Conclusion
Conclusion
Ah man, three fans. I kinda liked the two fans on the previous models that somehow resembled two eyes (owl) staring at you. Ah well, that's as much as we can nitpick anyway, what a h00t the STRIX is man. The ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX much like all AIB cards can get your performance upwards in an extra 20% region on top of the reference cards due to the very high base and boost clock frequencies. It does so running at OK temperatures. I say OK as other board partners have solution in the 65~75 Degrees C area, this card runs a little closer to 80 Degrees C, but ASUS did that on purpose to make the product VERY silent. Performance then, well a card like this STRIX edition simply beats the Titan X with a good notch, at a far better price. So yeah armed with 6GB of graphics memory and combined with the sheer rendering muscle this card has, you'll be future proof for a while. The one question that remains, and I will address this in each and every 980 Ti review, is simple; do you really need a card as beefy as the GTX 980 Ti really is? Well no Sir, not at all if you are playing games in the 1080P or 2560x1440 monitor resolution domain as the GTX 970 or 980 is sufficient. But with owl like senses the STRIX card offers you to enable any quality settings you desire, and next to that DSR (super-sampling) is slowly becoming popular. With DSR you render at a higher resolution than sample it back to say 2560x1440, and that adds a level of extra image quality as pixels are calculated and rendered more accurately. We have an example of that in our benchmarks session, Shadow of Mordor which we rendered at a whopping Ultra HD and 5K and then output at 2560x1440. And yeah I know, it's all relative but these are options the true enthusiast crowd likes. Then there is Ultra HD, that brute resolution of 3840x2160 requires sheer raw horsepower to output its 4x Full HD resolution, and the GTX 980 Ti is one of two cards that can handle this resolution well with very decent image quality settings. So again, value for money wise you are way better off with a card like the GeForce GTX 970 or 980, make no mistake about that as there is no doubt. But this is enthusiast grade graphics hardware, and yeah it kinda rules. Plus you are a little more future proof with the nice 6GB frame-buffer of course.
Aesthetics
So the ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX is a terrific looking product, nice PCB, good overall looks with the three fans, the shielding and the PCB is just lovely in its matte black and ultra-clean design. So yes, overall it is a good looking product with a dark matte PCB and grey/black red cooler accents. Nice addition is the STRIX LED lit logo, albeit I rather see it on or off, not fading all the time. Overall it is an aesthetically pleasing product. Looks however are personal, that I have to mention.
Cooling & Noise Levels
The reference design of the GTX 980 Ti are set at an offset threshold of 80 degrees C. Once the GPU gets warmer the card will clock down and lower its voltage. ASUS uses a DirectCU III cooler that manages roughly 450W of cooling performance. The card to run close to 80 degrees C under heft conditions, the cooler however can perform better, but at the cost of more noise. The decision ASUS made was less noise, and that works out OK. Up-to a degree or 60 on the GPU, this card remains passive and thus inaudible. Once the fans kick in, you can expect to hover around the 75 to maybe 82 Degrees C marker, with hefty games. Please do note that you will ALWAYS need proper ventilation inside your chassis to achieve that number. Please do consider how far this product is overclocked for you already. At default settings you may expect sound pressure values in the 41 dBA range at max under load. That's measured 75 CM away from the PC. This means you the card is working in a silent to normal DBa range. As stated, the downside is the slightly higher temp, but really they remain fine, especially when you take the factory overclock into consideration eh?
We have not heard any coil noise or detected whine noises.
Power Consumption
Much like the GM200 Maxwell GPU harbored in Titan X, this GTX 980 Ti is rated as having a 250~260 Watt TDP, our measurements pass that number by a good degree as we measured roughly 300 Watt. It likely is due to the factory overclock, which requires additional voltage. We remain comfortable advising a 650 Watts power supply if you do not go crazy overclocking wise. If you go with 2-way SLI, a 950 Watts power supply is recommended. Remember when purchasing a PSU, aim to double up in Wattage as your PSU is most efficient when it is under 50% load. Here again keep in mind we measure peak power consumption, the average power consumption is a good notch lower depending on GPU utilization. Also, if you plan to overclock the CPU/memory and / or GPU with added voltage, please do purchase a power supply with enough reserve. People often underestimate it, but if you tweak all three aforementioned variables, you can easily add 200 Watts to your peak power consumption budget.
Game Performance
We can't be any clearer about it, all ranges from 1080P to Ultra HD are very playable for the GeForce GTX 980Ti. Up-to WQHD (2560x1440) this card seems to be a true sweet-spot, however it is really capable of rendering games in that whopper of a resolution Ultra HD as well. You'll be in the 40 FPS on average domain with decent settings and the latest titles mostly, and that's ok. This much game rending horse-power versus the nice 6GB graphics memory helps you in Ultra HD, hefty complex anti-aliasing modes, DSR and of course the latest gaming titles. And that makes this the second viable single GPU solution that allows you to game properly in Ultra HD with some very nice eye candy enabled with a single GPU. Drivers wise we can't complain at all, we did not stumble into any issues. And with a single GPU there's no micro-stuttering to fight off. Performance wise, really there's not one game that won't run seriously good at the very best image quality settings. You must do gaming with a nice 30" monitor of course, at 2560x1440/1600 or Ultra HD.
Overclocking
The boost modes can be configured with temperature targets relative to maximum power draw and your GPU Core frequency offsets. Saying that; I realize it sounds complicated but you'll have your things balanced out quite fast as these products are easy to tweak. Our GPU sample could take a ~1270 MHz base clock, add to that the dynamic boost clock and you'll see your games rendering in the 1400 to 1500 MHz domain. The memory you'll be able to get close to roughly 8 GHz effective. This card uses Hynix memory btw. Don't push memory too far though, and we certainly do not recommend adding voltage to that memory. The overclock potential is good, albeit it has a fantastic factory clock frequency as default already, of course.
Concluding
It is a little puzzling to see how good all the custom board partner graphics cards are, pretty much they all are very impressive with all the right boxes ticked. It is the same for the ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX, green lights across the board as far as I am concerned, though I had hoped for a little more performance from the new DirectCU III cooler. Overall though is a terrific product if you look at it from a pure performance perspective, it has a very fast out of the box factory clock frequency. The negatives ? Well, temp levels are a notch higher than I would have liked, but it remains OK, the benefit however is a near silent graphics card and for a card in this range and caliber, that is really nice to hear :) That really is all I can nitpick about. Well of course pricing remains a bit of a topic with the GXT 980 Ti in general. The PCB is 100% custom, the GPU is kept at very acceptable temperatures, the components on-board remain at decent temperatures, the looks are good, the board design is sturdy with metal plates, and even the backside is covered by a back-plate, FORTIFIER!. The performance is seriously faster than a GTX Titan X, yet pricing is much better at MSRP is $700 USD marker plus tax. In the end this product will offer you a AAA gaming experience in any monitor resolution, as even Ultra HD now becomes a viable resolution for single GPU setups. The card does so while keeping itself at nice temperatures. Compared to the GeForce GTX 980 Ti at 2560x1440 you can expect an increase of up-to say 25% performance (over the reference GeForce GTX 980 Ti) and overclocked you can add another 10%. We adore the ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX for what it really is, a super fast performing product with nice aesthetics, excellent noise levels and OK cooling performance. A product like this comes highly recommended to those who do not like overclocking themselves, but want the fastest out of the box performance. The ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX will be very hard to beat. It's not just an owl, it is a beast!
Update: Shortly before finishing this article ASUS gave us a call. It appears that the retail units will be clocked 26 MHz slower at a 1190 MHz core and 1291 MHz Boost frequency. The batches media received are clocked at 1216 MHz on the core and 1317 MHz on the boost frequency (as displayed in this review). The faster mode can still be achieved by using the OC mode in their overclocking software. It is a little disappointing to not see the fastest advertised frequency straight out of the box.
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