Conclusion

General		+	-
With the HD 7850 DirectCUII Top, ASUS has a custom design and factory overclocked version of AMDs Radeon HD 7850 in its portfolio. The factory overclocking, which is 115 MHz, is well measurable and increases the performance noticeably as this architecture scales well with GPU frequency. This cards performance is very close to a reference GeForce GTX 580 and better than the HD 6970 which were the last gen single GPU performance kings. Furthermore there is ASUS' DirectCUII cooler which once more did a good job from the noise level and temperature point of view.		- 2D silent - Noise Level in 3D mode
Performance		+	-
Regarding performance the ASUS HD 7850 Direct CU II Top can almost be compared with a reference GeForce GTX 580 from NVIDIA. On average HD 7850 Direct CU II Top is a bit slower than the previous NVIDIA high-end card but very close or even faster than AMD's last gen high-end GPU HD 6970. It also doens't matter if you look at synthetic Futuremark performance or real life gaming benchmarks, the performance of this card is on a highly competitive level.		- Performance in general
Overclocking		+	-
Included in the bundle you get the software ASUS GPU Tweak, which allows to adjust the GPU voltage as well as GPU and memory frequencies. It has been possible to run 3DMark 11 with 1'300 MHz on the GPU and 6'100 MHz on the memory. Which results on a 27 % more powerful card at those clocks. This architecture really does scale well with higher core frequency.		- Overclocking GPU 1'300 MHz / Mem 6'100 MHz - Max. 1.3 Volt
Recommendation		+	-
If you should be looking for a very powerful graphics card, which comes with a factory overclocking and that can outperform previous gen high-end graphics cards at a reasonable price point, then the ASUS HD 7850 DirectCU II Top definitely can be recommended. Especially if you want a card for performance gaming and you don't want to empty your bank account.		- High-End Gaming - Performance Gaming	- Desktop PC

Author: Christian Ney, c.ney@ocaholic.ch Edition and translation: Christian Ney, c.ney@ocaholic.ch Marc Büchel, m.buechel@ocaholic.ch

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 8 - Stone Giant
Page 2 - Technical Data / Specifications	Page 9 - World in Conflict
Page 3 - Preview / Delivery	Page 10 - Resident Evil 5
Page 4 - Testing conditions	Page 11 - Call of Juarez
Page 5 - 3D Mark 11	Page 12 - Far Cry 2
Page 6 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 13 - Overclocking
Page 7 - Unigine Heaven	Page 14 - Conclusion

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