ASUS has outdone themselves yet again. The GeForce GTX 980 STRIX OC is pretty much perfect, bringing significant improvements over the already excellent NVIDIA reference design. ASUS overclocked their card out of the box, which, depending on the resolution, yields a 5-7 % performance improvement. This lets it beat any single-GPU card on the market conclusively while also making it faster than the dual-GPU GTX 690 and roughly equal to the dual-GPU HD 7990. Just like the stock GTX 980, I'd recommend the ASUS GTX 980 STRIX for full detail gaming at 1440p and 1600p, with 4K being quite playable when two cards are teamed in SLI. The difference to AMD's single GPU flagship, the R9 290X, is roughly 20%. It would have been nice to also have the memory on the card overclocked out of the box since the memory chips have the headroom to do so. I recently reviewed the MSI GTX 980 Gaming, which ends up a little bit faster than ASUS's card, but ASUS makes up for that in other non-performance-related fields.

We've seen the ASUS STRIX cooler from ASUS before, and it's a fantastic piece of technology. The fans will turn off completely in idle and during light gaming. Once the card reaches 67°C, the fans will spin up, but do so in a very quiet way that's barely noticeable. Even with full-on gaming, the card stays extremely quiet, running at only 30 dBA, which is barely audible when installed in a normal case with other noise sources, like the CPU cooler, HDD, and PSU. The MSI GTX 980 Gaming has exactly the same noise profile - both cards are the perfect choice if you are looking for low-noise high-performance gaming.
The foundation for these low noise levels is certainly NVIDIA's Maxwell GPU, which comes with huge efficiency improvements. Less power consumed results in lower temperatures and less noise because the cooler doesn't have to cool such a big heat load. What really impresses me is that ASUS managed to improve efficiency even further by improving the board design. Even with the overclock out of the box and the dual-fan cooler, we see typical gaming power consumption that's lower than the NVIDIA reference board! Other cards, like the MSI GTX 980 Gaming, run much higher power consumption numbers. I'm not 100% sure what secret sauce ASUS is using, but it's working incredibly well. Another plus of the ASUS card as compared to the MSI Gaming is ASUS's inclusion of a backplate, for example, which not only improves looks, but also helps protect against damage during installation and handling.

You can find the ASUS GTX 980 STRIX OC online for $580, which is a fantastic price. It's only $30 more expensive than the reference design, a safe investment for its awesome noise output alone. Compared to other (non-GTX 9xx) cards on the market, there really is no contest. AMD has recently dropped pricing of their R9 290X down to $360, which might make it more competitive than the GTX 980 in price-performance, but that is the only metric in AMD's favor. Much faster, with awesome power consumption, a super-quiet operation, and great overclocking potential, ASUS STRIX GTX 980 is better in every other regard. The only drawback is that the card appears to be out of stock in many stores, which doesn't surprise me at all. If you have the money, the GTX 980 is the card to buy. If you want to save some money, the GTX 970 is an excellent choice as well, having all the fantastic Maxwell improvements and a better price-to-performance ratio than any other high-end option on the market.

The key differences which had the ASUS STRIX score a 10.0 rating as opposed to MSI GAMING's 9.9 are its much better power consumption and the backplate, despite the MSI card coming with slightly higher performance out of the box.