First Look: ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II Top Video Card

ASUS HD7970 DirectCU II Pictures

Here is a picture of the retail box of the ASUS HD 7970 DirectCU II TOP video card. You can see on the board that the DirectCU II cooler is supposed to be 20% cooler and 14dB quieter than the AMD reference design.

The DirectCU II GPU cooler uses two 10cm (100mm) cooling fans that keep the aluminum fins on the copper heatpipe cooler nice and cool.

Taking a look at the top edge of the card you can just barely make out the two 8-pin PCI-E video card power connectors behind the black metal fan shroud.

With the GPU cooler removed we can see that ASUS is using DIGI+ VRM with what looks to be 12-phase Super Alloy power technology to make sure the card gets all the power that it needs. Notice the metal PCB reinforcement frame that ASUS is using.

Here is an exploded view of the ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DC2 TOP graphics card.

ASUS uses a backplate on the HD7970 DirectCU II graphics card and has various voltage monitoring points along the top edge of the card.

That is all ASUS wanted us to disclose right now, but check back next month as we’ll have a full review on this card!