ASUS GeForce GTX 680 & GTX 670 DirectCU II Top Edition Video Card Reviews

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

The ASUS GTX 680 and GTX 670 DirectCU II Top Edition graphics cards are examples of the best NVIDIA based graphics cards that money can buy. ASUS designed these cards to be over the top and we feel that they have done just that. The custom designed PCBs, high-end components and DirectCU II GPU coolers are topped of with binned GPUs that are overclocked well beyond the factory specifications set by NVIDIA. It doesn’t get better than this!

When it comes to performance we ran the latest drivers (GeForce 310.33) and found that both the GTX 670 and GTX 680 were competitive with price comparable Radeon HD 7900 series cards from AMD. The ASUS GTX 680 DirectCU II Top Edition card only has one drawback and that is size. This card takes up three slots and is nearly a foot long! That means this oversized card will not fit in most small form factor cases and also can’t be run in SLI on some motherboards as the PCIe x16 slots need to be spaced properly apart in order to accommodate this card. If size is an issue then the ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU II should be a better solution as it is just 10.5″ long and takes up two slots.

The ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP (GTX670-DC2T-2GD5) is a specially binned card that has a core clock that can boost up to 1137MHz, which is 157MHz higher than the reference card. ASUS only made a $10 price difference between the two cards, so you get a card with a 16% higher core clock speed with the “TOP” version. The standard ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II is sold under model number GTX670-DC2-2GD5 for $379.99 shipped after rebate. The “TOP” version that we reviewed today is sold under part number GTX670-DC2T-2GD5 for $389.99 shipped after rebate.

For those with deeper pockets, the ASUS GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II TOP (GTX670-DC2T-2GD5) is also a specially binned card that has a core clock that can boost up to 1201MHz, which is 143MHz higher than the reference card. ASUS only made a $10 price difference between the two cards, so you get a card with a 16% higher core clock speed with the “TOP” version. The standard ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II is sold under model number GTX680-DC20-2GD5 for $509.99 shipped after rebate. The “TOP” version that we reviewed today is sold under part number GTX680-DC2T-2GD5 for $536.12 shipped, so it is about $25 more than the standard version as there is no rebate.

Both the ASUS GTX 680 DirectCU II and GTX 670 DirectCU II cards were found to be well designed cards that would make any gamer happy to own. The GTX 680 comes with unique features like VGA Hotwire, but will the average gamer actually use that functionality? The performance difference between the two on our 30″ monitor with a 2560×1600 resolution was usually 3-4 FPS. Is it worth paying an extra $150 to get that extra frame rate, larger cooler and features? If money is an issue we think it isn’t worth the price jump, but that is a choice that you need to make. Both cards are more than impressive, so you can’t go wrong with either!

Legit Bottom Line: The ASUS GTX 680 DirectCU II and GTX 670 Direct CU II Top edition cards are pretty damn epic, but we expect nothing less for high-end custom cards!