I can only applaud ASUS for their implementation of their EAH5850 TOP DirectCU. The card performed flawlessly in almost all our tests. The included overclock out of the box can give the card a performance boost of about 3% which is justified considering the price increase of $10. This is actually the first overclocked card that reaches a better price/performance score than the non-overclocked product. However, a difference of 3% will be barely noticable in gaming. A major improvement over the reference design HD 5850 is the cooling solution, it delivers extremely low noise levels, especially under load. In idle the card is very quiet as well, even though we have seen even less noise on the PowerColor HD 5850 PCS+. Temperature levels did not suffer, the card runs at perfectly safe temperatures. Compared to the reference design HD 5850, the ASUS implementation comes with a higher power draw all across the board, but that is something we have seen on other custom HD 5850 cards, too. Also I am not sure if it is significant. Most people will upgrade to this card from a HD 4000 or GTX 200 card, a move that reduces power consumption by a lot, even with the higher power draw compared to the reference design.
Thanks to ASUS' included SmartDoctor utility, aspiring overclockers can easily increase the GPU voltage to reach a higher overclock. Another overclocker friendly feature are the increased CCC Overdrive limits that ASUS has set to a generous 1200/1400. Manual overclocking potential on our sample was a bit less than expected, but it is my educated guess that our sample is on the lower end of the overclocking spectrum.
Overall the ASUS EAH 5850 TOP DirectCU is an excellent alternative to a HD 5850 reference card purchase, especially since the price increase is rather small and the added benefits clearly outweight the cost.