Thursday, April 2nd 2015
ASUS Announces the Fastest GeForce GTX 980 Graphics Card
ASUS announced what it claims to be the fastest GeForce GTX 980 graphics card out of the box. Called the ASUS GTX 980 20th Anniversary Gold Edition, this card marks ASUS' 20 years of presence in the PC graphics card market. Based essentially on the GTX 980 ROG MATRIX Platinum, this card features a black and gold color scheme, and a higher factory-overclock than its ROG sibling. Its cooler shroud and back-plate feature matte-black and gold-painted metal panels. The rear I/O shield is matte-black, while the connectors are gold-plated.
Under the shroud, the card features the company's largest trim of the DirectCU II cooler, featuring matte-black aluminium fins, and matte black copper heat pipes, ventilated by a pair of 100 mm spinners, which stay off until a temperature threshold of 65°C is reached. Given the size of that heatsink, we reckon a large silence headroom, even while casual-gaming, before the fans begin to spin.
The PCB features a monstrous 14-phase Digi+ VRM by ASUS, which draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. There's also an independent 4-pin Molex-powered defrost circuit, which makes doubly sure that frost doesn't collect onto the PCB which is coated with a water-repelling material. All this, to support a factory-overclock of 1317 MHz core, 1431 MHz GPU Boost, and an untouched 7.00 GHz memory. More than high clock speeds, the ability to keep the GPU and memory away from temperature-triggered clock-speed throttles, is what ASUS claims, makes this the fastest GTX 980. Display outputs include one each of dual-link DVI, HDMI 2.0, and three DisplayPort 1.2 connectors. ASUS didn't announce pricing or availability, but it wouldn't surprise us if the card costs halfway between the GTX 980 and the GTX TITAN-X.
Under the shroud, the card features the company's largest trim of the DirectCU II cooler, featuring matte-black aluminium fins, and matte black copper heat pipes, ventilated by a pair of 100 mm spinners, which stay off until a temperature threshold of 65°C is reached. Given the size of that heatsink, we reckon a large silence headroom, even while casual-gaming, before the fans begin to spin.
32 Comments on ASUS Announces the Fastest GeForce GTX 980 Graphics Card
This does look like quite the beast of a card, though!
well price is another grief i hold to EVGA ... ok let say the failure rate is not so high ...
in fact since recent nvidia behavior any "nvidia only" AIB is in my "do not buy list" ... eh...
ahahaha ... they did it they really did it ... they pissed me off and me, who was not a "brand loyalty" type of buyer went to "all out for AMD GPU"... i can't wait too see the 3xx line (as my 290 still compete just fine with any 970 980 Titan X, and nope you can't say the opposite ;) 55+ fps is enough, specially when you are a "all ultra maniac" )
Still though, I would love to see what the max overclocks a card like this could achieve (By that I mean comparing it to like the classified cards).
I laugh at the product claims for a "powered defrost circuit... so that frost doesn't collect on the PCB which has a water-repelling material". I'll bet the gullible LN2 kids fall for this nonsense.
Nice pictures to drool over.
Pity they only compare it to a reference gtx980.
oh wait i did send a Striker II Extreme for RMA and got a shiny new one in a sealed box, i guess it's on case to case O.oso do i ... but only if they do a 390X Gold Edition ahah ... (well i would still see a review of that 980 tho )
edit: @Jorge frost will form anywhere when temps are well (-180c) below freezing.
www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-362-AS
It is damn sexy, but the price is a small jump to titanx territory, and reviews show the titanX is 4k supreme!
What will happen next and what will customers get with GM200 6GB that's question.
Probably they should wait some new anniversary if they don't like gambling.
Or if they like gambling but between 200-300MHz not 0-300MHz.
If they want warranty on competitive clock not to be 1000 points slower in start than others.
Maybe ASUS after this decide to change politic and offer competitive graphic cards as motherboards.
Nobody ask always highest clock because that's impossible, reason is launch date, but always 10-15MHz more or less than highest fabric clock would be great.