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as usual NVIDIA's recent graphics card launch was dominated by coverage of

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their new flagship gtx 980 and we were

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guilty of focusing on it too but i think in some ways the lower price gtx 970

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could actually be much more interesting from a regular gamer's perspective

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especially if its performance is similar enough to its beast of a big brother

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welcome to our gtx 970 review featuring the strix direct co2 from ASUS

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cooler master neptune series CPU coolers are available in a variety of radiator

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sizes to perfectly suit your next build click now to learn more

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we'll start with a brief overview of how the reference gtx 970 stacks up against

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the gtx 980. the memory config is identical it's got the same 256 bit

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memory bus with the same four gigs of vram clocked at the same seven gigahertz

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but the core is where NVIDIA has opted to cut their second tier card down this

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time around the gtx 970 gets 13 sms

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compared to 16 on the 980 giving it about 80 percent as many cuda cores and

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texture units and it comes with a lower clock speed out of the box but that's

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about it and ASUS takes care of one of these things right off the bat by

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delivering their non-reference card with a factory increased boost clock of 1253

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megahertz actually higher than a reference 980. of course as usual we

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aren't going to be running the card at factory speeds anyway so we're more

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interested in how the rest of ASUS's alterations including that their latest

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version of GPU tweak their overclocking utility supports automatic GPU BIOS

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updates on certain cards now are going to affect the performance we'll start

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with a general physical overview ASUS has increased the height of the card

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especially near the sli connector that supports up to three-way sli

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configurations they've changed out the dual 6-pin PCIe connectors for a single

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8-pin connector they've changed the stylized back plate to a sexy brushed

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aluminum jobby they've swapped out the in my opinion much better i o config for

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a more conventional one with dvid dvii

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HDMI 2.0 and displayport 1.2 ports of

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which you can use all four at the same time in a three surround and then one

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auxiliary configuration and finally they've increased the length of the card

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slightly to 11 inches to accommodate the much larger heat sink design and the

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cooler probably deserves its own little overview here ASUS is using a dual 92

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millimeter triple heat pipe direct cu type cooler that means the heat pipes

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make direct contact with the GPU core with an open-air design ASUS quotes

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220 percent as much overall surface area

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compared to reference so this should give us better card temps compared to a

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reference cooler at the cost of internal system temps if you're not using a case

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with solid airflow pulling the cooler off the card by removing the four screws

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around the core at the back reveals one large 10 millimeter diameter heat pipe

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flanked by a couple of eight millimeter ones and this also gives us a better

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look at the pcb for the card revealing the final advantage that non-reference

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cards often have over normal ones ASUS six phase super alloy power and digital

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vrm design is made to increase the lifespan and efficiency of the card and

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lower random electrical noise and while it's difficult for us to observe the

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first two directly especially without a reference 970 to compare against our

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experience with ASUS direct cu cards lately including this one has been that

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they are extremely quiet with no observable coil whine which leads us to

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what i think is the coolest feature of this card and presumably the one that

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led to the owl logo for it the 976 has a

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zero decibel idle fan mode so the fan doesn't spin at all

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with the system powered on and it can actually stay

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off even in games as long as they aren't very demanding so games like league of

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legends are perfect candidates for this of course it'll ramp up like any other

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card when overclocking or pushing it hard but it speaks volumes about the

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efficiency of the cooler and the efficiency of the maxwell-based gm204

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GPU that this card is equipped with that it can do this at all

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so along with GeForce experience shadow play game recording game stream

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network gaming on shield devices and automatic game optimization and driver

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updates NVIDIA has added some very interesting new technologies to 900

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series cards including third generation delta color compression to make better

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use of memory bandwidth dynamic super resolution a way of running less

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demanding or older games at higher res than down sampling for better visuals

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mfaa a less demanding anti-aliasing mode

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with pretty much the same visual quality as msaa and auto-asynchronous warp a vr

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feature that should improve the experience for users of the oculus rift

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or similar head tracking head mounted displays who are prone to motion

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sickness you can get more in-depth explanations of these technologies in my

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gtx 980 video linked here

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for now the big thing we want to know is how the gtx 970 stacks up against the

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competition from a price to performance standpoint as well as from an efficiency

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standpoint take it away luke all right guys just a reminder that we're running

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all of our benchmarks overclocked and that our per graphics card overclocking

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settings are laid out in the graphics card overclocking dock in the

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description below this video speaking of which first up we have overclocking do

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the 970 not being equipped with the auto balancing power rails that bless the 780

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ti and 980 the overclocking of this card is

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fairly straightforward apply some voltage increase the power level

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allowance jack up the core and memory clock speeds set a temp target and voila

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you're hopefully running at a range of 1403 to 1459 or above when it finally

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came to running actual numbers i was happy with how well it performed in

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essentially every test it slotted itself snugly between the 770 and 780 which is

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good considering it cost pretty much the same as a 770. but just like the gtx 980

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before it the 970 isn't exactly earth shattering in terms of raw performance

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when compared to the already existing big dogs but what it is is a much better

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value the price per performance of these cards is much stronger than the previous

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generation of heavy hitters and this is especially true when talking about

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wattage coming in at a full system wattage of 305 the 970 is an extremely

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low power overhead card which might actually make a noticeable difference on

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your power bill depending on what you're running i'm looking at you gtx 480

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owners and that's not all this card is running at a temperature of only 71

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degrees while under load while overclocked not bad at all if you ask me

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back to you Linus alright so with that out of the way it looks like the gtx 970

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is everything we hoped it would be the 980 is interesting to folks who have 500

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plus dollars to spend on a GPU but if you're on a tighter budget or upgrading

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an older system both the power efficiency even you might not want to

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upgrade to a new power supply and the frankly stunning performance of the 970

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strix make it a compelling choice for two and a half k or even light 4k gaming

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at a much lower price than its bigger brother

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speaking of much lower prices nothing is

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lower than two weeks for free so try out hulu plus they are the only streaming

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service that streams new current season episodes of popular shows from abc fox

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nbc and other major networks with shows like modern family brooklyn nine-nine

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and once upon a time with hulu plus you aren't tied to your computer so you can

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use your phone tablet smart tv roku or game console to watch every episode of

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shows like south park and family guy you guys have heard me talk about fooloo

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plus fuloplus hulu plus quite a bit already and they've been a

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great supporter of the show so if you haven't already why not give it a try if

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you use our code you get a two week trial instead of the standard single

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week trial and then you can decide if 7.99 a month is in your budget for hours

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of on-demand content guys thanks for watching our video today

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like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment letting me know if you have suggestions

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for future videos or other comments that are just much more complicated than this or this you can also find a link in the

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video description to support us if you want to buy a cool t-shirt like this one give us a monthly contribution or change

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i don't know gtx 970s or whatever else the case may be thanks again for

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watching and as always don't forget to subscribe