ready, etc. The card also supports quad CrossFireX , 7.1 channel audio over HDMI, along with Dolby TrueHD and DTS enhancements. The card also requires just two 6-pin power connectors to run, so it’s a bit more power efficient, compared to their previous generation of cards.

One of the best utilities out there

Asus bundles the GPU Tweak utility, which is by far one of the best in the market. Replacing the Smart Doctor utility, the functions remain pretty much the same, along with some new ones, all packaged in a slick little interface. The program lets you adjust the core and memory speeds for both 2D and 3D modes as well as the voltages. The fan speed can be manually set or you can leave it at auto. Each setting can be saved as a profile, so you can easily switch to it before firing up a game. Along with this, you also get a monitoring window on the side, which lets you track the temperature, voltages, clock speeds and even log this data, which helps you to figure out the limit when overclocking.