ASUS Announces its Radeon HD 7800 DirectCu II Graphics Card Series

ASUS kicked off its Radeon HD 7800 series with two non-reference design implementations, DirectCu II TOP, at that. Both the ASUS Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon HD 7850 DirectCu II TOP use a 2-slot variant of ASUS' coveted dual-fan cooler, and based on what appear to look like a non-reference design PCBs. The DirectCu II cooler consists of a combination of a heatsink and an aluminum fin array, to which heat is conveyed by copper heat-pipes that make direct contact with the GPU die. The cooler makes use of two large fans to ventilate the heatsink. As TOP models, the two should feature 5-10% factory OC, out of the box. There's no word on the pricing.