Asus GTX970 STRIX OC Review

1. Introduction2. MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G3. MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G (High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. 3DMark Vantage6. 3DMark 117. 3DMark8. Unigine Heaven Benchmark9. Unigine Valley Benchmark10. Grid AutoSport (1080p and 1600p)11. Grid AutoSport (4k)12. Thief (1080p and 1600p)13. Thief (4k)14. Tomb Raider (1080p and 1600p)15. Tomb Raider (4k)16. Metro Last Light Redux (1080p and 1600p)17. Metro Last Light Redux (4k)18. Thermal Dynamics19. Acoustics Performance20. Power Consumption21. Overclocking22. Closing Thoughts23. View All Pages

In the second of our GTX970 launch articles today, we look at the new ASUS version of the card – the GTX970 STRIX OC. As the name would suggest it ships in an overclocked state with a proprietary cooling system and a hybrid fan system to drop noise levels to a minimum.

The Asus GTX970 Strix OC is a mean looking card – the artwork is intentionally minimalistic, fitting in with the theme. Asus say the name STRIX is taken from the ancient Roman and Greek for the word ‘OWL'. Bird lovers all over the world will be happy.

Even though we have a handful of reviews ready for the launch today, Nvidia's Maxwell architecture deserves a little discussion before we get into testing the ASUS GTX970. If you are a regular reader of KitGuru then you will already have studied our multiple analysis of the lower level GTX750Ti solution throughout the year.

The GTX750ti has been one of the most exciting cards that Nvidia have released in recent years – performance is close to the HD7850 while consuming half the power at the socket – and all without the need for a PCIe power cable. It produces such a modest heat emission that the Asus GTX750Ti Strix OC we reviewed recently didn't need to spin the fans most of the time, even when gaming.

AMD really are so far behind now when it comes to power consumption that they will need to release a new architecture to compete. Not an easy thing to do overnight, but we hope they have something in the pipeline to become competitive again in the coming months.

The Maxwell architecture has been designed to deliver twice the performance per watt of previous generation Geforce hardware. It sounds easy enough on paper, but the real world challenges for Nvidia have been complex.

GPU	GeForce GTX 680 (Kepler)	GeForce GTX 980 (Maxwell)	Geforce GTX 970 (Maxwell)
Streaming Multiprocessors	8	16	13
CUDA Cores	1536	2048	1664
Base Clock	1006 mhz	1126 mhz	1050 mhz
GPU Boost Clock	1058 mhz	1216 mhz	1178 mhz
Total Video memory	2GB	4GB	4GB
Texel fill-rate	129 Gigatexels/Sec	144.1 Gigatexels/Sec	109.2 Gigatexels/Sec
Memory Clock	6000 mhz	7000 mhz	7000 mhz
Memory Bandwidth	192 GB/sec	224 GB/sec	224 GB/s
ROPs	32	64	64
Manufacturing Process	28nm	28nm	28nm
TDP	195 watts	165 watts	145 watts

The new GM204 GPU is very efficient. The Maxwell SM has been rebalanced so that the CUDA cores are fully utilised more often. Doing so saves power and enhances overall performance. The L2 cache size in the GM204 is 2MB, or four times larger than the GK104. The addition of extra cache means that fewer requests to the GPU memory are needed – again reducing power consumption and pushing more performance.

The Geforce GTX 970 is equipped with 7Gbps memory. Those of you with higher resolution monitors, or running in a multi screen configuration will also be pleased to hear that there is 4GB of GDDR5 memory on the card, not 3GB – this memory will push 224 GB/s sec. Nvidia have added a new compression engine to reduce the demand on DRAM bandwidth.

The Asus GTX970 Strix OC has received a core clock enhancement to 1,114mhz, from 1,050mhz on the reference design. The GDDR5 memory remains untouched, as we would expect – its certainly not going to be a bottleneck.

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