Asus ENGTX580 DirectCU II

ASUS ENGTX580 DirectCU II Review

The GTX 580 has proven to be at the top of the food chain in the single GPU arena. AMD has taken shots with the HD6970, falling short on performance, but mitigating that with better pricing. With that said, ASUS has brought together a video card in the ENGTX580 DirectCU II that pushes the performance a little further, with clock speeds that get a small boost for a very modest pricing upside over a reference card, currently selling for $469. What you get from ASUS is a card packed full of all its performance improvements that include the massive dual-fan DirectCU II heat sink package that improves cooling airflow by 600%, ASUS Super Hybrid Engine and SAP 8 phase power circuitry for improved performance and cooler operation, and ASUS' own exclusive protective designs that feature GPU guard, Fuse protection, and a dust proof fan. All these are upsides over the reference design that add some serious value to the package. If you pay any attention to HWbot or any benchmarking news, you know that the ASUS GTX580 DirectCU II is the card of choice when running an NVIDIA GPU. This speaks volumes about the PCB layout and design of the card as a whole.