ASUS AMD Radeon HD 7970 DirectCu II Graphics Card Surfaces

ASUS’ new premium DirectCu II graphics card based on AMD’s Radeon HD 7970 has been spotted. The new GPU’s design focuses on a custom triple slot cooler paired with a custom-designed PCB. The size of the cooling solution allows ASUS to put one of the three expansion slot brackets to good use by providing additional display connectivity options. The PCB on the other hand is designed with heavy overclocking in mind, using a 10+1+1 ASUS Digi+ VRM that draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. The cooler is based on a common metal heatsink that spans the length of the graphics card, and makes contact with the VRM and memory components. The DirectCu II heatsink sits above the common metal heatsink and cools the GPU by conveying heat through six heat-pipes to an aluminum fin-stack. The DirectCu II cooler is topped off with two 100mm fans and a back-plate for support. The ASUS DirectCu II AMD Radeon HD 7970 will come clocked at 1000 MHz core (vs 925 MHz reference), and 1400 MHz memory (vs 1375 MHz reference). At this time there is currently no information on pricing or availability of the ASUS DirectCu II Radeon HD 7970.