When AMD released the Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 in October 2010, they had their sights set on one thing: bringing out a contender capable of taking on the very successful Nvidia GeForce GTX 460. In order to do this, not only did the performance of the HD6800 cards have to be up to par, but the price point had to be within range of the 460. Now that the 6800 series cards have been out for a while, we're taking a closer look at ASUS' HD 6850 variant, the EAH6850 DirectCU. With their unique heatpipe cooling solution, DirectCU, ASUS claims their cards run up to 20% cooler than OEM style cooled cards. Come along as we see how things turn out as the benchmarks get under way.