Asus Strix 980Ti - Unboxing & Benchmarks | Tek Syndicate

Level1Techs
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Here is our unboxing and overview of the Asus STRIX 980Ti, along with some quick benchmarks. Right now this card is one of the most expensive gaming cards on the market, but it is also the fastest because it is so overclockable. This is the STRIX-GTX980Ti-DC3OC-6G DDR5 version of the card. It features the Direct CU III heatsink and has 6gb of Ram


In terms of connectivity, the card has one HDMI 2.0 port, 3 DP 1.2 ports and one Dual-Link DVI-I port (VGA capable). It requires one 4-pin and one 3-pin PCe Power connectors.


It has an anti-sag backplate, and the backplate is closer to the PCB than most of the other cards out there because the non-reference 980Ti design substitutes through-hole components for all surface mount components.


The heatsink is a triple fan “triple wing-blade” design and Asus has opted to emphasize the quiet gaming aspect of this design. The triple fan setup is still capable of ramping up to significant speeds (and noise) to move a significant amount of air and still provide good cooling even when pushing past the factor overclocks. Because the fans do not even come on until the GPU hits 65 degrees C, the card runs warm out of the box. However, it is easy to reconfigure this to your preference with the bundled GPU Tweak utility, or any number of third party utilities that are available.


Other software bundled with the card is a 1-year premium XSplit subscription and some Asus utilities including a system optimizer that will disable unwanted windows services and a memory defragmenter.


For our gaming benchmarks, we used Shadow of Mordor, Witcher 3 and Trine 3. They are all benchmarked at both factory and our “extreme” overclock settings. The maximum stable boost clock we were able to achieve on this card was 1525 with a memory clock of 7700mhz. At this overclock, the fans were quite loud, but effective.


The only real downside of this card is that we have seen is that at extreme overclocks the fans are quite loud. That is to be expected for the level of heat that needs to be dissipated. The new patent-pending “wing-blade” fans do seem to help with that vs ordinary fans, but we can’t help but wonder if fewer larger fans would have been effective. It’s also true that the heatsink design seems to be shared with the Strix 390X .


The build and assembly quality on the card is spectacular and the color scheme and brushed metal finish are a nice touch.


While I can’t recommend any nVidia cards for use on Linux at this time, this card is currently the performance king for gaming on windows, and that is by a substantial margin. This may change in the blink of an eye when new triple-A titles come out with full DirectX12 support. Things could also get interesting for nVidia as the Fury X drivers mature.


https://imgur.com/a/fjkKr


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://teksyndicate.com/videos/asus-strix-980ti-unboxing-benchmarks
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The company I work for manufactures circuit boards to customers with Class 3 requirements. Class 3 means that the mean time between failures must be minimal and quality is held to a higher regard than a standard "motherboard, graphics card, ect." would. Some circuit board designs, such as nuclear reactor core control cards, are rigorously tested in high temperature environmental ovens to establish component integrity for our customer. The automated process of SMT ensure that the product is being supplied with the best solid state component placed with accuracy and perfect solder joints to the appropriate pad on the PCB. The ever improving technology of automated processing circuit boards allow for cheaper and better preforming products. Thru hole components are not only bulky for most modern applications but they also contribute to noise, both audible frequencies and electrical interference with neighboring sensitive components that can cause issues.

Yes thru hole parts can never be done away with, the most common one seen anymore is power connectors that need structural rigidity to "hold on to" the PCB. These components can be placed during the SMT process prior to the final oven baking step. Surface mount machines are reel loaded, pneumatic "pick and place" machines that have a high degree of accurately placing components to the appropriate pads. A visual inspection done by a 5 camera AOI machine checks to see if there was a misplacement within a fraction of a millimeter. If a component wasn't fully aligned on the pad, which ICT STD require 50% for a non-defect part, it must be unsoldered and replaced by hand.

I must say that our SMT machines take away 95% of the human element when it comes to producing a finished product. Yes all solder paste applications are virtually flux free, unused pads can leave trace residue though, but depending on the components moisture sensitivity it can be washed to remove all residue from the board. Traditional soldering isn't just labor intensive and adding cost to the product, the human aspect of their soldering reliability might damage the integrity of the components they soldered. Microscopic air pockets in the solder joint, cold solder joints, excess flux residue shorting out leads.. These things can be avoided by automated process that produce precise results each and every time. The more a human touches a board, the higher chances that an ESD failure can be imminent. Having worked in the process for years, I can tell you that the highest failure rate of any defect is the incomplete circuit due to an ESD issue. All it takes is one spark to damage the microtransistor on a circuit board.

After hearing how ASUS is becoming fully automated, to a degree, with their manufacturing process excites me to believe that reliability of their products is held to a higher standard over other PC component companies. I don't just by their products for their name, I trust them that my computer parts will never fail on me. It's 2015, days of receiving DOA boards should be a thing of the past and I shouldn't have to worry if my computer will fail on me one day.

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AND... GTX980TI STRIX are officially sold-out on Newegg, Thank Wendell. They weren't sold out yesterday. Your words move product.

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Oh my, that laugh at the beginning hahahaha

Why do they stick the HDMI in the middle of all the DP ports? That annoys me.

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Mind sharing what voltage you were able to achieve the OC at? Perhaps I missed it, but I don't see it anywhere. I have this same card, and am getting confused overclocking it (somewhat new to gpu oc, but have done it before). thanks

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Man I sure feel bad for AMD, hope they can crawl out of the hole with their next gen cards, and HBM on die APUs

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I wish I could do buttery smooth 4K...I have a Fury and it struggles to do 1080p in demanding titles thanks to AMD's drivers(Linux) :(

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@wendell
Hello, i need this card's bios file. Can you share yor card's bios file?

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Awesome food for thought! Thanks for the knowledge.
RazerLife,