Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini 4096MB

1. Introduction2. Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini3. High Res Gallery (w/ Asus Maximus VII Impact)4. Testing Methodology5. 3DMark Vantage6. 3DMark 117. 3DMark8. Unigine Heaven Benchmark9. Tomb Raider (1080p and 1440p)10. Grid AutoSport (1080p and 1440p)11. Thief (1080p and 1440p)12. Metro: Last Light Redux (1080p and 1600p)13. Total War Rome II: Emperor Edition (1080p and 1600p)14. Thermal Dynamics/ IR Thermometer Readings15. Acoustics Performance16. Power Consumption17. Overclocking18. Closing Thoughts19. View All Pages

For the review today we are using Nvidia 347.88 drivers. We retested all Nvidia hardware with these drivers for this review, to keep things on a completely even footing. The AMD cards were tested with the Catalyst OMEGA 14.12 driver.

If you want to read more about our test system, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page. We are using an Asus PB287Q monitor for this review today.

We test all the hardware today at high image quality settings and with anti aliasing when possible. Years ago gamers would have to make sacrifices to get smooth frame rates at 1080p – but it is 2015 and we all expect very high image quality even from these ‘mid range’ boards. We include higher cost cards such as the R9 290 and GTX770 to get an idea of performance positioning in the market.

Comparison cards:
Inno3D GTX960 iChill X3 Air Boss Ultra (1,329 mhz core / 1,800 mhz memory)
MSI GTX960 Gaming 2G OC (1,190 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Palit GTX960 Super JetStream (1,279 mhz core / 1800 mhz memory)
Asus GTX960 Strix OC Edition (1,253 mhz core / 1800 mhz memory)
Asus R9 290 Direct CU II OC (1000 mhz core / 1,260 mhz memory)
Gigabyte GTX770 OC (1,137 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Sapphire Dual X R9 285 (965 mhz core / 1,400 mhz memory)
XFX R9 280X DD (1,000 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory)
Asus Direct CU II GTX 760 OC (1,006 mhz core / 1,502mhz memory)
Asus GTX750TI Strix OC Edition (1,124 mhz core / 1,350mhz memory)

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Grid AutoSport
Tomb Raider
Metro Last Light Redux
Thief 201
Total War Rome 2: Emperor Edition

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.

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