The truth is that the card was built for overclocking so that’s what we will focus on. Once overclocked, it leaps ahead of the reference card and closes the gap even on the overclocked HD6970. For reference, the latter was clocked to 949MHz on the core, not far behind the 984MHz achieved on the ASUS card. The difference between the two was a mere 3% showing that even though the DirectCU II card cannot be unlocked, it can still match HD6970 performance level. In fact, the overclocked ASUS HD6950 did just that and managed to draw level with a stock clocked HD6970. It can be argued that a reference card will do so more easily through unlocking and still have further headroom for overclocking but they would lack the thermal benefits of the DirectCU II cooler. The overclocked ASUS card is no match to the overclocked GTX480 and GTX570 in this case which are priced similarly.