ASUS EAH6950 DCII/2DI4S/2GD5 Pro Reviews

The two HD 6800 cards are now pretty long in the tooth, but they perform very well for the respective pricepoints. These cards somewhat fit right between where the HD 7770 is and what we expect the HD 7850 to be. They are still very good buys even in the face of new products coming down the pipeline. Buying one of these at this point in time is not a bad idea at all. The new 7000 series will not add much in terms of features. About the only thing that the HD 7770 has over the HD 6850 is power consumption, but that turns into a few tens of watts at load. The only thing I would really change would be to make the EAH6870 into a DirectCU II based product. I think it would have been a lot better with the larger heatsink and twin fans. While it works perfectly fine as is, I did find the extra noise to be slightly bothersome. The HD 6900 series is a bit tougher to take on at this time. While Asus does a very nice job with the design and build of these cards, there is still that triple slot requirement. Not only that, but it does appear that the new HD 7800 series of cards will essentially displace the HD 6900s. If a user can get a hold of these cards on sale, then I think the investment will be worth it. Still, the HD 6970 has been my favorite overall card for this generation due to a combination of price, power consumption, and performance as compared to the competing high end cards from NVIDIA. If a user is sitting on the fence between buying one of these cards now, and waiting some time for the HD 7800 series… I would tend to just buy one of the 6900 series right now and enjoy it for some time to come.

ASUS has two very solid video cards on its hands with the EAH6950 DirectCU II and the ENGTX570 DirectCU II. These both offer a great combination of components that will let an enthusiast get the most from these video cards. ASUS has provided the perfect trifecta: Super Alloy Power to improved power circuitry, Voltage Tweak to increase the Vcore, and the DirectCU II cooling solution to handle that extra heat. At $324.99 and $349.99 the ASUS EAH6950 DirectCU II and ASUS ENGTX570 DirectCU II should both be on any enthusiasts short list depending on what features you require. If you plan a multi-display configuration, you will have support for this on the ASUS EAH6950 DirectCU II in ways the ENGTX570 DirectCU II can't touch. We feel that both video cards here deserve our HardOCP Editor's Choice Silver Award for an outstanding piece of engineering.

Just a really strong HD 6950 at a little over $300 USD, and to be honest you can see why ASUS is throwing the DirectCU II cooler on all these higher end models. It's nice to get something so meaty in the cooling department without the need to own a $600 USD model.