ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX Review - Introduction

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ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX tested

We review and benchmark that owl of a card, the ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX, the graphics card is named after a beast, and is one. The product comes factory overclocked at great levels and has got that all new three fan cooling. Merge all that with the default goodness the GeForce GTX 980 Ti has to offer like the 6 GB graphics memory and this product simply is a h00t.

The GPU that resides on under the hood is the big Maxwell, and oh man it's a freak of nature with that kind of game rendering powah! You'd expect a product with '980' in it to have a similar slightly tweaked GPU, but no Sir. Nvidia shifted a thing or two around, the 980 Ti is based on the BIG Maxwell GPU, the same GPU that is powering the Titan X. Obviously the product has been trimmed down a tiny bit, but trust us when we say, there's plenty performance to be found. This product comes with a luxurious six Gigabytes of graphics memory and with these specs, the GTX 980 Ti should be fetching a lot of interest for the true gamers among us. The GPU empowering the GeForce 980 Ti is big, this one has a massive transistor count; it is a slightly revised GM200 A1 GPU that currently feeds the Titan X its horsepower. So yes, a slightly different iteration of the GM200. The card has five display outputs: three DisplayPorts, HDMI and DVI-I.  Where the GTX 980 has 4 GB, this product has a nice 6 GB frame buffer, and close to a third more shader processors when compared to the GeForce 980, accumulating up-to 2816 of them playing the binary game in a GPU that has a whopping 8 Billion transistors (GeForce GTX 980 has 5 Billion). The card looks pretty identical to previous models with subtle changes here and there and with that familiar cooler shroud. Memory wise NVIDIA equipped its GeForce GTX 980 Ti with 7 Gbps memory, the fastest GDDR5 memory you can find on a graphics card today, that's until HBM (stacked memory) is released by the competition in the near future. Combined with GPU Boost 2.0 you will see this product is advertised in the 1076 MHz range on its dynamic clock for the reference products. The reference base clock for 980 Ti is 1 GHz. It's not that the card can't go any higher, but it is done to keep the product in line power consumption wise. With a 250W TDP, we are not complaining at all, no Sir. For the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, monitor outputs include DVI, HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort, this will vary a little with board partner products that are bound to get released after Computex, based on their own design and cooling. With a card like the ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX you will be able to play the hottest games including the Witcher 3 and Grand Theft Auto V at that whopping Ultra HD 8.2 Mpixels at a 3840x2160 resolution with a single card, in fact we are going to check that out in this review. The maximum allowed board design power draw is roughly 250 Watts, not bad considering the caliber of this product.

The all custom ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX comes with a default base clock set at 1216 MHz, the Boost speed for this product is listed at 1317 MHz ! The memory is bumped up as well at 1800/7200 MHz (effective). To keep things cool the card launched with an updated third-gen triple-fan DirectCU III cooling solution. DirectCU III comes with a "Triple Wing-Blade 0dB Fan Design", well that is a lot of marketing but at full load you will not hear this card, and the fans remain disabled when the GPU is under a set temperature at light GPU load. The product is armed with a 12 GPU phase and 2 phase memory power circuitry. Anyway, have a peek at the photo below. Next page please. 

GeForce GTX 980 Ti  STRIX edition from ASUS