A Closer Look

In terms of cooling there are no surprises with ASUS' Direct CU cooler. It uses two heatpipes that make direct contact with the GPU surface and transport heat away quickly from the hot graphics processor to a fin heatsink where heat is dissipated in the fan's airflow.
The voltage regulator circuitry is cooled by a simple metal heatsink.


A single 6-pin power connetor is required, even though it seems that ASUS has left an option to use a second 6-pin connector for more powerful designs.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ1H24AFR-T2C. They are specified to run at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


The HD 6800 Series is the first product where we see the use of CHiL's CHL8214 voltage regulator. It supports voltage control via I2C and comes with extensive monitoring and tweaking features.


AMD's new Barts graphics processor is made on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. It uses approximately 1.7 billion transistors on a die area of 255 mm². This is also the first GPU to carry the AMD logo instead of the ATI logo.