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.