How We Tested Asus' Matrix Platinum GTX 980
Surely you know all about Nvidia's GeForce GTX 980 by now. The Maxwell architecture is both fast and efficient. If this is news to you, check out Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 And 980 Review: Maximum Maxwell, our in-depth review of the features and performance of Nvidia's flagship. In brief, the GeForce GTX 980 is about as fast as a GeForce GTX 780 Ti for much less money and a lower 165W TDP.
Of course, today we're focusing on Asus' Matrix Platinum GTX 980. We'll look at the card's special features, the cooler's thermal and acoustic performance, power consumption and overclocking headroom.
Intel Core i7-5930K
MSI X99S XPower AC
Crucial Ballistix 16GB Kit (4GBx4)
| Test System | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i7-5930K (Haswell-E), 3.5/3.7GHz, Six Cores, LGA 2011-v3, 15MB Shared L3 Cache, Hyper-Threading enabled, Overclocked to 4.2GHz | ||||
| Motherboard | MSI X99S Xpower AC (LGA 2011-v3) Chipset: Intel X99 Express, BIOS v1.5 | ||||
| Networking | On-Board Gigabit LAN controller | ||||
| Memory | Crucial Ballistix DDR4-2400, 4 x 4GB, 1200MHz, CL 16-16-16-39 2T | ||||
| Graphics | Asus Matrix Platinum GeForce GTX 9801241MHz GPU, 4GB GDDR5 at 1753MHz (7009MT/s)Zotac GeForce GTX 980 AMP! Omega Edition1203MHz GPU, 4GB GDDR5 at 1762MHz (7048MT/s)Reference GeForce GTX 9801126MHz GPU, 2GB GDDR5 at 1750MHz (7000MT/s) | ||||
| SSD | Samsung 840 Pro, 256GB SSD, SATA 6Gb/s | ||||
| Power | Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 10, 850W, ATX12V, EPS12V | ||||
| Software and Drivers | |||||
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 8 Pro x64 | ||||
| DirectX | DirectX 11 | ||||