Introduction

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980 Ti was released in June last year. Built on the same GM200 GPU as the GeForce Titan X, it has fewer shaders (2816 vs 3072). While the GTX 980 Ti's GPU is still produced on a 28 nanometer process at TSMC in Taiwan, it comes with the fantastic power efficiency optimizations of the NVIDIA Maxwell architecture, which promises lower power draw, higher performance, and reduced fan noise all at the same time.

Our review of the reference design GTX 980 Ti revealed that it is barely slower than the Titan X, which means custom designs could surpass Titan X performance at a much lower price point.



Today, we are reviewing the ASUS GTX 980 Ti Matrix flagship card, which is geared towards gamers, enthusiasts, and hardcore overclockers. The Matrix competes with cards like the MSI Lightning and EVGA Kingpin Edition. ASUS has overclocked their card's GPU to a base clock of 1216 MHz and its memory to 1800 MHz.

A large dual-fan, triple-slot cooler ensures the ASUS GTX 980 Ti Matrix stays cool at all times, and hopefully quiet as well.

At $720, pricing is high, so let's see if its cost is justified.