ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 970 Video Card
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,607 words · ~8 min read
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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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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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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