ASUS have succeeded in what they set out to achieve. They have created a card with tremendous cooling potential and overclocking headroom that transforms AMD’s HD6950 from being a mediocre overclocker to one of the best in this regard. Their voltage tweaking utility proves invaluable in unlocking the full potential of the HD6950 GPU, although it can be argued that to truly unlock its potential one could unlock all its stream processors. Unfortunately, this is where ASUS lets us down. In customising their card for durability, low operating temperatures and stability, they sacrificed the ability for the card to be unlocked to a HD6970. Nonetheless, ASUS makes up for that by allowing the card to overclock to an impressive 984/5484MHz, a 24/10% overclock on the core and memory respectively that enables their HD6950 to match HD6970 levels of performance. The DirectCU II cooler is the highlight of the card and does an excellent job at taming the temperatures while still remaining near silent at all times. It does come at the cost of an extra slot and length but it demonstrates some of the innovations that the exclusive ARES card brought to the world. If ASUS could still retain similar efficiency in a smaller package, they would be on to a winner. Sometimes, a fine balance between performance and size has to be reached rather than compromising one for the other.

Performance wise, the ASUS HD6950 had some problem keeping up with the reference card despite its 10MHz overclock. The problem wasn’t driver related but it was a very marginal difference. Once overclocked, it managed to leap ahead of the overclocked reference card by 3%. The problem was that the overclock didn’t generate the same linear scaling the reference card demonstrated. It is likely to be due to PowerTune throttling the card as a result of the maximum TDP being exceeded. The overclocked results were enough to close the gap between itself and an overclocked HD6970 and more importantly the ASUS card managed to beat a stock clocked HD6970. On the whole, the card’s performance was very good and the 2GB framebuffer coped with high resolution gaming and high levels of Anti-Aliasing very well. In popular games such as Crysis Warhead and Battlefield Bad Company 2, the HD6950 presents very good value for money, generating up to 85% of the GTX580’s performance at a fraction of the price even after overclocking is taken into account.


Currently, the DirectCU II HD6950 is priced at around £250, putting it in a very difficult position to evaluate. It lies in the same territory as the cheapest reference HD6970s, GTX570s and GTX480s which are superior cards in terms or performance out of the box. The ASUS card offers much better cooling and favourable noise levels but whether this is enough to justify its premium is another question. The cheapest HD6950s are available at £200-£215 so ASUS are asking for a 20% premium above the standard card. In my opinion the card doesn’t warrant such a price hike, especially when the standard card isn’t significantly louder and has the potential to be unlocked to a HD6970s. Even disregarding this feature for people not willing to flash their graphics cards, the standard HD6950 still offers slightly better value for money. To remain competitive, the ASUS HD6950 DirectCU II will have to be priced £230 or less.

Those looking for the ultimate in cooling and one of the best overclocking cards we’ve had, this card is definitely worth considering. The HD6950 may not be the ideal card to demonstrate the benefits of the superior power circuitry and DirectCU II cooling solution (the reference AMD design is already very good), it holds promise for other cards such as the HD6970, GTX570 and GTX580. Being the best overclocking HD6950 on the market is certainly no easy feat and ASUS can proudly receive the title.


The ASUS DirectCU II HD6950 deserves the Vortez Silver Award.