ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce GTX 980 Ti Platinum edition review - Introduction

ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce GTX 980 Ti
You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

We review the ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce GTX 980 Ti Platinum edition. it's is the most high-end series from the ASUS Republic of Gamers team, a graphics card that was redesigned to perform and to be tweaked. The product comes factory overclocked at fairly high levels and has got that all new DirectCU based cooling design. The card has RGB LEDs that change color based on the workload, a defroster that prevents condensation build-up with sub-zero overclocking, and even a safe-mode button that can rescue you from overly-zealous overclocks.

The GPU that resides 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 varies a little with board partner products released after Computex, based on their own design and cooling. With a card like the ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce GTX 980 Ti Platinum edition 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 ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce GTX 980 Ti Platinum edition comes with a default base clock set at 1216 MHz, the Boost speed for this product is listed at 1291MHz. The memory is bumped up as well at 1800/7200 MHz (effective). The card has RGB LEDs that change color based on the workload, a defroster that prevents condensation build-up with sub-zero overclocking. It also comes with a safe-mode button that rescues you from overly-ambitious overclocks. To keep things cool the card launched with an updated DirectCU cooling solution. This DirectCU II revision comes with a dual-fan in a triple slot design. The product is armed with 12 phase GPU and 2 phase memory power circuitry. The ROG graphics card comes with a new design and looks, it will please some and others not so much we think. Overall we think it looks terrific, including a proper Aluminum back plate. But have a peek at the photo below. Next page please. 

ROG Matrix GeForce GTX 980 Ti Platinum edition from ASUS