# ASUS Radeon HD 7870 DirectCU II 2 GB



## W1zzard (Mar 28, 2012)

The ASUS Radeon HD 7870 Direct CU II is a highly overclocked custom version of the Radeon HD 7870. Coming at clock speeds of 1100 MHz GPU and 1250 MHz memory, it is a good deal faster than the AMD reference design. Thanks to aggressive pricing, the card retails at $360, which means there is no price increase for overclocking.

*Show full review*


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## temp02 (Mar 30, 2012)

> Actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is *2*.1%.


 should be (if math doesn't fail me) 





> Actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is *14*.1%.


 still great review, as always.


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## N3M3515 (Mar 30, 2012)

Excellent overcloking, way to go ASUS!
W1z, just a sugestion, why not put o/c results among the others? (all the benchmarks and de summaries)
That would be awesome!

PD: wake me up when this card costs $240 =)


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## Sasqui (Mar 30, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> W1z, just a sugestion, why not put o/c results among the others? (all the benchmarks and de summaries)



Good suggestion, but I suspect because overclocking is like gas mileage - it may vary from one car(d) to another.


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 30, 2012)

It was finally smart of asus not to bump price up on such a miniscuile overclock.

Id only pay higher if the cooler is far better as of keeping stock temps down while keeping noise tolerable. Also if the pcb is ref price shouldnt change drastically


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## W1zzard (Mar 30, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> W1z, just a sugestion, why not put o/c results among the others?



makes graphs more complicated to read: "more colored bars", and adds a ton of testing time, running all the benchmarks again with oc


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## DarkOCean (Mar 30, 2012)

Wtf is wrong with the power consumption on this card? it only has 10% oc and no overvolting.


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## N3M3515 (Mar 30, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> makes graphs more complicated to read: "more colored bars", and adds a ton of testing time, running all the benchmarks again with oc



But W1z, that way we can compare o/c 7870 with the other cards on all the games!, please!!


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## Inceptor (Mar 31, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> But W1z, that way we can compare o/c 7870 with the other cards on all the games!, please!!



The sample overclock resulted in +14.1% performance.
Get a calculator, turn it on, multiply results of benchmarks by 1.141.
Why should he waste his time rerunning benchmarks?  He'd have to redo ALL benchmarks for ALL cards...
:shadedshu


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 31, 2012)

thats what the similar reviews button is for, review the product yourself


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## N3M3515 (Mar 31, 2012)

Inceptor said:


> The sample overclock resulted in +14.1% performance.
> Get a calculator, turn it on, multiply results of benchmarks by 1.141.
> Why should he waste his time rerunning benchmarks?  He'd have to redo ALL benchmarks for ALL cards...
> :shadedshu



Lazy man!

14.1 x everygame? it AVG, not the same increase for every game ...¬¬


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## Over_Lord (Mar 31, 2012)

amazing card must say


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## Jstn7477 (Mar 31, 2012)

Looks like a nice card, but I probably wouldn't get rid of my 6950 unlocked for it due to the seemingly small performance difference. Probably decent if you don't have a 6950 and can't afford the awesome GTX 680 that beats nearly everything but costs $150 more.


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## Inceptor (Mar 31, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> Lazy man!
> 
> 14.1 x everygame? it AVG, not the same increase for every game ...¬¬



It's a percentage.  If the overclock gives that percentage in one benchmark, it will give it in all other benchmarks.  If you want to look at it another way, think of it as a 'modifier', apply the the 1.141 modifier to the Asus Direct CUII at stock and you get the performance in any particular benchmark based on the percentage modifier.  It has absolutely nothing to do with any manufacturer/designer specific features of the gpu, or any specific code in a game benchmark, it's an increase in overall hardware performance.  It applies to all benchmarks...

Why do I even bother?


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## N3M3515 (Mar 31, 2012)

Inceptor said:


> It's a percentage.  If the overclock gives that percentage in one benchmark, it will give it in all other benchmarks.  If you want to look at it another way, think of it as a 'modifier', apply the the 1.141 modifier to the Asus Direct CUII at stock and you get the performance in any particular benchmark based on the percentage modifier.  It has absolutely nothing to do with any manufacturer/designer specific features of the gpu, or any specific code in a game benchmark, it's an increase in overall hardware performance.  It applies to all benchmarks...
> 
> Why do I even bother?



There are games that don't go up the same way others do, some get huge increases some don't, is that so hard to understand?
Anyway, thanks for your OPINION, i don't have to agree with you


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## Inceptor (Mar 31, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> There are games that don't go up the same way others do, some get huge increases some don't, is that so hard to understand?
> Anyway, thanks for your OPINION, i don't have to agree with you



"games that don't go up the same way others do..."

It doesn't apply well to cpu limited games, like Starcraft 2, but it applies to every other game out there.  It doesn't matter what game it is, who coded it, what the gpu is; if you increase the performance of the gpu, it increases the performance in all games and benchmarks by the same percentage, except, as mentioned, in cpu limited games.

I can tell that your English is not precise enough for you to articulate yourself properly, and that you probably have not understood everything.  So I'll leave it there.

Here's to hoping you don't make another intemperate comment based on misunderstanding.


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## OneCool (Mar 31, 2012)

> You will receive:
> 
> Graphics card
> Driver CD + Documentation
> ...



Good, SLI scales better


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## Alvy Ibn Feroz (Mar 31, 2012)

I am sure something is wrong with the 7950/7970 because even with about 40% higher sp and 60% more transistors at 1920*1200 HD 7950 is only about 6% and HD 7970 is 18% faster than 7870. 7900 also has a 384 bit wide memory. :shadedshu


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## dir_d (Mar 31, 2012)

Alvy Ibn Feroz said:


> I am sure something is wrong with the 7950/7970 because even with about 40% higher sp and 60% more transistors at 1920*1200 HD 7950 is only about 6% and HD 7970 is 18% faster than 7870. 7900 also has a 384 bit wide memory. :shadedshu



I agree something is off or they are just clocked too low stock


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## Alvy Ibn Feroz (Mar 31, 2012)

dir_d said:


> I agree something is off or they are just clocked too low stock



7870 and 7970 both @ 1ghz there will be only 15-20% difference but 7970 has 40% higher sp and 60% more transistor and also 384 bit wide memory. sometimes 7950 gets beaten by the 7870.


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## Delta6326 (Mar 31, 2012)

Might as well save some $ and just get this over the 7950.


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## N3M3515 (Mar 31, 2012)

Alvy Ibn Feroz said:


> 7870 and 7970 both @ 1ghz there will be only 15-20% difference but 7970 has 40% higher sp and 60% more transistor and also 984 bit wide memory. sometimes 7950 gets beaten by the 7870.



WOW, 984bit  that's monstruous!!

Maybe the 7970 & 7950 are bottlenecked?


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## xenocide (Mar 31, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> WOW, 984bit  that's monstruous!!
> 
> Maybe the 7970 & 7950 are bottlenecked?



It's the same thing in all reviews.  The only potential bottleneck is ROP's, but I find that unlikely.  There has to be something at work in the 79xx cards that makes them so much less efficient than Pitcairn...


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## Alvy Ibn Feroz (Apr 1, 2012)

N3M3515 said:


> WOW, 984bit  that's monstruous!!
> 
> Maybe the 7970 & 7950 are bottlenecked?



Sorry its 384 bit not 984 bit. You should understand that its only a typing mistake.


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## Alvy Ibn Feroz (Apr 1, 2012)

xenocide said:


> It's the same thing in all reviews.  The only potential bottleneck is ROP's, but I find that unlikely.  There has to be something at work in the 79xx cards that makes them so much less efficient than Pitcairn...



7970 isn't bottleneck-ed by Rops because there is no game out there which can use 70% rops of the 7970


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## Inceptor (Apr 1, 2012)

xenocide said:


> It's the same thing in all reviews.  The only potential bottleneck is ROP's, but I find that unlikely.  There has to be something at work in the 79xx cards that makes them so much less efficient than Pitcairn...



Has to be drivers, producing a gpu with a hardware bottleneck is a huge huge huge mistake for the engineers; I can't see that kind of mistake being made, by any engineer, regardless of company.


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## Super XP (Apr 1, 2012)

Alvy Ibn Feroz said:


> 7970 isn't bottleneck-ed by Rops because there is no game out there which can use 70% rops of the 7970


This is a driver issue.

Anyhow, this review among many others says if you have the HD 6970, then no need to upgrade to the HD 7870. They are practically identical in performance with the HD 7870 being slightly more efficient and OC's much better.


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## m1dg3t (Apr 1, 2012)

Another great review W1zz! This look's like a pretty good option aside from it being an Asus product


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## General Lee (Apr 2, 2012)

Nice OC for this sample. They should add the ASIC quality value in the OC section. Also higher clocks isn't the biggest reason for higher power consumption, it's the higher stock voltage this card has. Some might say it's included but those are two different things.

7900 is simply inefficient in gaming workloads. Games don't take use of the insane memory bandwidth or the shader grunt 7970 has. The only few games that take use of this is Crysis that's quite ROP heavy, which in turn utilizes the available bandwidth. 7970 simply needs higher clocks to make use of its resources.


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## N3M3515 (Apr 2, 2012)

General Lee said:


> Nice OC for this sample. They should add the ASIC quality value in the OC section. Also higher clocks isn't the biggest reason for higher power consumption, it's the higher stock voltage this card has. Some might say it's included but those are two different things.
> 
> 7900 is simply inefficient in gaming workloads. Games don't take use of the insane memory bandwidth or the shader grunt 7970 has. The only few games that take use of this is Crysis that's quite ROP heavy, which in turn utilizes the available bandwidth. 7970 simply needs higher clocks to make use of its resources.




That, plus better drivers.


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## pp965 (Apr 6, 2012)




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## W1zzard (Apr 6, 2012)

General Lee said:


> it's the higher stock voltage this card has



1.24V on DCII vs. 1.24V on ref. oh wait, same voltage


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## Drash (Apr 12, 2012)

Just got a Sapphire 7870 OC edition, (1050/1250), thought what the heck, banged it straight to 1250/1450 ran FurMark, got an 11% improvement in score over 1050/1250. Seems like a result. Certainly a jump from the 4850 it replaced! Didn't run a long test but playing with the fan control it only gets noisy over 60% but its not got any where near that in the few hours Skyrim I've played. Was worried about price on these and had been thinking of waiting for a 670, but seen as it came as a birthday present don't think I can complain. Think the 680 stole a lot of thunder but the 7870 is a solid product.


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## kensiko (Apr 19, 2012)

Hi guys,

just looking to buy a 7850. I thought the ASUS directCU line-up would be great, but after looking at this review, I'm not sure.

I would simply want a 7850 at stock with a big heat-sink so that it's silent. I don't want to take 90 more watts for a 5% performance increase!! So, is the ASUS really good at stock speed? Will it give the results from the HD7850 and 7870 review from AMD done in March?


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