Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition

1. Introduction 2. Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition3. High Res Gallery4. Testing Methodology5. 3DMark 116. 3DMark7. Unigine Heaven Benchmark8. Grid AutoSport (1440p)9. Grid AutoSport (Ultra HD 4K)10. Tomb Raider (1440p)11. Tomb Raider (Ultra HD 4K)12. Grand Theft Auto V (1440p)13. Grand Theft Auto V (Ultra HD 4K)14. Metro 2033 Redux (1440p)15. Metro 2033 Redux (Ultra HD 4K)16. Ashes Of The Singularity (Ultra HD 4K)17. Thermal Dynamics/IR Thermometer Readings18. Acoustics Performance19. Overclocking20. Power Consumption21. Closing Thoughts22. View All Pages

With Christmas just around the corner, what better time to treat yourself to a new graphics card? Time to put that old card to pasture and invest in a new GTX980 ti. If you fancy something really fast and expensive then the mouth watering Asus Republic Of Gamers GTX980 Ti Platinum Edition might sate your appetite. As we would expect from an Asus flagship solution, the Matrix Platinum is a complete ‘no-compromise' design.

The Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition is a heavy beast – shipping with an all metal, proprietary ‘Direct CU II' cooler and custom backplate. It incorporates a 14 phase DIGI+ VRM with Super Alloy Power II components – to reduce buzzing and eliminate coil whine. If you want to break some overclocking records then you will be pleased to hear that ASUS have a LN2 mode switch on the PCB to unlock voltage and power limits. There is also a ‘Safe Mode' button to reload and recover the vBIOS and a memory defroster to help prevent cold bug issues.

GPU	GeForce GTX960	Geforce GTX970	GeForce GTX980	Geforce GTX 980 Ti	Geforce GTX Titan X
Streaming Multiprocessors	8	13	16	22	24
CUDA Cores	1024	1664	2048	2816	3072
Base Clock	1126 mhz	1050 mhz	1126 mhz	1000 mhz	1000 mhz
GPU Boost Clock	1178 mhz	1178 mhz	1216 mhz	1075 mhz	1076 mhz
Total Video memory	2GB	4GB	4GB	6GB	12GB
Texture Units	64	104	128	176	192
Texture fill-rate	72.1 Gigatexels/Sec	109.2 Gigatexels/Sec	144.1 Gigatexels/Sec	176 Gigatexels/Sec	192 Gigatexels/Sec
Memory Clock	7010 mhz	7000 mhz	7000 mhz	7000 mhz	7000 mhz
Memory Bandwidth	112.16 GB/sec	224 GB/s	224 GB/sec	336.5 GB/sec	336.5 GB/sec
Bus Width	128bit	256bit	256bit	384bit	384bit
ROPs	32	56	64	96	96
Manufacturing Process	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm
TDP	120 watts	145 watts	165 watts	250 watts	250 watts

The Nvidia GTX980 Ti ships with 2816 CUDA cores and 22 SM units. The memory subsystem of the GTX980 Ti consists of six 64-bit memory controllers (384-bit) with 6GB of GDDR5 memory.

The Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition has received a clock boost over Nvidia’s reference card, with final speeds set at 1,216mhz (core)/1,317mhz (boost). The memory is boosted from reference speeds of 1,753mhz (7Gbps effective) to 1,800 mhz (7,2Gbps effective).

For the last week we have been retesting many graphics cards with the latest AMD and Nvidia drivers and have made the switch to the 64 bit Windows 10 operating system as well. We compare the Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition against a plethora of high end solutions, including, but not limited to the AMD Fury X, Nvidia Titan X, Nvidia Titan Z, AMD R9 295X2, Nvidia GTX980 Ti, AMD R9 390X and AMD R9 390.

ASUS Republic Of Gamers artwork is very distinctive and actually a little bland if we are being honest. No images of the card itself on the front either.

The rear of the card goes into some details on the cooling system, with a break down diagram of the card as well on view. ASUS claim ‘18% faster out of the box performance' over a reference solution.

If you happen to stumble upon one of these in a retail store then you can open the box up, gatefold style – just be aware the shop owner will likely be watching you carefully. Asus detail the lighting on the card, the Super Alloy Power ‘Extreme Technology', the cooler, safe mode, and the memory defroster option. They also highlight their custom overclocking and tweaking software called ‘GPU Tweak II'.

The card is shipped inside a heavy duty foam surround to protect against mishandling.

For a flagship card, the bundle is a little light. ASUS include a software disc, literature on the card alongside two power converter cables.

The Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition is a hefty 2.5 slot design. Two large fans reside inside a metal cooling system – which is effectively coloured silver/grey with orange accenting. It is actually one of the prettiest high end graphics cards that Asus have ever produced. Feel free to disagree.

Asus are using patented ‘Wing-blade' fans. They claim these maximise air flow efficiency with 105% more air pressure. Furthermore, If you pay attention you will see that the thick heatpipes are actually treated with a heat resistant black coating to fit in with the design of the card.

The Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition is equipped with a branded backplate. We do like to see a quality backplate fitted to a graphics card – it not only helps protect the sensitive PCB components but will drop temperatures specifically on hot spots close to the VRM's and GPU core.

While it might be easy to miss on first glance, the cooler is fitted with a color coded load indicator which you can see in the image above.

The colour system on the cooler has four indicator colours. Blue – Light Loading. Orange – Medium Loading. Red – Heavy Loading. Green – Safe Mode.

The Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition takes power from two eight pin connectors, as shown above.

One edge of the PCB is home to the SAFE MODE button, and a Molex connector. This Molex connector is only used to supply power to the memory defroster circuit – so in most instances, and unless you have some liquid nitrogen at hand, you won't need to use this.

The card is SLI capable in 2,3 and 4 way configurations.

The ASUS card ships with a single DVI-D port. There are three DisplayPorts 1.2 and a single HDMI 2.0 port along the bottom of the I/O plate. If you wish, you can use all these ports at the same time for triple monitor gaming. HDMI 2.0 is supported, so you are able to get 60hz at 4K resolutions, without the need for any adapters.



The Direct CU II cooling system is formidable, both in size and weight. It is comprised of five thick black heatpipes which lead into two separate racks of aluminum fins – all painted black. Asus are using very high grade SK Hynix GDDR5 memory on this PCB and we hope it will overclock well later in the review.

This graphics card is manufactured via a fully automated production process to ensure maximum reliability.

An overview of the hardware in the latest version of GPUz. This overclocked GM200 core runs at 1,216mhz with a boost speed set at 1,317mhz and is built on the 28nm process. The GTX980 Ti has 96 ROPs, 176 Texture units (Titan X has 192 texture units) and 2,816 CUDA Cores (Titan X has 3,072 CUDA Cores). The 6GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1800mhz (7.2Gbps effective) and is connected via a 384 bit memory interface.
On this page we present some high resolution images of the product taken with a Canon 1DX and Canon 28-70mm F2.8 lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.







We have been retesting a slew of graphics cards over the last 10 days, focusing on the latest Nvidia and AMD drivers. We have also selected some new game sections to benchmark during our ‘real world runs’.

Additionally, even though it is not close to being finished, we wanted to include some findings from an early access build of the (Windows 10) Direct X 12 capable Ashes of The Singularity by Stardock (website HERE) – this uses the Nitrous game engine. We are confident this is not an indication of how the game will run when it reaches retail in the future, but still, it is interesting to showcase today. You can buy it from STEAM, over HERE.

If you want to read more about our test system, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page. We are using an Asus PB287Q 4k and Apple 30 inch Cinema HD monitor for this review today.

Due to reader feedback we have changed the 1600p tests to 1440p. Anti Aliasing is also now disabled in our tests at Ultra HD 4K resolutions as readers have indicated they don’t need it at such a high resolution.

If you have other suggestions please email me directly at zardon(at)kitguru.net.

Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition (1,216 mhz core / 1,800 mhz memory)

Comparison Cards on test:
Sapphire R9 295X2 (1,018 mhz core / 1,250mhz memory)

AMD Fury X (1,050 mhz core / 500 mhz memory)

Nvidia GTX Titan Z (706 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)

Nvidia GTX Titan X (1,000 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)

Asus GTX980 Strix (1,178 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)

Nvidia GTX980 Ti (1000 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)

Palit GTX970 (1,051 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)

Sapphire R9 390X Tri-X 8GB (1,055 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory)

Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB (1,010 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory)

Software:
Windows 10 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Ashes Of the Singularity (early access build)
Grid AutoSport
Tomb Raider
Grand Theft Auto 5
Metro 2033 Redux

We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.

Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.



The Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition rates well at the default resolution, scoring 26,549 points, and slotting in between the Titan Z and the R9 295X2.




The high level of overclock helps drive the Platinum Edition card to within shouting distance of the dual GPU R9 295X2. A score of 8,410 is certainly very impressive with this last generation Direct X 11 benchmark test.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”




Almost 20,000 – an incredible result for an ‘out of the box' single GPU solution. The R9 295X2 is top of the benchmark, out in the lead by a clear margin.




At Ultra HD 4K resolution, the Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition scores well, achieving 4,648 points, only 500 behind the R9 295X2 and 600 points ahead of the reference clocked Nvidia Titan X.
Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We test at 2560×1440 with quality setting at ULTRA, Tessellation at NORMAL, and Anti-Aliasing at x2.

The benchmark results from the Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition are excellent – averaging 91 frames per second. It falls a little distance behind the R9 295X2, but almost 11 frames ahead of the reference clocked Titan X.
Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia).

We test at 2560×1440 with 8xMSAA and with the ‘ULTRA' profile enabled.

Performance in this title was exceptional at 1440p, averaging 150 frames per second – great to see if you are wanting to game with a 120hz or 144hz 1440p panel.Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia).

We test at 3840×2160 with 8xMSAA and with the ‘ULTRA' profile enabled.

Performance at Ultra HD 4k is class leading and thanks to the hefty overclock on the core, the Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition tops the chart.
Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia).

We test at 1440p with the ‘ULTIMATE’ image quality profile selected.

No problems holding an average frame rate over 100, even at the highest image quality settings. The Titan Z almost matches the highly overclocked Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition, taking third place in the graph.Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia).

We test at 3840×2160 (4K) with the ‘ULTIMATE’ image profile selected. We normally reduce the image quality profile to ‘ULTRA’ at this resolution, but we decided to keep it at the highest image quality possible.

At Ultra HD 4K, the Sapphire R9 295X2 takes top position in the performance chart, averaging 64 frames per second. The Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition yet again manages to match, and even slightly outperform (in minimum frame rates) the Nvidia GTX Titan Z at reference clocks.
Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story.

Outside of missions, players can freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world of Grand Theft Auto V is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series.

The world may be fully explored from the beginning of the game without restrictions, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content. (Wikipedia).

We maximised every slider – FXAA was enabled, although we left all other Anti Aliasing settings disabled – based on reader feedback from previous reviews. ‘Ignore Suggested Limits’ was turned ‘ON’.


We found some intensive sections of the Grand Theft Auto 5 world and tested each card multiple times to confirm accuracy. The game demanded around 3.5GB of GPU memory at 1440p and just over 4GB at 4K.

No problems achieving a smooth gaming experience at 1440p, even with all the image quality settings at the limit.Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story.

Outside of missions, players can freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world of Grand Theft Auto V is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series.

The world may be fully explored from the beginning of the game without restrictions, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content. (Wikipedia).

We maximised every slider – FXAA was enabled, although we left all other Anti Aliasing settings disabled – based on reader feedback from previous reviews. ‘Ignore Suggested Limits’ was turned ‘ON’.


We found some intensive sections of the Grand Theft Auto 5 world and tested each card multiple times to confirm accuracy. The game demanded around 3.5GB of GPU memory at 1440p and just over 4GB at 4K.

The Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition maintains an average close to 50 frames per second at Ultra HD 4K at these settings. This is 5 frames per second ahead of the Nvidia Titan Z.Metro 2033 Redux is a remake of the original game, with enhanced graphics. We often test with Metro Last Light Redux, but decided to mix things around for this review today. We test at 2560×1440 with the following settings: Quality-Very High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

Blistering performance at 1440p, averaging 86 frames per second.
Metro 2033 Redux is a remake of the original game, with enhanced graphics. We often test with Metro Last Light Redux, but decided to mix things around for this review today. We test at 2560×1440 with the following settings: Quality-Very High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.

At Ultra HD 4K, the game is playable on the Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition averaging 43 frames per second. If you want to run above 30 frames per second at all times however, some of the image quality settings would need to be reduced.
Ashes Of The Singularity is still in the early phases of development, although you can buy it from STEAM as an ‘early access' game over HERE. This game has a Direct X 12 mode available, if you are using Windows 10. We don't expect our results today will be indicative of the engine performance when the final game is released in the future, but it is interesting to include as an additional test.

We test at 3840×2160 with the ‘Crazy' Profile enabled, but with Anti Aliasing disabled.




The Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition delivers good results in this benchmark, with the system getting an average in the ‘all batches' of 26.5 frames per second.
The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.


The cooler on the Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition performs exceptionally well, holding a sub 60c temperature when gaming.

We install the graphics card into our system and measure temperatures on the back of the PCB with our Fluke Visual IR Thermometer/Infrared Thermal Camera. This is a real world running environment.

Details shown below.

The backplate on the Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition does an admirable job, holding temperatures around 60c under extended load when gaming.

We found a hotspot beside the SLI connectors, showing the exposed PCB underneath – temperatures held steady at 67c under load.
We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The automatic dual fan profile is not aggressive at all, with both fans spinning only moderately under load. In real world terms the card is audible but quiet, and likely masked completely by a couple of case fans. We could detect no coil whine, even when running some game engines at 400 frames per second.
We tested with the version of GPU Tweak supplied on the disc with the Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition graphics card. We had GPUz open at the same time and surprisingly noticed that the card was downclocking after the software was installed and running.

With the ‘gaming mode' enabled, the card was actually downclocking to 1,190mhz and the memory to 1,788mhz.

We enabled the ‘OC Mode' and the core speed reset to default, although the memory was still underclocked to 1,788mhz. We aren't sure if this was an isolated incident or not, but we deinstalled and reinstalled the software and the same thing happened.

We also noticed that sometimes the clock speeds didn't seem to hold when manually overclocking. So for the sake of consistency we deinstalled this software and reverted to our tried and tested software – MSI Afterburner.


The power limit was increased to 110% with a little extra core voltage added (+19). We managed to push the turbo speeds to 1,408mhz before artifacting would occur. The memory could be increased to just over 2,000mhz (8Gbps effective) – which is an incredible result.

Any further increases to core voltage didn't enhance the clock speeds. Every card is different and while our particular sample was actually stable to 1,500mhz we did notice very minor artifacting above 1410mhz which could indicate long term damage if maintained. We don't report inflated figures just to try and impress – we are interested only in 24/7 usable clock speeds.


With the manual overclock in place, the 3DMark score increased from 19,805 points to 21,189 points – not too far behind the reference clocked Sapphire R9 295X2 graphics card.
We measure power consumption from the whole system when idle and when gaming, excluding the monitor.

The Asus Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition consumes quite a lot of power under load, with the system taking 365 watts. This is 35 watts or so greater than the reference Nvidia GTX980 Ti.
If you have £700 cash in hand and are looking for the finest graphics card on the market, then the Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition should definitely make your final shortlist.

They say first impressions matter, and unboxing the Asus card was quite the experience. The card is beautifully put together, and the cooler itself is substantial in hand and fantastic to look at. No attention to detail has been spared – we particularly like the backplate, and the way that ASUS have coloured the heatpipes and aluminum fins with a special heat resistant black coating – to raise the aesthetic appeal.

The orange and two tone grey/silver colour scheme is both stylish and understated while the coloured lighting to indicate load status is effective and useful for troubleshooting potential issues.

Nvidia's GTX980 Ti has been king of the hill now since it was launched, and nothing has really changed since that day. While the Fury X is a great card set to satisfy the high end AMD audience, these modified GTX980 ti cards are simply in a performance league of their own.

With such high overclocked core clock speeds, the Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition is able to generate extremely high frame rates at 1440p, and many gamers would be happy enough with single card Ultra HD 4k performance. I personally prefer to get a steady 60fps at 4K, and this still will require an SLi configuration. Yes, super smooth 4K gaming is undoubtedly very expensive.

The Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition dominated our benchmark charts and outclassed all of the other Nvidia and AMD hardware on test today, apart from the dual GPU R9 295X2 which still manages to hold the top position in many of the tests. That said you need an effective Crossfire profile to get the most from dual GPU hardware and if there is no profile available then you are often playing a game with dramatically reduced performance. Many gamers don't want to rely on a Crossfire or SLi profile, regardless of potential gains. This is what makes a graphics card such as the Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition incredibly desirable.

The Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition is available for £659.99 inc vat. You will be able to buy it soon direct from Overclockers UK HERE.

Pros:

• class leading performance.
• high overclock out of the box.
• looks fantastic
• backplate.
• quiet.

Cons:

• We are not sold on ASUS GPU Tweak software.
• its expensive.

Kitguru says: The ultimate gamers wet dream? The Asus ROG Matrix GTX 980Ti Platinum Edition is one of the finest graphics cards we have ever tested.

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