ASUS ROG Poseidon Platinum GTX 980 Ti Review @ [H]

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ASUS ROG Poseidon Platinum GTX 980 Ti Review - ASUS has just released its new hybrid air/liquid cooled video card based on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB GPU. The ASUS ROG Poseidon Platinum GTX 980 Ti can be run with liquid cooling to make this a cool and quiet GTX 980 Ti and hopefully give us some good overclocks. We'll test it, and find out how it does on air and liquid.
 
Very nice card. Hopefully it stays close to MSRP but for some reason I believe the usual stores will mark it up. Would love to have one in my case.
 
I was away for a while and missed out on the Poseidon series until now. I am impressed. Much better than the EVGA models that come with a built-in waterblock for $200-300 more than their regular cards, and are water-only.
 
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Commander Suzdal said:
I was away for a while and missed out on the Poseidon series until now. I am impressed. Much better than the EVGA models that come with a built-in waterblock for $200-300 more than thier regular cards, and are water-only.
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Yep, ASUS simply owns this portion of the market. There is little reason to even consider another card if the Hybrid thing is what you want.
 
I was very anxious for this review since i own the 780 Poseidon, and i'm very pleased with ASUS's ROG series.
Seems like another excellent GPU from ASUS :)
 
Great review, thanks!


So did you do any benchmarking with this special bios you mentioned? I'm curious to see if this card can go further with more power.

This looks like a nice (considerably cheaper) alternative to buying a 980ti and a separate water block, I wonder how this would compare to say EK's offerings performance wise.
 
britjh22 said:
Isn't Zotac's 980 Ti Arcticstorm the same type of hybrid cooler, allowing air or air+water?
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Yes it is, so the ASUS is not that unique after all. And the zotac card seem to have a better design too, with 3 fans.
 
it seems like the last two iterations of the poseidon have not been the monster oc'ers that the gtx 780 poseidon was. that card matched what many custom water coolers were achieving. still, i've been curious to see what this cooler can do for fiji.
 
rennyf77 said:
it seems like the last two iterations of the poseidon have not been the monster oc'ers that the gtx 780 poseidon was. that card matched what many custom water coolers were achieving. still, i've been curious to see what this cooler can do for fiji.
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I think it's all due the freaking Power limit however 1500+mhz with stock BIOS isn't nothing bad.. some people can't even go above 1550mhz with custom BIOS and insane amount of voltage, as the review state they are reaching over 1500mhz rock solid by just using water and nothing more so that's stock voltages which it's just GREAT, but they also may be damned by the luck of the draw lottery, who knows, that's how overclocking works actually just luck.
 
i suspect asus is using binned chips for these poseidon cards as well as their strix. unless someone with a great chip puts their card under high end water, we truly may never know what a bleeding edge oc on the gtx 980 ti would look like.
 
britjh22 said:
Isn't Zotac's 980 Ti Arcticstorm the same type of hybrid cooler, allowing air or air+water?
Click to expand...

M76 said:
Yes it is, so the ASUS is not that unique after all. And the zotac card seem to have a better design too, with 3 fans.
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Two potential problems--the Zotac card is $40 more, and the reviews on NewEgg complain of non-standard water fittings, that will void your warranty if you change them.
 
britjh22 said:
Isn't Zotac's 980 Ti Arcticstorm the same type of hybrid cooler, allowing air or air+water?
Click to expand...


If you want to pay $50 more for a hybrid system with non-standard fittings....sure.
 
The 980ti scales horribly past 1450 core. I can get 1550 at 1.25v on a modded bios and 1455 at 1.175v but the difference between the two is so negligible as per performance....but the temps skyrocket. Kepler was so much better with regards to OC scaling linearly. Maxwell disappoints. That said I love my 980ti and it is a beast but it does get warm running modern games at 4k.

At least the water keeps it much quieter it seems.
 
an extra $60 over the regular card aint bad, that said...

all i see is air-based coolers reaching a higher OC than a water-based card. thats pretty shameful. dB and voltages are important, but performance is king. the performance gained from +10mhz is probably utterly negligible, but its hard to justify all the extra hardware and $$$ needed just to lower the decibels. my gigabyte 770 windforce isnt even that loud at 100% fan speed (with my case's side off), though other GPU coolers certainly vary.

id only buy this if i already had a watercooling setup and wouldnt mind the wear and tear, but then again... if i spent all this money on a custom loop a;ready... why not just a get a proper badass waterblock and really OC the damn thing?
 
cinnamonandgravy said:
id only buy this if i already had a watercooling setup and wouldnt mind the wear and tear, but then again... if i spent all this money on a custom loop a;ready... why not just a get a proper badass waterblock and really OC the damn thing?
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Because you can quite possibly get worse OCs if you use non-binned reference GPUs on water. If you sell the card, chances are you won't sell it with a waterblock attached too.

It's worth paying 60bux for guaranteed OCs and silence, without worrying about warranties, resale values or potentially losing those tiny heatsink screws down the road.
 
*Update on Special BIOS*


I applied the BIOS and re-tested overclocking on the card. The BIOS unfortunately does not raise the power limit, still stuck at 110%, so ultimately limited. What the BIOS does is BIOS lock the voltage in at 1.243v, so it is on constantly at that voltage, can't change it.

Unfortunately, it does not allow any higher stable overclocks. I can now run it at 1544MHz, for longer then I could before, but ultimately it still causes the system to restart. Therefore, I did get about a 20MHz higher clock out of it, but, it is not stable, and doesn't run long enough to allow me to get any ap2ap results run to compare to sad to say.

End of story, the new BIOS is not helping my overclock. 1522MHz overclock with 1.187v is still my highest stable overclock on the card.

For the record, at 1.243V the temp was only at 49c, so water cooling worked well at very high voltage.

That's it folks, testing complete. I was going to do an update performance article if I could get it to OC higher, but I could not, so it is what it is.
 
Thank you Brent for the heads up, it prove again the high-end quality of the WaterBlock offered by the Poseidon Series.. this is hell of a deal for anyone with already a WC setup. it's cheaper and probably better than any other aftermarket Water Block actually in the market, without take into consideration about the possibly high binned card. 1522mhz at 1.187 is just amazing.
 
Btw the 355.82 drivers are the worst for overclocking the card so comparing to what you got with the gigabyte is not really fair. My classifieds run 1506/8200 in SLI but with 355.82 I am running them on stock since at 1450+ MHz I start getting grey screens and flashing which doesn't happen with previous drivers. fwiw.
 
KickAssCop said:
Btw the 355.82 drivers are the worst for overclocking the card so comparing to what you got with the gigabyte is not really fair. My classifieds run 1506/8200 in SLI but with 355.82 I am running them on stock since at 1450+ MHz I start getting grey screens and flashing which doesn't happen with previous drivers. fwiw.
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tested and re-tested? I was having a issue with my card but just had to restart my machine manually and done (it seems that fast boot fk everything overtime in Win10).
 
Yup tested and retested. Was on 355.82. Everything was running fine but started getting crashes. Thought my overclock was done. Rolled back to 353.30 and got my overclock back. Had to move back to 355.82 again since I am playing Mad Max and MGS V in 4k dsr and wanted my SLi back.

Issue is well documented on multiple forums. I am on Win 7 so I don't deal with win 10 beta crap.
 
Brent_Justice said:
*Update on Special BIOS*


I applied the BIOS and re-tested overclocking on the card. The BIOS unfortunately does not raise the power limit, still stuck at 110%, so ultimately limited. What the BIOS does is BIOS lock the voltage in at 1.243v, so it is on constantly at that voltage, can't change it.

Unfortunately, it does not allow any higher stable overclocks. I can now run it at 1544MHz, for longer then I could before, but ultimately it still causes the system to restart. Therefore, I did get about a 20MHz higher clock out of it, but, it is not stable, and doesn't run long enough to allow me to get any ap2ap results run to compare to sad to say.

End of story, the new BIOS is not helping my overclock. 1522MHz overclock with 1.187v is still my highest stable overclock on the card.

For the record, at 1.243V the temp was only at 49c, so water cooling worked well at very high voltage.

That's it folks, testing complete. I was going to do an update performance article if I could get it to OC higher, but I could not, so it is what it is.
Click to expand...

It's pretty easy to raise the tdp and power limit with Maxwell BIOS Tweaker. I have done for my 970 and my current OC BIOS (my 1555+core benching bios).


PM the bios and I will take a look at it or you can the follow the TDP/PL steps here (Step 6) and do it yourself. Most 980tis are power limited.
 
This sounds like an interesting card and I like the liquid cooling option. My case runs under my desk and I hate screaming video cards and CPUs.........what I don't like is the 700 video card and 300 cooling solution to run it.....Fury X just doesn't appeal to me, I guess what I want is a product with just liquid cooling built in....
 
What size fittings are these? My loop is running 1/2" ID tubing, would it work with this card?
 
Yeah, still interested to see how one of the Platinums handles some more power with a tweaked bios.


Seventyfive said:
What size fittings are these? My loop is running 1/2" ID tubing, would it work with this card?
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You have to install your own fittings, so whichever size you like basically.
 
Sufu said:
Because you can quite possibly get worse OCs if you use non-binned reference GPUs on water. If you sell the card, chances are you won't sell it with a waterblock attached too.

It's worth paying 60bux for guaranteed OCs and silence, without worrying about warranties, resale values or potentially losing those tiny heatsink screws down the road.
Click to expand...

OCing is always a gamble, and this 'platinum' variant cant even beat aircooled solutions. binned and watercooled, and worse peak MHz. eh, thats not the best argument to get me to buy something. esp. since i can get a non-reference 980ti with a factory OC for $650 and just reattach the heatsink later for resale if i watercool it.

the waterblock is a bit of an oddity. it looks to cover the CPU and vram, but mosfets and friends are cooled via air, though the heatsinks do share a little metal with the properly watercooled stuff.

for the same price or so (and more effort), you can just rig an AIO CPU watercooler for the core and rig a fan/heatsinks to cool the other stuff. that way you dont need a custom loop of any kind (lots of $$$ and effort).

an extra $60 aint bad at all, and considering the waterblock, its a pretty good deal, but at the end of the day youre paying more money for aircooled performance and adding a hot ass GPU to your loop. its quieter sure, but the waterblock/heatsink is still using fans. this thing would be awesome if it was AIO, but it aint.
 
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cinnamonandgravy said:
OCing is always a gamble, and this 'platinum' variant cant even beat aircooled solutions. binned and watercooled, and worse peak MHz. eh, thats not the best argument to get me to buy something. esp. since i can get a non-reference 980ti with a factory OC for $650 and just reattach the heatsink later for resale if i watercool it.

the waterblock is a bit of an oddity. it looks to cover the CPU and vram, but mosfets and friends are cooled via air, though the heatsinks do share a little metal with the properly watercooled stuff.

for the same price or so (and more effort), you can just rig an AIO CPU watercooler for the core and rig a fan/heatsinks to cool the other stuff. that way you dont need a custom loop of any kind (lots of $$$ and effort).

an extra $60 aint bad at all, and considering the waterblock, its a pretty good deal, but at the end of the day youre paying more money for aircooled performance and adding a hot ass GPU to your loop. its quieter sure, but the waterblock/heatsink is still using fans. this thing would be awesome if it was AIO, but it aint.
Click to expand...

they main limiting factor for 980TIs is called BIOS. the only fact that this card can reach 1500mhz+ at stock clocks talk itself of how good the binning is, people tend to think ASIC is a good binning and are surprising later of how incoherent is that result with overclocking, a good binning is how high can overclock a card at stock voltages, specially with a TDP limit such low of 110%. only flashing this card to a BIOS 130%+ TDP will bring greater possibilities to this card..
 
Nice card, however, I don't think it's a fair 1:1 / apples-to-apples to highlight the ROG card's cooling performance compared to the Fury X seeing as to how one's running off a single 120MM OEM radiator and one is running off of an after-market 360MM setup. If this was mentioned I apologize.

All-in-All good review though.
 
Looks like this is my next video card.
I will try to remove my Corsair H100 cooler and order some kit complete with 240mm from EK http://site.ekwb.com and put together on watter CPU & GPU.
I think is better option vs Koolance or any other ambient liquid cooling systems for same amount of money.

Question for you, This Asus Posiedon or previous reviewed Gigabyte GTX 980Ti G1?
 
TheBlueChanell said:
Nice card, however, I don't think it's a fair 1:1 / apples-to-apples to highlight the ROG card's cooling performance compared to the Fury X seeing as to how one's running off a single 120MM OEM radiator and one is running off of an after-market 360MM setup. If this was mentioned I apologize.

All-in-All good review though.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the Fury X running 3 degrees C higher with an included small water system seems rather a non-issue. Performance, on the other hand...
 
Has anybody seen a bios yet that lets you raise the TDP? Does it give results? Most of us don't have water cooling setups to have the same performance as air cooled systems. Quiet is nice and all, but....
 
Does anyone happen to know if the block on the Poseidon is copper or aluminum? I have a Predator 360 (which has a copper radiator) on pre-order and I was giving some thought to hooking it up to a Poseidon until the new Titan releases, but I'm a bit concerned about the block possibly being aluminum. I know there are coolants made specifically for this situation, but I'd really just rather avoid a mixed loop.
 
Fixall said:
Does anyone happen to know if the block on the Poseidon is copper or aluminum? I have a Predator 360 (which has a copper radiator) on pre-order and I was giving some thought to hooking it up to a Poseidon until the new Titan releases, but I'm a bit concerned about the block possibly being aluminum. I know there are coolants made specifically for this situation, but I'd really just rather avoid a mixed loop.
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From my research its nickel plated copper. That is from an Asus employee on their own forums. I have one in transit to my house as we speak, so I'll know for certain tomorrow.

I really didn't want to pay $699 when I can get a new or lightly used 980 TI on the forums for $100 less. However I have a large custom water cooling loop which I'm not going to let go to waste, and the prospect of spending another $100 on a water block which will be essentially worthless when I retire the card is not something I wanted to do again. So the hybrid solution was ideal.

I'm coming from two R9 290's in Xfire, so I'm not expecting anything huge. Its been awhile since I batted for team green and I wanted to try something different. Plus the new Acer Predator I got had a slight influence.
 
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