ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 970 Strix

ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 970 Strix – NVIDIA’s Maxwell GPU architecture was first introduced with the GTX 750 and 750 Ti graphics cards, and were some of the most power-efficient GPUs of their time.

The second generation Maxwell GM200 chip was recently unveiled with the GTX 980 and 970 cards, and it didn’t take long for ASUS to slap their newest cooling system on-board, thus creating the ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 970. With the Strix cooler, the GTX 970 looks a bit more streamlined and simple, which is sure to please those who care for aesthetics as much as they do for performance.

Also thanks to the cooler, the Strix GTX 970 is factory-overclocked, with the core clock set at 1,114MHz as opposed to the stock card’s 1,051MHz, though unfortunately the memory clock stays the same at 1,750MHz. The ASUS DirectCU II Strix cooler takes full advantage of NVIDIA’s new powerefficient GPUs in ways that we imagine that many enthusiasts will love.

For one, only a single 8-pin PCIe plug is required to power up this bad boy. Secondly, the fan does not kick in until it reaches a certain temperature point, and when it does, ASUS claims that the cooler efficiently cools down the GPU 30 percent better compared to its competitors, and we can’t really argue with that as the card remain cool throughout our testing period.

As far as performance goes, the Strix GTX 970 card is capable of playing any and all games that you throw at it at 1080p resolution. As a matter of fact, we took it for a spin playing Skyrim and Crysis 3 with a 1440p screen, and it did extremely well there too. As a matter of fact, this would be the perfect card to pair with the ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q G-Sync monitor. Despite being factory overclocked, you can still overclock the GPU a bit more to squeeze that few extra frames out of the card, but in general, we feel this isn’t necessary for gaming as the performance gained from overclocking even further is quite negligible.

The ASUS Strix GTX 970 is one card that we definitely recommend to those who are starting to move beyond 1080p gaming. It’s literally silent for the most part, and performs on par, if not better than the high-end GTX 700 cards, and is power efficient to boot.

Pros

• Performs very well
• Silent
• Power-efficient

Cons

• None

ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 970 Strix Specifications

• Core clock: 954MHz
• Boost clock: 1,020MHz
• Memory size: 3GB GDDR5
• Ports: 1x DVI-D, 1x DVI-I, 1x HDMI, 1xDisplayPort