As expected ASUS is also amongst NVIDIA's launch partners for their new Maxwell based graphics cards. In this review we're having a close look at the GTX 980 STRIX, which is ASUS's flagship model for now. Therefore it features a custom PCB as well as ASUS's semi-passive STRIX cooler. This should be a rather punch combination and we're curious to learn more about this card.


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Presentation

ASUS is amongst the first Nvidia add-in-card (AIC) partners that have decided to introduce a new custom GTX 980 graphics card which is using NVIDIAs latest and greatest GM204 Maxwell chip. For this graphics card, ASUS makes use of a custom PCB paired with its own custom STRIX cooler and on the flip-side of the card, there is a good looking backplate. A quick glance at the specs also reveals that this card ships factory overclocked.

Browsing the specifications of this card we find 2048 CUDA cores, 128 TMUs and 64 ROPs. For comparison reasons, the GTX 780 features 2304 CUDA cores, 192 TMUs and 48 ROPs. This means that NVIDIA cut down the CUDA core count as well as TMU count, but at the same time increased the number of ROPs. Looking for reference clocks we find 1'126 MHz base clock and 1'216 MHz boost clock.



As you can see from the GPU-Z screenshot below, ASUS decided to use a factory-overclock on their new GTX 980 STRIX. While the reference GTX 980 with GM204 GPU is set to work at 1'126 MHz for the base clock and 1'216 MHz for the GPU boost clock, the GTX 980 STRIX runs at 1'178 MHz base clock and 1'279 MHz boost clock.

When it comes to memory clock speeds we see a tiny, 12 MHz frequency boost, which makes the chips run at 7'012 MHz. Combine this with a 256 Bit memory interface and you end up with a total of 224 Gigabyte of memory bandwidth.

The typical boost clock is set at 1'279 MHz, the maximum boost of 1'305 MHz was achieved quite easily and the GTX 980 STRIX held that clock most of the load time due to the capable STRIX cooler as well as good TDP target (nVidia's Boost technology being power-based and not temperature-based on this card). At this point we also run Furmark to see how high the card overclocks, when the GPU is under full load. This way we can determine a worst case scenario regarding maximum boost clock. With the card we see clocks speeds of 1'178 MHz at 1.07v.

Specifications

	ASUS GTX 980 STRIX	GeForce GTX 980	GeForce GTX 780
Chip	GM204 Maxwell	GM204 Maxwell	GK110-300 Kepler
Process	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm
Transistors	5.20 billion	5.20 billion	7.10 billion
GPU clock	1'179 MHz	1'126 MHz	863 MHz
GPU Boost clock	1'279 MHz	1'216 MHz	900 MHz
Memory GDDR5	4'096 MB	3'072 MB	3'072 MB
Memory clock	1'753 (7'012) MHz	1'750 (7'000) MHz	1'502 (6'008) MHz
Memory interface	256 Bit	256 Bit	384 Bit
Memory bandwidth	224'000 MB/s	224'000 MB/s	288'400 MB/s
Shader Cores	2'048 (12 SMX)	2'048 (12 SMX)	2'304 (12 SMX)
TMUs	128	128	192
ROPs	64	64	48
TDP	>165 Watt	165 Watt	250 Watt
PCB Type	Custom Design	Reference Design	Reference Design
Slots	2	2	2
Cooler	ASUS STRIX	NVIDIA Reference	NVIDIA Reference
Launch Price	$	$599	$649

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Page 1 - Presentation / Specifications	Page 11 - DIRT Showdown
Page 2 - The card	Page 12 - Far Cry 3
Page 3 - Photo Gallery / Delivery	Page 13 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 4 - Test Setup	Page 14 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Page 5 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 15 - Metro: Last Light
Page 6 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 16 - GTA V
Page 7 - BattleField 3	Page 17 - Power Consumption
Page 8 - Bioshock Infinite	Page 18 - Temperatures / Noise levels
Page 9 - Crysis 3	Page 19 - Performance/Price & Performance/Watt
Page 10 - Call of Duty Black Ops 2	Page 20 - Conclusion