ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB GDDR5 Graphic Card Review

It’s an exciting week here at goldfries and a very long one too as I spend countless running benchmarks for multiple graphic cards and the highlight of the day would be ASUS’ GTX 980 Ti. 😀 I love my job! Well sorry, don’t drop me any E-mails on job openings yet.

ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB GDDR5 Graphic Card Review

And looks like I need not elaborate much as the card is of a reference design, that means it uses a blower type fan for the cooling.

The ASUS GTX 980 Ti is powered by a 6-pin and an 8-pin PCI-E connector.

ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB GDDR5 Graphic Card Review

No backplate for this card, it’s just as vanilla as it is.

ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB GDDR5 Graphic Card Review

The top and bottom of the card is totally card, the blower fan pushes the heat away, exhausting it from the IO connection side of the card.

ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB GDDR5 Graphic Card Review

And that’s all there is to the card, nothing fancy.

ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB GDDR5 Graphic Card Review

Here’s the GPU-Z of the card, more details on the official product page.

ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB GDDR5 Graphic Card Review

Test Setup & Overclocking

Processor Intel Core i5-4670K
RAM Kingston HyperX 2x 4GB DDR3 2400Mhz Kit
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z97X Gaming 3
Cooler NZXT Kraken X31
Monitor BenQ XL2430T
Power Supply FSP AURUM S 600W
Casing NZXT S340
Operating System Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit

I managed to add 200Mhz to the core clock and 250Mhz to memory clock of the ASUS GTX 980 Ti of which I think is a pretty decent overclock, the results will be included in the benchmarks.

Benchmarks

Unigine Heaven 4.0

Heaven 4.0
*NOTE : Details are set to maximum.
*NOTE : AA disabled in 4K test.

Card 1080p (avg) 4K (avg)
ASUS GTX 980 Ti 82.8 30
ASUS GTX 980 Ti Overclocked 89.1 33
GALAX GTX 980 SOC 65.4 25.7
AMD R9 295X2 97.6 33.5

Metro Last Light

Heaven 4.0

Card 1080p (avg) 4K (avg)
ASUS GTX 980 Ti 90.5 40.5
ASUS GTX 980 Ti Overclocked 93.5 43.5
GALAX GTX 980 SOC 93.5 35.5
AMD R9 295X2 73 41.5

Bioshock Infinite

Settings are at
2 – UltraDX11_DDOF | 2 – Custom | 1 – 16:9 | 4 – 1920×1080
*NO 4K test on this one. Just figured out how to get it to work on 4K after the 980Ti left the lab. Will update when possible.

Card 1080p (avg)
ASUS GTX 980 Ti 138.26
ASUS GTX 980 Ti Overclocked 145.4
GALAX GTX 980 SOC 130.71
AMD R9 295X2 134.0

Shadow of Mordor

Shadow of Mordor

Card 1080p (avg) 4K (avg)
ASUS GTX 980 Ti 98.74 35.01
ASUS GTX 980 Ti Overclocked 105.59 37.15
GALAX GTX 980 SOC 76.56 29.03
AMD R9 295X2 79.14 46.2

Temperature

Furmark Burn-in Test was used to stress the card. Fan settings are at Auto. Room set to ~25c.

Card Idle(°C) Load (°C)
ASUS GTX 980 Ti 34 84
ASUS GTX 980 Ti Full RPM 30 65

The fans run sufficiently silent when left at default, hovering at 50% RPM on load. Going at 100% load, the reference cooler is pretty much akin to a hair-dryer.

Power Consumption

The stress was done with Furmark Burn-in Test. Power consumption reading was taken from the watt-meter, actual power draw by the entire system from the wall point. I’m using an FSP Aurum S 700W with 90% efficiency and the estimated system power draw (CPU, not including GPU) during Furmark test is 60w.

Card ASUS GTX 980 Ti
Furmark Burn-in 350
Estimated Actual System Draw 315
Estimated Card Power Draw 255

Guess what – the rated wattage for the GTX 980 Ti is 250w. 🙂 Details on available at Nvidia

The Verdict

The ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB GDDR5 is one awesome card retailing at RM 3,199 which I think is rather steep a price for a reference model. I hate to say it but I believe readers ought to know that there are other reference models with many years of warranty and retails at quite a few hundred RM less.

The difference being that this is ASUS and you’re assured that if anything goes wrong, you have official channels to report to.

Now back to the product – I love it, I think that 6GB VRAM is a great change from the 4GB available on the GTX 980. This makes the GTX 980 Ti a much better option than the GTX 980 when it comes to running multi-card setup.

The GTX 980 Ti makes cards like AMD’s Radeon R9 295X2 obsolete. Load vs Load, the GTX 980 Ti shows wall draw that’s only about half of what I got with the R9 295X2.

goldfries recommended

The review sample was provided by IdealTech – if you’re looking for this card, you know where to find them.