Asus Reveals Over-Engineered GTX 980 Matrix

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dovah-chan

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To be honest I think everyone would be interested in a 980 Poseidon more than a Matrix edition. Many reviewers lamented that the 290X Matrix Platinum didn't have the same features as the 780 Poseidon. Maybe there will be a Poseidon card on AMD's side this time since there is a possibility of the reference cards being liquid cooled?
 

soccerplayer88

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I'm happy with my EVGA GTX 980 ACX 2.0. However I quickly modified the VRAM heatsink and attached my Kraken G10 (Kraken x60 combo), couldn't be happier. My load was hitting near 45C (delta-T).

I don't care what type of heat sink they put on these things, they're still loud and dissipate heat like crap. With my G10, my 980 idles at 3C (delta-T) and running Furmark for an hour caps out at 24C (delta-T).

What I want to see is manufacturers start to include some decent cooling options. I think there is one card out there that has built in liquid cooling but I would like to see some more out of the box.
 

mortsmi7

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I'm happy with my EVGA GTX 980 ACX 2.0. However I quickly modified the VRAM heatsink and attached my Kraken G10 (Kraken x60 combo), couldn't be happier. My load was hitting near 45C (delta-T).

I don't care what type of heat sink they put on these things, they're still loud and dissipate heat like crap. With my G10, my 980 idles at 3C (delta-T) and running Furmark for an hour caps out at 24C (delta-T).

What I want to see is manufacturers start to include some decent cooling options. I think there is one card out there that has built in liquid cooling but I would like to see some more out of the box.
Why all the (delta-T) nonsense? It's all but meaningless without a reference temperature.
 

Ninjawithagun

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Meh, not impressed. If Asus really wants to innovate with the GTX980, then they need to increase the memory bus bandwidth from 256-bit to either 384-bit or better yet a 512-bit bus (yes, just like what AMD has now with Hawaii). Until that happens, I'll keep yawning :p
 

arossetti

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For the amount of money you'll pay for one of these specially engineered air cooled cards you could spend just a little more and slap a water block on a reference card, loop it into one the expandable AIO coolers like the Glacial or a custom loop and get great temps and almost no noise. -
 
Water cooling the 9xx series will eliminate noise but don't expect higher clocks. So far, temps hasve been a complete non-issue on 9xx cards ... I haven't as yet seen one "hit the wall" on GPU temps yet.

I have a 26% OC on twin Asus 780s that run w/ GPU temps at 39C on the box I am typing from now but have bettered that a bit on two later air cooled builds using the MSI 780. Of course they ran hotter but still more than 12C below the rated 95C.
 

gaborbarla

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I had an MSI 780 Lightning (20 phase power as opposed to 14 on this) which I replaced with a much quieter MSI 780ti reference. The reference ti overclocked just as well (both to about 15%) before became unstable. I feel that this kind of engineering is too awesome for me. ;-)
I still happily use the reference 780ti that is very quiet even overclocked at full load.
 

compulsivebuilder

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@ninjawithagun - ASUS can't change the width of the memory bus - only NVidia can do that. If you don't understand that much, your comments aren't worth much.

I've had ASUS Matrix video cards in the past, and they've been quite decent. This one looks a bit less exciting, though. I think I'll stick to my 780 Ti for a bit longer.
 

seshysama

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Meh, not impressed. If Asus really wants to innovate with the GTX980, then they need to increase the memory bus bandwidth from 256-bit to either 384-bit or better yet a 512-bit bus (yes, just like what AMD has now with Hawaii). Until that happens, I'll keep yawning :p

I.....I dont think you understand how video cards work....
 

Christopher1

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I got down on Asus after buying one of their cards 5 years ago and having the fan on it have a defect in it that made it whine even under the LEAST amount of load.
I call them within the warranty period for replacement and they refused to replace it, saying it was Newegg's (where I bought it from) responsibility.
Newegg told me "No, we only cover the warranty for 30 days..... after 30 days (I was on day 42) the Asus warranty kicks in!"
Back and forth, back and forth.... I finally gave up and just ordered another 50 dollar card that a friend and Tom's Hardware recommended from Sapphire.
 
1) Memory bus:
NVidia uses lossless compression for the 900 series to reduce bus size. Having said this, the GTX970 at 4K and similar resolutions can lose a small amount of performance since it can't quite keep up with the compression unlike the GTX980.

And to the guy who's "not impressed" with the bus bandwidth just avoid the techno jargon and use BENCHMARKS as a guide to what you should buy.

(Meh, personally I want a GTX970 with 4093GigaBytes of memory that uses 1W of power and can get me a beer from the fridge or I'm not impressed.. )

2) VOLTAGE:
Nice card Asus, but does it even matter if the voltage isn't unlocked or are we still looking at 1600MHz max GPU frequency?

For that matter, can the MEMORY keep up?

3) Liquid cooling and NOISE:
For the 900 series having a liquid cooler attached isn't necessarily ideal. It doesn't "eliminate noise" as said in a comment above as it has a PUMP and a FAN. Furthermore it has to run those at all times whereas many 900 cards can run without any noise in idle/light usage.
 


Water cooling certainly can eliminate noise .... at least in the realm of reality where we are talking about "below detectable limits" or background noise. I'm sitting here w/ 2 cards in SLI typing this message and the systems is dead quiet .... my radiator fans are not running. My pump is running but it's noise level is undetectable. I had to buy a flow meter to tell if it was running.

The system has ten 140mm fans and 2 pumps, sitting 18" away, side panels are off and close your eyes and you can't tell the system is running ... and that's even while running Furmark w/ the cards OC'd 26% and drawing close to 300 watts each .... the fans top out at about 850 rpm .... if I manually boost the speed, you can detect them at about 925 rpm.

All pumps and fans do not make the same amount of noise .

b2.jpg


The H100i produces vacuum cleaner like 68 dbA whereas the H220-X produces only a bedroom / library like 32 dbA, thereby "eliminating" 46 dBA. Let's not play a semantic game here..... no one is implying 0 dbA, we are not talking about eliminating noise to 0 which is an impossibility given typical home / office background noise levels:

http://www.nonoise.org/library/household/index.htm

Quiet Room 28-33
Typical Living Room 40

A quiet bedroom at night or library is generally listed as 30 - 33 dbA. So when we talk about "eliminating noise" we are talking about one of the accepted dictionary definitions of "eliminating noise as a consideration". That can most certainly be done with water cooling.

More specifically.... the Asus Strix 980 for example has two 92mm fans..... taking those off and replacing them with a radiator and two 140mm fans at a much lower rpm will eliminate noise.

And no, the fans by no means need to run all the time. I have my radiator fans set to turn off when not required using the utility that came with the MoBo. If the heat sink doesn't need fans when air cooled .... the radiator won't either. The circuitry on the GFX card PCB controls the fans via fan connector on the PCB, simply by connecting the radiator fans to that connector, you will realize the exact same control scheme with the radiator fans as with the stock card fans on air. A dual 140mm fan water cooling system is most certainly capable of eliminating any noise above background level, equivalent to a bedroom at night or library.

Now of course, if you used the Kraken GFX card adapter and an H100i, you will certainly have the capability to increase noise. Both air cooling and water cooling can be done well or done poorly. A GFX card however is limited by the amount of weight it can support, so air cooling is limited by the size of the heat sink that can realistically be physically supported. That in turn dictates both maximum fan size and rpm. Water cooling frees you from both those restrictions. There are quiet pumps and there are quiet fans..... with any decent pair of 140mm fans, rpms which generate detectable fan noise are wholly unnecessary for a GFX card generating < 200 watts.
 

arossetti

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All I can say is that I'm running a EVGA GTX 980 SC - EKWB water block on an expanded Glacial 240L with a pair of high static pressure Cougars and temps (both CPU and GPU) stay around 45C at load. And I barely notice it.
 
Today's radiators generally (8 - 12 fpi) don't need high SP fans tho I can't speak to the 240L.... The need to use high SP fans comes from back in the days of 30 fpi radiators where the tight fin spacing required more oomph to push air thru the tight spaces. With 8 - 12 fpi, two 140mm fans on a 980 shouldn't have to run any faster than 750 rpm; two 120's maybe 1050 rpm.

But, since you have the CPU on there, that will add about 50% more heat load.....I'd expect you'll need 1200-1500 rpm.
 
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