The GTX 670 is NVIDIA’s latest entry into the mid-to-high end segment and is basically the little brother of their flagship GTX 680. Requiring just a two-slot and twin 6-pin form factor, it fits in almost any case and does not put too much strain on the power supply. The GTX 670 provides quite a lot of bang for your buck, and ASUS makes that even more so by including the GPU Tweak utility in the box to allow for easier overclocking and tuning.
The ASUS GeForce GTX670 DirectCU II TOP belongs to the super overclocking class; with the base clock and boost clock set significantly higher than reference at 1058MHz and 1137MHz respectively. The DirectCU cooler and twin 100mm fans drastically reduce the overall temperature while offering better performance over the reference design.
Here it is outside of the box:
The box lists the main features and benefits of DirectCU cooling with its all-copper heat dissipation points, bigger heatsink, and direct contact with the GPU.
Standard packaging for all ASUS graphics cards, the components are kept safe and secure.
Behold the GTX 670! The card itself measures 10.7″ x 5.4″ x1.7″ and takes up two PCI Express slots. Two 6-pin power connectors are required.
Tough backplate like on many other DirectCU cards, this helps prevent the card from warping while reducing noise and aiding in heat dissipation.
The carbon look of the front of the card, purely for aesthetic reasons.
Standard connectors.
The side of the card shows part of the heatpipe build, which is quite massive.
Upon closer inspection, we see the large heatsink and impressive solid state capacitors. No wonder it's TOP!
While it is not built to compete with the flagship GTX 680 or Radeon 7970, the GTX 670 is an impressive card in its own right. With the addition of the famed DirectCU II cooler and overclocked right out of box, this card is definitely for gamers who are looking for a fast graphics card but on a limited budget.
We don’t mean to brag but in other news: TechPowerUp just gave the new ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II a perfect score! A very first! In their own words:
“Yes, you’ve seen correctly, the ASUS GeForce GTX 670 Direct CU II TOP is the first graphics card ever that I gave a perfect ten score. The stock GeForce GTX 670 provides already great performance, but ASUS has topped that by boosting it with a large overclock out of the box which catapults it beyond GTX 680 performance levels. Averaged over all our testing we see the card 1% faster than GTX 680 and 8% faster than GTX 670. The card does so without massive power consumption increase thanks to an efficient VRM design and low temperatures. ASUS has done away with NVIDIA’s cheap voltage regulation circuitry and put a much better CHiL controller on the card, which also supports voltage control and monitoring.”
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