ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU Mini OC - Compact Form Factor Without Compromises

High Performance In A Compact Form Factor

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 was launched about a year ago and we have seen several cards featuring a customized cooler like the Palit GeForce GTX 670 JetStream as well as variations from the reference design that provided better power delivery like the ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP card. Both cards touted higher performance levels with overclocking out of the box.

The ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU Mini OC has a 928 MHz base clock with a boost clock of 1,006MHz, but its 2GB of memory chips have not been overclocked as they are rated to operate collectively at 6,008MHz (which is the same as the memory on a reference NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670). However the main focus of the card is its diminutive nature as it measures roughly about 7 inches in length (17 centimeters) and 4.7 inches in height (12 centimeters). While the card's thickness requires it to occupy dual slots, its length is a perfect fit with even a mini-ITX motherboard. This certainly helps enthusiasts build compact mini systems for their HTPC usage that can also double-up for big-screen gaming - nifty indeed.

The card also boasts of the new CoolTech Fan that's touted to have a wider-angle airflow in multi-direction versus that of a traditional cooling fan that has a single-directional airflow in a narrow channel.

The card draws power from its 8-pin Molex connector, and the card has a 5-phase VRM system that boasts of Super Alloy components for better power delivery and longer lifespans.

At the rear of the card, we see a DirectPower plate that covers the SAP capacitors that are located directly behind the NVIDIA GK104 graphics processor (the core used for the GTX 670).

The video connectivity options of the ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU Mini OC include one dual-link DVI-D port, one dual-link DIV-I port, one full-size DisplayPort, and a HDMI port. In essence, you get all the expected ports from a full-sized graphics card.

There are a pair of  SLI connectors that would allow you to combine up to three GeForce GTX 670 cards in a multi-GPU setup. Such a setup obviously calls for a ATX board or larger board with the corresponding PEG slots and a full tower PC chassis.

Test Setup

These are the hardware specifications of our recently updated graphics card test rig:

• Intel Core i7-3960X (3.3GHz)
• ASUS P9X79 Pro (Intel X79 chipset) Motherboard
• 4 x 2GB DDR3-1600 G.Skill Ripjaws Memory
• Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive (OS)
• Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM 1TB SATA hard drive (Benchmarks + Games)
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Here's the list of cards we'll be testing and the drivers used. We down-clocked our Palit GeForce GTX 670 JetStream graphics card to emulate a reference NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 card so as to obtain some baseline GTX 670 figures on our new testbed system.

• ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU Mini OC 2GB GDDR5 (NVIDIA ForceWare 314.22)
• Palit GeForce GTX 670 JetStream 2GB GDDR5 (NVIDIA ForceWare 314.22)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 310.90)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB GDDR5 (NVIDIA ForceWare 310.90)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB GDDR5 (NVIDIA ForceWare 314.14)
• ASUS Radeon HD 7790 DirectCU2 1GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 13.3 Beta)
• AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta)
• AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 13.2 Beta)

Take note that the main purpose of our tests is to check how the mini GTX 670 card fares against the normal sized GTX 670 and it isn't an AMD/NVIDIA comparison. The best AMD counterpart at the same price point is the Radeon HD 7950 and HD 7970 graphics cards, but we're still getting updated results at this point of time on our new test rig. As such, we'll have to make do without them at the point of publication. We will however shortly update the article as soon as it's done.

 

Benchmarks

As the ASUS card is just slightly overclocked to specifications that are tad higher than the reference GeForce GTX 670, we will be focusing on overclocking potential, temperature performance, and its power consumption. As such, we've chosen to streamline our results reporting to a very select set of benchmarks as outlined below. For a full set of of comparison results with more benchmarks, you may tune in to our older GeForce GTX 660 Ti article for appropriate comparisons.

• Futuremark 3DMark 11
• Crysis 3
• Overclocking (Futuremark 3DMark 11)
• Temperature
• Power Consumption

3DMark 11 Results

3DMark 11 is a synthetic benchmark designed to test a GPU's performance at various aspects of DirectX 11 such as tessellation and DirectCompute. The diminutive card was just slightly behind our downclocked Palit card that mimics stock GeForce GTX 670 performance. In fact, the margins that separate them on both Performance and Extreme settings were just about 1%. Our reference NVIDIA GTX 680 card naturally pulled ahead of the GTX 670 ones by a comfortable margin of 8%, showing that the GTX 670 is a fairly powerful card and within striking distance of what the GTX 680 can achieve.

Crysis 3 Results

Crysis 3 is currently one of our toughest gaming benchmark due to its extreme amounts of tessellation, per-pixel per-object motion blur, Bokeh Depth of Field, displacement mapping, particle and volumetric lighting and fog shadows. However, due to some technical glitch, we couldn't get the GeForce GTX 670 cards to complete the test scenario when we set the display resolution to a maximum of 2560 x 1600 pixels resolution. However, they were able to run the test scenario smoothly when we disabled our frame rate recording software, Fraps.

We can see that at the maximum resolution with anti-aliasing turned off, both the cards were churning out average frame rates that are below 30 frames per second mark; hence, we can safely conclude that with anti-aliasing enable at 8x, the game play will be choppy. The GeForce GTX 680 lagged in its scores due to its outdated drivers as its results were derived from our new test rig prior to the availability of the current driver release, NVIDIA ForceWare 314.22.

Overclocking Results

At the end of our overclocking exercise, we managed to boost the ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU Mini OC to 1098MHz, with its memory overclocked to 6308MHz GDDR5; we were actually able to push these levels higher but we experience performance degradation due to GPU throttling. By overclocking, we managed to garner performance boosts that range from 10.5- to about 12% gains. This is in line with what we had expected.

Temperature Results

Despite its new CoolTech fan, the compact ASUS graphics card clocked in an operating temperature of 64 degrees Celsius under load! While it might not look so impressive in our graph here, if you consider that the full sized reference GeForce GTX 670 recorded a temperature of 65 degrees Celsius and the even more powerful GeForce GTX 680 recorded temperatures of 69 degrees Celsius, the diminutive ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU Mini OC graphics card managed our test commendably. Thumbs up for the ASUS engineering team.

We also noted that its new CoolTech fan operated rather quietly under load and this is a plus point for system builders who need to operate a rig without too much fan noise - especially useful if you intend to use it as part of your gaming-capable HTPC in your entertainment room.

Power Consumption Results

Its power consumption was almost identical to that of a reference class GeForce GX 670 product. Also note that since the GTX 670 and GTX 680 cards share the same GK104 GPU (except that one less one SMX (Streaming Multiprocessor) unit is active on the GTX 670), the power consumption figures are very similar.

Conclusion

The ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU Mini OC is an impressive engineering feat as the company has managed to squeeze a full GK104 GPU, which is of the NVIDIA GTX 670 SKU, onto a compact form factor PCB, complete with an appropriate power delivery system and a new cooling system. The redesigned DirectCU cooling system threw out the usual bulky copper cooling pipes and opted for a vapor-chamber based heatsink with a new, slim CoolTech fan that operated with an acceptable level of fan noise under load. The card also has Super Alloy Components featured in its VRM system that ensures its durability as well as ease of overclocking.

The performance levels of the card were almost in line with our expectations and in its overclocked state, the card enjoyed decent gains that  averaged around 11%. The card is also versatile as it can fit into mini-ITX and mATX PC chassis, ideal for gamers who seek to build a powerful gaming system with a small footprint. It is also convenient for small footprint HTPC builders who would like to have a compact gaming-grade capable graphics card to game on the big screen without dragging in a full fledged rig.

With the card's dual SLI connectors, it is even possible to link up three such cards in a multi-GPU setup (but in a larger chassis). However, the compactness of the card is limited to its length, as it still requires the width of two PEG slots for proper installation. Hence, system builders will need to take that into consideration as not all mini-ITX chassis on the market can fit a dual-slot graphics cards. Modern cases are probably geared towards this requirement, but older chassis are likely not designed for dual-slot graphics cards.

Despite the diminutive nature of the ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU Mini OC, we can safely say that it belongs to the wolf pack of full-sized NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 graphics cards, but with greater deployment versatility. Priced locally at S$639, it's just slight more expensive than the current going rate of just above S$600 for most GeForce GTX 670 graphics cards. As such, you're not really paying much of a premium despite the card being totally redesigned from the reference design for a small but growing group of small form factor gaming rig builders.

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