ASUS GTX 980 Ti STRIX DCIII OC Video Card Review @ [H]

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ASUS GTX 980 Ti STRIX DCIII OC Video Card Review - Today we have the custom built ASUS GTX 980 Ti STRIX DirectCU III OC 6GB video card. It features a factory overclock, extreme cooling capabilities and state of the art voltage regulation. We compare it to the AMD Radeon R9 Fury, and overclock the ASUS GTX 980 Ti STRIX DCIII to its highest potential and look at some 4K playability.
 
Anyone else believing that the DX12 controversy will lower prices on 980-Ti's a bit, say $50?
 
how come you guys don't post the ASIC quality of the boards you guys test? Is that GPU-Z test just a bunch of hooey or does it actually give you a rough estimate of how OC-able a card is?
 
Feel free to believe in an arbitrary number.

We'll spend the time to actually do real-world overclocking and base our evaluation on factual results.

Now back on topic please.
 
Better showing than what I was expecting...and lower priced than what I was speculating. Thanks for putting in the time for another awesome review, [H]
 
Hats off to nvidia. They have managed to make a $649 card seem cheap while AMD's FuryX looks way overpriced. :D:D

Anyway the Strix card looks like a great card for "only" $20 more than stock.
 
At last, the [H] review I've been waiting for! I've been planning on an upgrade and this card is the top one I've been looking at. Couldn't buy it without the [H] seal of approval. Thanks, guys!
 
I don't, just commenting about evga and their use of it.

anecdotal evidence from a review I watched on Youtube, but the reviewer got a 78% chip and a 77% chip and neither of them would OC any better than other 980 Tis he had worked with. He also worked with EVGA directly to try getting higher clocks.
 
while we know how a reference 980Ti is better than the FuryX, i would want to know the differences in performance between different 980Ti's. The comparison to the FuryX is irelevant now.
 
Any reason why benchmarking was done at 1440p?

Both the 980 Ti and Fury X are 4K cards. In 1440p both of them become CPU bottlenecked. You aren't using overclocked Skylake i7s either.

I mean, in 1440P it looks like the 980 Ti is between 25-35% faster than a Fury X. I know this is because various driver bottlenecking. But in 4K the CPU part is taken out of the equation.
 
Any reason why benchmarking was done at 1440p?

Both the 980 Ti and Fury X are 4K cards. In 1440p both of them become CPU bottlenecked. You aren't using overclocked Skylake i7s either.

I mean, in 1440P it looks like the 980 Ti is between 25-35% faster than a Fury X. I know this is because various driver bottlenecking. But in 4K the CPU part is taken out of the equation.

If they're bottlenecked by the CPU, then the framerates would all be the same. "Hey, we notice these three cards are performing exactly the same, because the CPU can't feed them data fast enough."

If the cards are showing differences, especially drastic differences, then no, they are not CPU bottlenecked.

Also, AMD's terrible marketing aside, what about these cards makes them 4K cards and not 1440P cards? The 980Ti can only just barely provide a playable 4K experience, and the Fury X doesn't even come close. But they do great at 1440P.

Besides, [H]ardOCP is all about providing info on the "real world" experience. What percentage of "real world" players are gaming at 4K?
 
Fury X and 980 ti are not 4k cards in latest games.

Great review. 25-35 % performance delta at similar price point is ridiculous and unheard of before this generation of cards.
 
Any reason why benchmarking was done at 1440p?

Both the 980 Ti and Fury X are 4K cards. In 1440p both of them become CPU bottlenecked. You aren't using overclocked Skylake i7s either.

I mean, in 1440P it looks like the 980 Ti is between 25-35% faster than a Fury X. I know this is because various driver bottlenecking. But in 4K the CPU part is taken out of the equation.

If you want a 4K comparison between the 980 Ti and the Fury X, they already did it and concluded single GPU cards do not give adequate performance for enjoyable 4K gaming.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/07/26/amd_radeon_r9_fury_x_4k_video_card_review/#.VeXwBPl1w20
 
holy moly did the fury X get its ass kicked :eek: shame 4k performance is still bleh though; those GTA5 4k performance deltas are way too large.

the next gen of GPUs sure will be interesting... HBM2, pascal and the fury X successor, DX12, greater emphasis on 4k...
 
Any reason why benchmarking was done at 1440p?

Both the 980 Ti and Fury X are 4K cards. In 1440p both of them become CPU bottlenecked. You aren't using overclocked Skylake i7s either.

I mean, in 1440P it looks like the 980 Ti is between 25-35% faster than a Fury X. I know this is because various driver bottlenecking. But in 4K the CPU part is taken out of the equation.

What kind of such ignorant commentary a 4.6ghz 3770K bottleneck at 1440P?, what are you smoking?..

you didn't even bother to read the full review?. they did 4K Apples to apples in this review to shut up the mouth of blind fanboys like you.. :rolleyes: just read how your beloved Fury X its crushed out of the box.
 
What kind of such ignorant commentary a 4.6ghz 3770K bottleneck at 1440P?, what are you smoking?..

you didn't even bother to read the full review?. they did 4K Apples to apples in this review to shut up the mouth of blind fanboys like you.. :rolleyes: just read how your beloved Fury X its crushed out of the box.

Jeez, you're the one that's taking this personally. It's asinine to believe that someone dropping $600+ on a GPU is going to be running it on an Ivy Bridge CPU, irregardless of the frequency it's being ran at. :rolleyes:
 
Jeez, you're the one that's taking this personally. It's asinine to believe that someone dropping $600+ on a GPU is going to be running it on an Ivy Bridge CPU, irregardless of the frequency it's being ran at. :rolleyes:

oh rly? how much better can be your beloved haswell 4690K vs my 3770K for gaming? wanna test?:rolleyes:. even more asinine to believe its someone running a overclocked 4690K with a crappy 270X.. damn ignorant people.. anything from and newer from any overclocked i5 2500K or i7 2600K will be far to be a CPU bottleneck for any card in the market much even less at 1440P..
 
oh rly? how much better can be your beloved haswell 4690K vs my 3770K for gaming? wanna test?:rolleyes:. even more asinine to believe its someone running a overclocked 4690K with a crappy 270X.. damn ignorant people.. anything from and newer from any overclocked i5 2500K or i7 2600K will be far to be a CPU bottleneck for any card in the market much even less at 1440P..

I spent $100 on my GPU(over a year ago), so I don't see your point. I don't care about e-peen, and I'm quite happy with the performace:dollar ratio that my GPU offers considering it runs the games that I play without a problem. Take Nvidia's cock out of your mouth, you're quite the fanboy. :rolleyes:
 
$864 on sale. Just insane. Since I have 2 regular titans, I will wait for Pascal. If it was $649 in Canada I would buy.
 
$864 on sale. Just insane. Since I have 2 regular titans, I will wait for Pascal. If it was $649 in Canada I would buy.

Unfortunately:

650.00 USD = 859.439 CAD
US Dollar ↔ Canadian Dollar
1 USD = 1.32221 CAD 1 CAD = 0.756308 USD

This is our reality for the foreseeable future.

Now what I really wanna know is; does this card properly support asynchronous compute?
 
So since the 980 TI OC version can run Witcher 3 better than a Titan X, would you still call the Titan X a good value for its price, or is it over priced under performer?

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1440939750KGqumUdZsR_5_1.gif
 
So since the 980 TI OC version can run Witcher 3 better than a Titan X, would you still call the Titan X a good value for its price, or is it over priced under performer?

I would suggest that the Titan X's "value" has been extremely questionable since the 980 Ti became available. Much like the Nano, it is a product for a niche of a niche market.
 
What niche does it provide since the 980 TI was released?

As I said to you in the other thread. Multi-GPUs configuration... Titan X scale better with overclocking due to the extra cuple of SMMs, so more shaders and more texture units.. so yes, will it be more expensive? yes. but it will offer better performance.. it still have a market a market that doesn't exist for fury.
 
Where are the real world values from those though? Are any games bottle necked by the 6GB on a 980 TI, even SLI @ 4k?

Considering you can clock the Titan X up to around 1450MHz in-game Boost Clock (on its stock cooler), there are certainly real world values in those if you are comparing to 980 Ti. As for VRAM alone, that one is hard to quantify outside of the crowd that is still very much into MSAA at high levels.

Edit: And the Skyrim (and to a lesser extent other games) modding crowd that is huge into crazy texatures and such.
 
As I said to you in the other thread. Multi-GPUs configuration... Titan X scale better with overclocking due to the extra cuple of SMMs, so more shaders and more texture units.. so yes, will it be more expensive? yes. but it will offer better performance.. it still have a market a market that doesn't exist for fury.

I've only seen Titan X's scale worse (can't OC as well as) 980 Tis, especially in SLI. Do you have any examples of OC'd Titan's running faster than OC'd 980 Ti's in SLI?

As for market, you could say the market for Fury X is people that want WC price/performance, but I'd rather stay on topic.
 
Everyone here claims that 1500 is "easy"/"low" for a 980 TI.

Also this review has a factory 980 Ti OC that beats out a factory Titan X.

I'm honestly wondering, I obviously don't have the HW to test it or I'd get my answers that way :)

Also I've heard that the Titan X has heat issues since its a stock cooler, vs the custom 980 TI coolers which are much better, which is why I'm assuming that they can OC and thus perform, better than the Titan X's.

"Heat Issues" doesn't exist at all. it's the cooler undercapable for thekind of card? yes it require to run at higher RPM than 980TI with the of course result of being noisier however you can keep the card relatively cool by using a aggressive fan curve.. but yes, you have point there with aftermarket coolers vs reference.

when I said that Titan X scale better with overclocking I mean to the fact that at lower clock the Titan X will run faster than the 980TI. with the typical overclock of a Titan X at 1450mhz you will need a 1550mhz+ 980TI to match it. which require generally a BIOS mod to run it with higher power limits and voltages. Things that aren't really needed in a Titan X to reach that clock..
 
"Heat Issues" doesn't exist at all. it's the cooler undercapable for thekind of card? yes it require to run at higher RPM than 980TI with the of course result of being noisier however you can keep the card relatively cool by using a aggressive fan curve.. but yes, you have point there with aftermarket coolers vs reference.

when I said that Titan X scale better with overclocking I mean to the fact that at lower clock the Titan X will run faster than the 980TI. with the typical overclock of a Titan X at 1450mhz you will need a 1550mhz+ 980TI to match it. which require generally a BIOS mod to run it with higher power limits and voltages. Things that aren't really needed in a Titan X to reach that clock..

Do you have any examples of SLI Titan X beating out SLI 980 TI both OC'd? I've seen some before where the 980 Ti's were faster, trying to find the link now but I think it was somewhere on Hexus. They found that the Titan's were throttling, or otherwise slower iirc, it was a month or so ago so don't remember.

I'm just trying to see how people can justify $350 ($700 if talking SLI) for almost no benefit, or even less performance if they do throttle / not OC as well). If there are cases/examples, please show them to me.
 
There are also five copper heat pipes directly contacting the GPU.

From the first page of the review. From what I have seen from other reviews that take the card apart, only 3 of the heat pipes are contacting the GPU while two are in contact with nothing.

What say you?
 
Do you have any examples of SLI Titan X beating out SLI 980 TI both OC'd? I've seen some before where the 980 Ti's were faster, trying to find the link now but I think it was somewhere on Hexus. They found that the Titan's were throttling, or otherwise slower iirc, it was a month or so ago so don't remember.

I'm just trying to see how people can justify $350 ($700 if talking SLI) for almost no benefit, or even less performance if they do throttle / not OC as well). If there are cases/examples, please show them to me.

look, again I'm not saying Titan X its a great Value Card nor I'm saying it offer 350$ in performance value over a 980TI.. however it still offer premium value over the lower cost card and still can offer better performance than a 980TI. I'm not trying to justify the Titan X (that's the main reason I don't own One even if was thinking in buy a couple before the 980TI rumors) but I accept the fact that it still have value specially for those who doesn't care about money.

As kayle said only the vRAM can be a game changer for a lot of people and certainly I love the example he used Skyrim at 1080P I've maxed out all my VRAM damn.. even in the 390X those 8GB are handy for that kind of games with huge amount of mods and ultra high textures..
 
look, again I'm not saying Titan X its a great Value Card nor I'm saying it offer 350$ in performance value over a 980TI.. however it still offer premium value over the lower cost card and still can offer better performance than a 980TI. I'm not trying to justify the Titan X (that's the main reason I don't own One even if was thinking in buy a couple before the 980TI rumors) but I accept the fact that it still have value specially for those who doesn't care about money.

As kayle said only the vRAM can be a game changer for a lot of people and certainly I love the example he used Skyrim at 1080P I've maxed out all my VRAM damn.. even in the 390X those 8GB are handy for that kind of games with huge amount of mods and ultra high textures..

I'm just looking for specific evidence that shows that the Titan X is faster. Are there examples of it in Skyrim? I looked but didn't see any, just people saying to wait for (before release) or to buy the 980 TI instead.

I'm looking for concrete examples of the Titan X's 12 GB being useful over 6GB, even in SLI extreme cases.

Edit: For example look at the reivew that Steve posted: http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/msi_gtx_980_ti_lightning/ It has OC Titan being beaten by the OC'd 980 TI constantly, the only place they are the same is in some 4k tests in which the FPS difference is under 1fps.
 
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Beast of a card. Perhaps AMD should should just leave the $500+ cards to Nvidia.

Any reason why benchmarking was done at 1440p?

Both the 980 Ti and Fury X are 4K cards. In 1440p both of them become CPU bottlenecked. You aren't using overclocked Skylake i7s either.

How in the world can you say these cards are CPU bottle necked with these games at 1440p? Did you even look at the pretty charts?

Jeez, you're the one that's taking this personally. It's asinine to believe that someone dropping $600+ on a GPU is going to be running it on an Ivy Bridge CPU, irregardless of the frequency it's being ran at. :rolleyes:

For someone that already has an o/c Ivybridge or even Sandybridge, they really wouldn't need to upgrade there cpu unless they want to play 1080p at very high frame rates.
 
Where are the real world values from those though? Are any games bottle necked by the 6GB on a 980 TI, even SLI @ 4k?
A professional rig used to crunch data or render would still value it. At 1k it's still cheaper than quite a few Quattro cards although it's effectiveness would probably not be worth it due to different driver philosophy.

That being said 980 ti especially this Asus vartian is quite attractive for gaming performance.
 
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