If you are an avid reader, you have most likely seen countless Asus motherboard reviews and even a few audio products as well recently. Something that is a little rarer is having an Asus video card come through our office. When Asus contacted me asking if we wanted to take a look at their upcoming GTX 650 Ti DirectCU II TOP, there wasn’t even a hesitation. We have already taken a look at the reference GTX 650 Ti; this card on the other hand is nothing like it. Sure you have the same architecture, as you would expect. But the DirectCU II TOP is almost twice as long, has twice the cooling, and has a considerably different PCB even. It’s no off the shelf reference design, today we are going to dig in and see what all of that means for you when looking to buy a GTX 650 Ti.Overall and Final Verdict
With the Asus GTX 650 Ti DirectCU II TOP, Asus went over the top to make sure that our experience was nothing like the factory reference card. Starting with its DirectCU II cooling, not only did it look amazing, but it ended up being one of the coolest running cards we have ever tested. Of course, the downside to that was the size of the heatsink. We went from the cute 5 inch long GTX 650 Ti reference card to over 11 inches with this card. It should still fit in just about any case, but it’s still crazy to see the two cards next to each other.
Much like the reference card, there isn’t support for SLI. But you are getting Asus’s amazing software. With the software we were able to inch out a nice overclock over the already overclocked card, something we can’t always do on other factory overclocked cards.
When you put it all together, we have an amazing package. Asus pushes the GTX 650 Ti over the edge with their software and DirectCU II technology. Being a factory overclocked card and a no- reference design you do pay a premium for it, the card as tested runs $179 and is a little pricy. When considering everything Asus went through to improve on the reference design, the additional cost is understandable. This does mean that this isn’t as good of a value as a reference card, but if I had to pick between the cute reference card and the Asus DirectCU II TOP model with their great software, I would go with the Asus card every time.
