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ASUS GTX 670 DirectCu II TOP Review

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Shogun 2: Total War (DX11)

Shogun 2: Total War (DX11)


Due to its very nature, Shogun 2 is a tough game to benchmark since the in-game tool doesn’t accurately convey an in-game experience. So we took a pre-recorded battle which pits three large armies against one another and includes camera zooms, fog, gun smoke and other items. Using a pre-recorded sequence also effectively removes the CPU from the equation since it doesn’t have to process AI.

1920 x 1200

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2560 x 1600

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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (DX9)

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (DX9)


Being one of the most popular and best looking RPG games released in the last few years, Skyrim needed to be included in our reviews, regardless of the fact that it uses an older DX9 rendering engine. For our test sequence we used a typical runthrough interspersed with some combat. A modded .ini file along with the official high resolution texture pack was used in order to ensure image quality was up to expectations.

1920 x 1200

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2560 x 1600

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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Wargame: European Escalation (DX11)

Wargame: European Escalation (DX11)


This may not be the most popular game on the market but through its DX11 rendering path it can display some amazing visuals. For our benchmark we used a combination of wide angle zooming, close quarters combat and camera pans in order to simulate as many in-game scenarios as possible.


1920 x 1200

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2560 x 1600

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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
The Witcher 2 (DX9)

The Witcher 2 (DX9)


The Witcher 2 may be a DX9 based game but its graphics quality is beyond reproach. In this benchmark we take an area out of The Kayran mission and include one of the toughest effects the graphics engine has in store for the GPU: rain. Throughout this sequence, rain plays a large part but explosions, combat and even some sun shafts are included as well.

1920 x 1200

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2560 x 1600

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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Taking Image Quality to the Next Level

Taking Image Quality to the Next Level


In this section we take a number of games we have tested previously in this review and bring things to the next level by pushing the in-game settings to the highest possible level. All other methodologies remain the same.


Batman: Arkham City

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Crysis 2

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Dirt 3

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Metro 2033

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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Taking Image Quality to the Next Level (pg.2)

Taking Image Quality to the Next Level (pg.2)


In this section we take a number of games we have tested previously in this review and bring things to the next level by pushing the in-game settings to the highest possible level. All other methodologies remain the same.

Shogun 2: Total War

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The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

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Wargame: European Escalation

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The Witcher 2

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SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Surround / Eyefinity Multi Monitor Performance

Surround / Eyefinity Multi Monitor Performance


Both NVIDIA and AMD now have single GPU multi monitor output options for some truly immersive gaming. However, spanning a game across three or more monitors demands a serious amount of resources which makes this a perfect test for ultra high-end solutions.

While all solutions have the ability to implement bezel correction, we leave this feature disabled in order to ensure compatibility. The benchmarks run remain the same as in normal testing scenarios.



Batman: Arkham City

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Battlefield 3

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Crysis 2

GTX-670-TOP-46.jpg


Dirt 3

GTX-670-TOP-58.jpg
 

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Surround / Eyefinity Multi Monitor Performance (pg.2)

Surround / Eyefinity Multi Monitor Performance (pg.2)


Both NVIDIA and AMD now have single GPU multi monitor output options for some truly immersive gaming. However, spanning a game across three or more monitors demands a serious amount of resources which makes this a perfect test for ultra high-end solutions.

While all solutions have the ability to implement bezel correction, we leave this feature disabled in order to ensure compatibility. The benchmarks run remain the same as in normal testing scenarios.



Metro 2033

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Shogun 2: Total War

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The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

GTX-670-TOP-74.jpg


Wargame: European Escalation

GTX-670-TOP-80.jpg
 

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
Temperature & Acoustics / Power Consumption

Temperature Analysis


For all temperature testing, the cards were placed on an open test bench with a single 120mm 1200RPM fan placed ~8” away from the heatsink. The ambient temperature was kept at a constant 22°C (+/- 0.5°C). If the ambient temperatures rose above 23°C at any time throughout the test, all benchmarking was stopped. For this test we use the 3DMark Batch Size test at its highest triangle count with 4xAA and 16xAF enabled and looped it for one hour to determine the peak load temperature as measured by GPU-Z.

For Idle tests, we let the system idle at the Windows 7 desktop for 15 minutes and recorded the peak temperature.


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Despite the fact that it has higher clock speeds than Gigabyte’s OC Edition, the ASUS GTX 670 DirectCu II TOP was able to pull ahead in this test. While its design may dump some hot air back into the enclosure, you shouldn’t worry as the GTX 670 core doesn’t produce extreme amounts of heat to begin with and most cases have ample internal airflow.


Acoustical Testing


What you see below are the baseline idle dB(A) results attained for a relatively quiet open-case system (specs are in the Methodology section) sans GPU along with the attained results for each individual card in idle and load scenarios. The meter we use has been calibrated and is placed at seated ear-level exactly 12” away from the GPU’s fan. For the load scenarios, a loop of Unigine Heave 2.5 is used in order to generate a constant load on the GPU(s) over the course of 20 minutes.

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While this DirectCu II heatsink may not have the large (and quiet) fans of the much larger version installed onto the GTX 680 TOP, it still maintains a very, very small acoustical footprint. So much so that it won’t be audible over your internal case fans. On paper this card does loose to the Gigabyte OC but we highly doubt anyone will hear a difference between the two.


System Power Consumption


For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption. We have also included several other tests as well.

Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.

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Once again it looks like ASUS’ component selection allowed their card to incorporate higher clock speeds without an overly large increase in power consumption.
 

SKYMTL

HardwareCanuck Review Editor
Staff member
Joined
Feb 26, 2007
Messages
12,840
Location
Montreal
ASUS' GPU Tweak / Overclocking Results

ASUS GPU Tweak


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Like many other graphics card manufacturers, ASUS has their own overclocking software suite. Dubbed GPU Tweak, it may not be as well known as the EVGA Precisions and MSI Afterburners of this world but it is just as functional and actually works quite well. By eschewing the unnecessary frills and oddities of some other tweaking software like Gigabyte’s ill-fated SoC Tuner, GPU Tweak puts every one of the necessary functions within reach. The only exception to this is the Voltage and Power offsets on GTX 600-series cards which have to be manually enabled through a secondary Advanced Settings screen.

ASUS has also used a variation on GPU-Z which shows all of the pertinent information about your card, its software and clock speeds. The left hand side shows GPU monitoring information and is remarkably well fleshed out with a nearly endless list of items that can be enabled or disabled.

Like many other monitoring / tweaking programs GPU Tweak looks a lot like the old Rivatuner software so it acts very much the same as the older Precision and MSI’s Afterburner. Nonetheless, ASUS has nailed it with their implementation but if we had one bit of critique it would have to be the lack of information when you place your cursor over an icon. We would have appreciated a dialog box explaining each icon’s function before clicking on it since there are a few which can have unintended consequences if they’re haphazardly clicked. We also liked ASUS' addition of a dedicated vBIOS update utility which should come in handy for anyone that wants to load a custom BIOS onto the TOP.

Before getting onto the results, we do have some house cleaning to attend to. When buying this card and installing the software, make sure you use the latest version of ASUS’ GPU Tweak since the one included on the CD caused graphics corruption and crashes.


Overclocking Results


Ironically, regardless of ASUS’ claims to the contrary, our sample didn’t overclock all that well, stopping short (it hit a core speed of 1311MHz) of the mark set by Gigabyte’s OC version, at least at its default voltage.

With about 100mV of extra voltage, We hit 1359MHz on the core and 6424MHz on the memory, both of which are decent results but somehow we were expecting a bit more, especially when it came to GPU Tweak. We ran straight into a clock speed wall which couldn’t be passed due to an artificial limit being placed by NVIDIA in their VBIOS. With that being said, we routinely saw the core reaching the 1.43GHz mark provided the Power Limit was pegged at the maximum 117%.

If ASUS wants to bill this card as overclocker-friendly, they need to raise or eliminate this limit altogether since it can be easily achieved without much in the way of voltage tweaking. At least give us the option to go to 1.5GHz.

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