ASUS HD 6870 DirectCU 1GB Video Card Review

System Overview & Testing Procedures
We will be installing the ASUS HD 6870 DirectCU into our X58 test system.  This test system is comprised of  the following components…

Intel Core i7 965 Extreme
Gigabyte X58A-UD5 motherboard
6GB of memory
750GB SATA drive
Blu-ray drive
Zalman ZM1000-HP Plus 1000W PSU
Antec Six Hundred V2 Case

We will be comparing the ASUS HD 6870 DirectCU to some of the latest video cards we have tested, they include: Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti, Sparkle Calibre X480 GeForce GTX 480, Sapphire Radeon HD 6850, Sapphire Radeon HD 6950, and the ASUS GeForce GTS 450.  Keep in mind these other cards range from low-end to high end.  They are just here for reference.

Opening up GPU-Z we can see all the information on the ASUS HD 6870 DirectCU.  This card is slightly overclocked up to 915MHz.  Also in CPU-Z we can see our system is running at the stock settings.

ASUS HD 6870 DirectCU 1GB Video Card ASUS HD 6870 DirectCU 1GB Video Card

We will be running 2 different types of tests on the card.  The first are benchmarking programs, most of which you should be familiar with.  The second part of the testing is actual game testing.  The programs and games we are using are listed below as well as links where you can download or purchase them.

Video Tests
3DMark 11 (download)
3DMark Vantage (download)
Heaven Demo 2.5 (download)
Stone Giant Demo (download)

Game Tests
Crysis Warehead (Buy)
Alien vs. Predator (Buy)
DiRT 2 (Buy)

About Author