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ASUS GTX 980 Strix OC edition Air and Ln2 Review

8 Pack

8 Pack

8 Pack

OcUK Staff
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I have been reading all the in house reviews by Gibbo of the GTX980 from Nvidia and seen nothing but praise for the card. Low power consumption, low temperatures but most of all big overclocks have really caught my eye along with the great efficiency for benching even on the reference Air cooling. With this in mind I could not wait to get my hands on a custom cooled GTX 980 begging to be hammered.

Just like with GTX 780 Ti DC2, ASUS where the first of the hard hitters to send me a sample 980 to test. This was in the form of GTX 980 Strix OC edition which I believe takes over from the DC2 positioned just below the Matrix in the range of ASUS GPU.

First inspections of this GPU is its built very well. The cooler has dual fans and a one massive heatpipe to remove heat from the GPU. These two large fans are positioned to the front of the cooler to handle GPU, mems and VRM cooling. The cooler is dual slot so you can fit cards side by side for a four way air cooled config should you decide. The card is fitted with a back plate to ensure no flexing of the PCB and to help further with cooling. It has the usual hotwire points for extreme overclocking and monitoring voltages Via DMM. I will for sure be using these when I take the card for a spin on LN2 cooling later. As you can see from the pics below the card looks like it means business.





So lets now see how the Card performs in my new X99 GPU testing system which comprises of.
Intel 5960X CPU @ 4625mhz
ASUS Rampage V Extreme Motherboard (My benching choice)
GSKILL 16gb DDR4 3000 C15 RAM
Antec 1300w HCP PSU
Windows 7 64 Bit
Nvidia 344.11 Windows 64 Driver.
CPU water cooling by XSPC

For these tests I ran with the fan both on its normal profile and with it forced to 100%. GPU tweak does offer voltage adjustment to the core of this card but for Air review I decided to see how it performed at stock volts. Baring in mind this extra voltage would give even more OC headroom.

Here are the benchmark scores.

Heaven Valley Ultra HD


3D Mark Firestrike


3D Mark Firestrike Xtreme


3D mark 11 Performance


As you can see some very impressive numbers. 1500 Boost Core and 2050 mems through the benches. All this with no added voltage and a completely silent fan profile with the fans spinning at a maximum of 40% and the temps reached no more than 62C. No reason every gamer cant reach these clocks and performance by adding volts where necessary for stability. The cooling headroom is massive!! Crank up the fans and the cooling performance is still quiet, not silent now but almost inaudible above the 1400 rpm Sythe GT fans I have cooling the CPU rad. With this all out fans approach we see the top temp for the card is only 55C under full loading.

After testing this GPU out on Air cooling I decided to try it on LN2. The Rig I used for this was exactly the same as above but with my Kingpin and Derb8auer LN2 pots attached to GPU and CPU respectively. The CPU I clocked to between 5.55 and 5,67 with the mem at 3100 C11 this time.

Here are pics of the card prepared for LN2.





In mt first testing session I was able to run 11P, Firestrike and Firestrike xtreme at 2025mhz core with 2000mems. This scoring 26010 in 11, 17433 in Firstrike and 8476 is Firestrike Xtreme. For these numbers I used 1.61v core and -120 temps.

Here are the validation links for the above scores.
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8813785
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8813785
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/2934434

I also managed to get the card to clock to 2100mhz core through 3D mark 11 Graphics tests but did not complete the run through lack of LN2 at work so this I will revisit when I have filled up with the probability of even bigger benchmarking numbers ;)

Finally I decided to take the card home at weekend where I had LN2 and decided to put it through its paces in two legacy bench marks namely 3D mark 05 and 3D mark 06. Legacy is notoriously tough for high card clocks but the 980 Strix managed 1900+ Core and around 1900 mems in both to propel me to two Global world records.

See HWbot links here:

http://hwbot.org/submission/2649492_8_pack_3dmark06_geforce_gtx_980_57742_marks

http://hwbot.org/submission/2649494_8_pack_3dmark05_geforce_gtx_980_75123_marks

So in conclusion then its very hard to fault the Strix at all. Great build and a polished product, overclocking in almost silence on air which is obviously perfect for ambient benching or gaming with stock cooler. The stock cooler is the quietest and most powerful I have come across. Excellent LN2 overclocking performance and support with world record breaking performance. I would highly recommend the ASUS GTX 980 Strix.
 
I have custom Bios guys for LN2 no limits as such. This card is good for 2100+ given a little more time for sure. I only tested 2025 then went straight to 2125 passed 11 GT's but ran out of LN2 at work and not enough time to take entire X99 rig with me.

When I get back from MOA we are streaming live 4 way 980 Strix on ASUS X99 platform aiming for some records.
 
Did the card ship with the BIOS? Or did you flash it?

What do reckon to the memory bus holding the core back compared to the 700 series with bigger busses and more bandwidth?
 
Now this i wanna see :) I'm 113 points under that fire strike extreme on air (pre LN2) with a previous gen x79 chip set (and not even that well tuned IMO)..................unleash the beast lets see what that baby can do :cool:
 
Last edited:
The new NVflash is from Windows only. Yes I have it. No more dos. SO remember to remove GPU driver before flashing. Command is NVFlash -6 xxxxxx.rom from command prompt.

All you need in terms of custom bios and modding guide is here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/43v94e93d5y6vua/980Strix.rar

Exercise extreme caution and do ask here if you don't understand any element of the instructions.
 
8 Pack said:
The new NVflash is from Windows only. Yes I have it. No more dos. SO remember to remove GPU driver before flashing. Command is NVFlash -6 xxxxxx.rom from command prompt.

All you need in terms of custom bios and modding guide is here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/43v94e93d5y6vua/980Strix.rar

Exercise extreme caution and do ask here if you don't understand any element of the instructions.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much dude much appreciated, I've been flashing my cards since the 7600 so I'm all good in the info department :)

I shall report back later on successful flashing "GOT ANY LEECHES FOR THIS ?!?!?" :p
 
Dicehunter said:
Thanks very much dude much appreciated, I've been flashing my cards since the 7600 so I'm all good in the info department :)

I shall report back later on successful flashing "GOT ANY LEECHES FOR THIS ?!?!?" :p
Click to expand...

Be extremely careful, that voltage modification is only for LN2 cooled cards, on stock cooler do not go beyond 1.30mv, otherwise you will risk killing the card and when it comes to severe over-voltage both Asus and NVIDIA can tell and would void the warranty.
 
Gibbo said:
Be extremely careful, that voltage modification is only for LN2 cooled cards, on stock cooler do not go beyond 1.30mv, otherwise you will risk killing the card and when it comes to severe over-voltage both Asus and NVIDIA can tell and would void the warranty.
Click to expand...

8 Pack said:
Agree totally with Gibbo dont burn the GPU as no warranty. Be very careful.
Click to expand...

Thanks guys, To be honest I think I'll skip flashing as it seems I got a good 980, My Strix does 1600 on the core and 8000 on the memory with the max allowed voltage in GPU Tweak of 1.21, Seems 3DMark, Valley and Heaven stable, Now on to games :)
 
Dicehunter said:
Thanks guys, To be honest I think I'll skip flashing as it seems I got a good 980, My Strix does 1600 on the core and 8000 on the memory with the max allowed voltage in GPU Tweak of 1.21, Seems 3DMark, Valley and Heaven stable, Now on to games :)
Click to expand...

That is certainly at the top of the pick for clocks on near stock volts, don't let 8 Pack know, otherwise he will be visiting you for that card. ;)
 
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