ASUS EAH5850 DirectCU/2DIS/1GD5 Pro Reviews

With a street price of around $315 CDN ($315 USD, £210 GBP), the EAH5850 DirectCU TOP is an excellent value for the enthusiast. It has performance to spare for running today's games, and support for DirectX 11 features that will make it into tomorrow's titles. The only real difficulty will be finding one; Radeon HD 5850's are in such high demand that manufacturers and retailers have had difficult keeping them in supply, and with cards like the ASUS EAH5850 DirectCU TOP it's easy to see why.

The ASUS EAH5850 DirectCU TOP/2DIS/1GD5 video card has several things going for it that other HD 5850 cards do not have. First feature is the DIRECTCU copper heatpipes that are in direct contact with the graphics chip. This allows the card to run much cooler than the equivalent HD 5850 video card from another vendor with idle temperatures of 38C and load temperatures of 53C, both below the norm. The Voltage tweaks allow the video card to easily overclock to over 1GHz for the core with 950MHz completely stable. The EAH5850 DirectCU TOP/2DIS/1GD5 video card is well worth the purchase at $340.

In most games and simulations we’ve ran, the ASUS EAH5850 TOP achieved performance similar to the standard Radeon HD 5850. The times it was faster, the advantage wasn’t of statistical relevance. The reviewed model from ASUS was up to 7% faster than the standard HD 5850, but it cost way more than the standard model (USD 310 vs. USD 255). Pay 20% more to get up to 7% more performance? No, thanks. Of course this model comes with a better cooling solution, but you have the option to buy the same video card without the factory overclocking for USD 280 (ASUS EAH5850 DIRECTCU/2DIS/1GD5). Although the Radeon HD 5850 graphics chip is a good option and we’ve been recommending it since its launch, the ASUS EAH5850 TOP itself is highly overpriced, and, therefore, we can’t recommend it.

If you were to consider overclockability, then the ASUS EAH5850 TOP takes the cake. At the end of the day, it really depends on what you need. For those with tighter purse strings, the PowerColor PCS+ HD 5850 is the obvious choice, but for those who want a little more, then both the ASUS EAH5850 DirectCU TOP and Sapphire HD 5850 Toxic Edition are excellent cards worthy of your consideration.

It is great to see ATI’s board partners still releasing products which breathe new life into the HD 5800-series. By now, the HD 5850 really should be showing its age and yet here it is in overclocked form breathing down the neck of the GTX 470 which was introduced only a few months ago. We have an impressive amount of praise for ASUS’ efforts with the HD 5850 TOP DirectCu and it all revolves around the significant improvements they have made to what will likely be remembered as one of the price / performance leaders of its generation. The clock speeds –particularly the memory- of this card have been pushed to levels that really do make a difference at some resolutions and IQ settings while the heatsink design can only be described as awe-inspiring. However, just remember that overclocked memory will only benefit performance in some games while the low core overclock proves to be a hindrance in others.