Introduction

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980 Ti was released just a few weeks ago. It is built on the same GM200 GPU as the GeForce Titan X, but 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 STRIX, one of the most anticipated custom designs for the GTX 980 Ti. ASUS is using their large triple fan DirectCU III cooler we've seen on other recent models before. The card comes with a large overclock of 1190 MHz on the GPU; memory is overclocked, too, to 1800 MHz.

The ASUS GTX 980 Ti STRIX can be found online for $670, which is a $20 premium over NVIDIA's MSRP for the GTX 980 Ti.