ASUS EAH6870 DirectCU Review

RHKCommander959 - January 17, 2011
» Discuss this article (1)

Lowest Prices

Testing:

The testing consists of running Aliens vs. Predator, Metro 2033, Crysis Warhead, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Just Cause 2, Unigine Heaven Benchmark 2.1, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, 3DMark 11 Professional, 3DMark Vantage, and temperature/power consumption testing. Three common resolutions are used for all of the tests with 4AA and 16AF in most of them, 3DMark Vantage has four resolutions. After a run through all of the tests, the card is overclocked to roughly its maximum stable capabilities and then tested again. Settings stay the same for each card tested so the results can be compared. All testing is done on similar hardware running 64-bit Windows 7. The charts are all organized in terms of best to worst performance.

Processor: Intel i7 920 @ 3.60GHz
Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth X58
Memory: Mushkin Redline DDR3 1600MHz 6-8-6-24
Video Card: ASUS EAH6870 DirectCU
Power Supply: Mushkin 800 watt modular power supply
Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 7200.12 1TB SATA
Optical Drive: LG DVD-RW
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Case: Hiper Osiris

Comparison Video Cards:

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

ASUS EAH6870 DirectCU 1010/1180

The ASUS EAH6870 DirectCU overclocked to 1 GHz right away and topped out at 1010 MHz.. Voltage control didn't work so this was all on stock voltage. ASUS SmartDoctor software would default the voltage back to stock and none of the other software out there seems to support voltage modification yet either. Memory may have had more room, it was getting hard to tell at 1180 MHz. ATI Overdrive limited the card to 1 GHz and both SmartDoctor and MSI Afterburner were capped there as well except for an option to have the limit lifted for Afterburner allowing for the extra 10 MHz! To test for stability, I initially run MSI Kombuster until it is stable and then try the speeds out in games to see how it responds. If it isn't stable then I lower the speed until it can make it through testing. It would be interesting to see how well this card does with working voltage adjustments.