Everything about this card is appealing - we see a visible and statistically significant increase in performance in the XXX Edition over the standard XFX HD 6950. The direct contact heatpipes do a good job at keeping the card cool under typical situations, however it becomes obvious that the performance of the cooler falls apart under a heavy heat load. This heavy heat load is from putting a huge overclock on the card and applying the extra voltage to the GPU. We see this in other "DirectCU" coolers, and they tend to fall apart in this same way.