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- Date:
- Monday , June 27, 2016
- Author:
- Grady McKinney
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Share:
ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING Video Card Review
Today we review in full detail our first custom GeForce GTX 1080 video card. ASUS has decked the ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING out with a factory overclock, the STRIX cooling system, and a fully customizable lighting system. Let's see this beast overclock and compare it to the previous gen's GTX 980 Ti and Radeon R9 Fury X.
Gameplay Summary
In this evaluation we witnessed the ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING put the ASUS GTX 980 Ti DC III OC and the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X in the dirt in terms of gameplay performance. The overall in-game performance of the ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING allowed us to experience each games maximum settings at 1440p.
The only game in which we could not fully utilize maximum settings was Tomb Raider and the only option we could have improved on was increasing aliasing to 4X SSAA. Neither the GTX 980 Ti nor the R9 Fury X were able to handle maximum settings in The Division, SSAA in Tomb Raider, or maximum HairWorks in Witcher 3. These are areas that the ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING delivered and excelled.
The fact of the matter is, the ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING is a beast and it performed like one. It is impressive to continue to see the 16nm process outperform the 28nm process with such command. Gaming before the GTX 1080 was released was already impressive on the GTX 980 Ti, but the ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING and the Pascal architecture are simply superior the GeForce GTX 980 Ti and Maxwell architecture.
We were also pleased to see a reasonable gain in performance thanks to our maximum manual overclock. Some of the gaming experiences were still relatively challenging for the stock ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING to handle. The performance in-game became quicker and more responsive, especially in The Division, and Tomb Raider.
Overclocking
The ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING is a factory overclocked video card. The boost clock of the default ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING video card utilizing the "Gaming Mode" profile is 1898MHz. This is 165MHz faster than the Founder’s Edition boost clock. By selecting "OC Mode" in ASUS GPU Tweak II the boost frequency increases by an additional 38MHz up to 1936MHz. All ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING video cards can handle this preset frequency.
Manually overclocking the ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING was a breeze using the updated ASUS GPU Tweak II program. Our final overclock increased the boost clock to 1973MHz. This is 75MHz faster than "Gaming Mode" and 37MHz faster than "OC Mode." It did require us to increase the voltage the maximum level, however the VDDC was still lower than the GTX 980 Ti and the AMD R9 Fury X. The total system wattage was also lower than the competition and only increased by 14W as a result of overclocking.
Our examination of GPU Boost 3.0 shows that 100% fan speed not only allows for cooler temperatures, but also faster operating frequencies. The cooler the video card operates, the more stable and consistent the frequency is. The cooling alone is not responsible for the increased gaming performance, the ability for the video card to consume enough power but not too much also created prime conditions for our overclock to be successful. This is the fastest video card we have ever evaluated.
Power Consumption, Temperature, and Fan Noise
In this evaluation we saw the ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING perform 20-35% faster than the customized ASUS GTX 980 Ti DC III OC. It is more shocking that it did so while pulling significantly less power at the wall. The ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING drew a maximum of 311W out-of-box and 325W overclocked, compared to 377W on the ASUS GTX 980 Ti DC III and 398W on the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X.
The temperature on the ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING reached a maximum of 76c with its fans automatically operating at 59%. Once we overclocked the video card with 100% fan speed the temperature dropped to 70c. The ASUS GTX 980 Ti DC III OC reached 79c with its fans increasing to 50%. The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X did excel in one single area, its liquid cooling kept the underperforming video card at a crisp 53c with fans only operating at 23%.
The Bottom Line
The ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING was impressive on every front. ASUS took a great deal of pride designing its new flagship video card, including all of the features we know and love, while adding in even more user control with AURA lighting which significantly boosts your cases visual appeal if you have a side window.
We were further impressed by the overclock we achieved, reaching above 2.1GHz and settling with an average in-game frequency of 2088MHz. The memory also handled overclocking nicely, increasing by 1300MHz up to an effective 11,310MHz clock. The overclocked performance was noticeable in-game and was somewhat smoother. The video card already performed incredibly without the maximum overclock, but it did help to smooth out the gaming experience and really allow further immersion into the games.
The bottom line is that the ASUS ROG GTX 1080 STRIX GAMING tremendously outperformed both the ASUS GTX 980 Ti DC III OC and the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X. It was a landslide, not even slightly close. The new Stix consumed less power, ran cooler, and handled more graphics options than the competition while simultaneously performing at higher framerates. If you are lucky enough to get your hands on one (and stock on this card is hard to come by), the price of $679 is totally worth it. This version of the Strix 1080 is the single fastest video card we have evaluated to date, and it is decked out with incredible features.
