ASUS AMD Dragon HD 7850 DirectCU II ~ The World is Mine

Jul 2, 2012

ASUS AMD Dragon HD 7850 DirectCU II

7/02/2012 06:02:00 PM

dannzfay

Nvidia is getting ready to announce the GeForce GT 600 series for the high volume mid-range market, so AMD and its partners are getting ready to counteract the launch. ASUS is showing a great deal of care and work, especially for the China region.

Therefore, ASUS is now preparing a special version of its DirectCU II HD 7850 graphics cards that’s specifically made to achieve better performance and cooling results than the reference AMD Radeon HD 7850 design. As reported by VR-Zone, The new version will come with two extra 8-millimeter cooling pipes next to the usual three heatpipes inside the DirectCU II cooling system. We can only see three heatpipes in the pictures, so we'll have to wait until the final product is pictured to see the exact number. Also, the PCB is slightly modified when compared with ASUS’ HD 7850 DirectCU II and the HD 7850 DirectCU II TOP. The PCB of the ASUS' Dragon HD 7850 DirectCU II features a high-quality 6+2+1 phase VRM that uses ASUS' SuperAlloy chokes, high-grade LFPAK MOSFETs, Japan-made solid capacitors, tantalum capacitors, along with the Digi+ VRM controller.

The card is fueled by two 6-pin PCIe power connectors and also has a black metal back-plate that helps with the heat dissipation and gives additional structural integrity to the device. ASUS’ Dragon HD 7850 DirectCU II doesn’t have the highest speeds on the HD 7850 DirectCU II line from the manufacturer, but it is, nevertheless, clocked higher than AMD’s reference design. The GPU’s frequency is 910 MHz, while the memory is clocked at 1250 MHz. That’s clearly faster than AMD's reference clock speeds of 860/1200 MHz for the GPU/memory. The price is estimated to be ranging anywhere between $200 and $240, which is about €157 to €181 EUR for the European buyers.