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If you are in the market for a new graphics card there are no shortage of options available in 2015. For enthusiast gamers with deeper pockets there has never been a better time to invest in a new GPU for 4K gaming.
If you have £800 burning a hole in your pocket then the Nvidia Titan X will prove tempting, due to the stellar shader power, great overclocking potential – coupled up with 12GB of GDDR5 memory. We aren't sure there is any real need for a 12GB framebuffer right now, but it surely offers serious futureproofing for upcoming AAA titles. It is just so very expensive and out of reach for many.
AMD launched their Fury X a short while ago and while not quite the GTX980 Ti killer that many had hoped it does exhibit excellent potential when partnered up with a 4K monitor. We are aware than a Rev 2 cooler (with a silver/chromatic logo) is already in the wild, but our sample lifted from the retail channel was Rev 1 and suffered quite badly from coil whine and pump noise. We honestly aren't sure if this was an isolated incident but we do hope if you buy one now it will be the latest Revision.
When we consider the alternatives, we keep coming back to the GTX980 Ti as the number one choice. KitGuru has reviewed many partner cards at this point and the Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming has been the board to beat. The ASUS STRIX Gaming GTX 980 Ti DirectCU 3 is clearly a product that ASUS have spent some time developing and they have not taken any shortcuts for a quick release.
Performance out of the box is class leading and The STRIX card is able to beat the G1 Gaming in every test. At the standard fan settings it does run around 5c hotter, although ASUS have opted for a very non aggressive default fan profile – to deliver the lowest possible noise characteristics. It is the quietest GTX980 Ti we have tested to date. When gaming, the triple fans never spin faster than 1,400 rpm.
While every card will overclock to different levels, we managed to squeeze another 10% from the overclocked core, before artifacting and instability would occur. This is a testament to high grade capacitors and beefy 12+2 power phase implementation. Asus move to a fully automated, flux free manufacturing process should help maintain tighter, more consistent levels of performance across the full production line as well.
You can buy the ASUS STRIX Gaming GTX 980 Ti DirectCU 3 from Overclockers UK for £659.99 inc vat.
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Pros:
- runs cool under load.
- built to the very highest standards.
- default fan profile is very non aggressive.
- 10% extra core clock available on our sample.
- very strong 4K performance.
- HDMI 2.0 support.
- fastest single GPU card we have tested.
- no coil whine.
Cons:
- its a serious investment.
Kitguru says: The ASUS STRIX Gaming GTX 980 Ti DirectCU 3 is a showcase of engineering prowess and why ASUS have earned such a reputation in the high end market. It is also the fastest single GPU graphics card we have tested.
still laughing at the r9 295×2 performance on the Witcher 3 hahahahahahahahaha (sorry).
Well I suspect that if AMD were to ever work out their driver-level Crossfire support for W3, the 295×2 would likely at least trade blows with the Titan Z. As it is, it looks just like I would expect a single reference 290X to look, because as far as W3 is concerned, that’s what it is.
It’s an Nvidia showcase title, I don’t expect any better.
Amazing card.
Good deal faster than Fury X on 4K, smokes it on 1440p which is my preferred resolution, good price, premium quality components used throughout the card, more quiet than Fury X.
Good test KitGuru.
They sacrificed some temps to make it more quiet. I fully support that !
i just agree with kitguru. < Find Here <
it’s a dual chip card (so basically crossfire) and it can even run past 45 fps on 1440p that is piss-poor performance even their single chip cards beat it
i am getting this and a hyper 612 pwm to upgrade my currently crippled rig
i7 2600
GTX 560 from msi that broke so gt 730 1 gb ddr3 64 bit from msi is the temp. gpu
16GB ram
TBs of HDD
etc
having put up witth infernal stock and laptop coolers running at 6000 rpm (100rps or 10ms/rev)
i won’t mind the extra fan speed for cooling… 3000 rpm seems to be the max i can tolerate a non optimised fan design but with this i think i can go to hell with the fans… although 2-3000 rpm at max should be enough that should be like 50 degrees right
SIDENOTE: because i have a micro atx mb it does mean the graphics card can only use the top pci slot so it means the 612 would almost touch the asus but hey more cooling right…
cool the cpu and backside of the gpu with 1 fan (+case)
in another review the temps were 80 ish ‘stock’ and 70 ish oc with a more aggresive fan
so that means it would be well under 65 with ‘stock’ clocks and more fan speed
40 fps @1440p is disastrous for that card, AMD are slowly killing themselves because of poor drivers and optimisation. If you look at Tomb Raider which is an AMD showcase title (tress FX first outing) Nvidia perform very well on there. If Nvidia can get their cards to perform well on AMD biased titles then why can AMD do the same on Nvidia biased titles ?
Because tech like TressFX is made open, deliberately, by AMD. When Tomb Raider came out and debuted TressFX, for a week or two Nvidia fans were screaming and moaning that it didn’t work properly on their cards, until Nvidia fixed it in drivers, and lo and behold, it suddenly worked BETTER on Nvidia cards. It was easy for them because TressFX is open, Nvidia picked up the base code and fixed it up in their drivers.
AMD can’t do that with Nvidia-biased titles because Gameworks features (such as Hairworks) are a black-box. Nvidia doesn’t open that stuff up, they lock it up.
By the way, the new Catalyst driver adds Crossfire support for Witcher 3, so I would expect the R9-295×2 to start kicking ass again at that game.
I’m definitely getting two of these. Nice review and great looking/performing card.
Either AMD need to start shutting Nvidia out or Nvidia need to start sharing more……it is unfair on the gamers.
This is what AMD fans have been saying for a while now. AMD simply can’t afford to try to shut Nvidia out, even if they wanted to – one failed attempt could be disastrously expensive for them. And their open approach tends to benefit all gamers when it’s successful. Nvidia on the other hand has piles of money to spend when Huang’s not swimming around in it like Scrooge McDuck, and a veritable army of devotees who would rather a feature not exist if it’s not an Nvidia exclusive. In my opinion, TressFX is superior to HairWorks (which is just “tesselate the **** out of it” written into code) and is advantageous because it works really, really well on all platforms, but Nvidia has 75% (ish) of the market, so game companies tend to do (and use) what they say.
why 4 gigabites from gpu?, the gtx 980 ti should be get 6 gigabites right?
Yes 1440p is great – I have a triple 1440p setup – Dual 980ti Strixii 🙂
Me too – They are in the post (hopefully)