My Asus Strix GTX 970 review

[Jonathan Cave]

on a single card my 970 runs at 12 fps less than my overclocked 780 Ti.

65 degree's

 

[Frag Maniac]

If it's an option, I'd go for the Giga WF. Better card and way better support IMO. It's not currently available where I live, but I'm not ready for an upgrade yet.

I'm going to wait and look at Broadwell and maybe even Skylake CPUs. Hopefully DDR4 will support one of them. By then I'll have had my 7970 about 3 yrs and it will be time to upgrade everything.

 

[Jonathan Cave]

oops that was STOC,

this is o/c

 

[Alex Kelly]

Very nice. 7.4 lowest FPS though?
I'm having the toughest time deciding.

 

[Alex Kelly]

Here is mine:

At stock.
Damn you can't see the picture I don't think 😛
I got with the exact same settings:
Avg FPS 53.1
Score 1338
Min FPS 8.4
Max FPS 112.7
62C max

 

[maxtex]

I ran the same benchmark with me new Asus 970, with stock clock, but damn printscreen button doesn't work for some reason, tried it twice..

Anyway I used the same preset as above, first bench i got a 1354 score, second one was 1356:
FPS:
53.8
Score:
1356
Min FPS:
24.1
Max FPS:
112.1

Max temp was 68C

 

[Frag Maniac]

Yikes, those minimum FPS scores are scary.

That said, it's more important what the min FPS is in games. If you were playing a game as resource intense as the Heaven bench is, you'd probably want to use an FPS limiter and keep those high max frames in check to minimize the number of low min ones.

 

[Alex Kelly]

At no point during the benchmark do you see anything that looks like below 30 fps, it must just be a frame or two in between the scenes.

 

[iamlegend]

The minimum FPS shows only in the loading of Unengine Valley, it is the same when you are playing games and you are about to start the game, which FPS drastically drops. It is not a concern though, it is normal.

You cannot expect a 90 FPS when you are about to start a game.

 

[Frag Maniac]

^You really have to go by how smoothly it plays, which can be hard in synth benches because there's usually very little movement and that which is there is pretty slow moving. Part of the reason I really don't like using them.

In games when there's a lot of low min frames, it can cause slight micro stutter. If it's as Speed Demon says though, no concern, and if it WERE happening in problem areas, a good bench tool like that would recognize it and adjust the score accordingly.

 

[maxtex]

Well the card plays really smoothly for me, only in a heavy game like Crysis 3 it can have some stutters, like when I ran it on Ultra with 4xMSAA, when I was in complex parts of the map it would lag sometimes. But I guess that's with every card in that game.

@Alex So have you decided yet what to do with your card? And how's the coil whine now? By the way when do you hear the coil whine, a lot of the time or just in some cases?
The Asus is just great, although it does do a bit of coil whine only when I'm in a main menu like Watch Dogs' one, where there's like 700-800 frames per second (though weird enough I didn't hear anything yesterday). It wasn't loud though, and it disappeared again when I turned on Vsync.
Do you guys know where you can set a maximum frame (like 60 or 120) for every program, so you don't get a thousand fps for no reason? I looked at Afterburner and Nvidia control panel but I didn't find such an option there..

 

[Trustdesa]

780 were great... 970 are a failure, so many problems!

 

[Jonathan Cave]

what makes you say that Trustdesa

 

[RobCrezz]

Looks great, can you do a Unigine Valley Extreme HD benchmark please?

 

[RobCrezz]

what makes you say that Trustdesa

He has probably just read a handfull of people having coil whine issues or something, ignoring that 10s of thousands out there that are working fine and well.

 

[Trustdesa]

what makes you say that Trustdesa

Google Gtx 970 coil whine
Go on MSI and EVGA official forums



And personal experience.

 

[Jonathan Cave]

 

[Jonathan Cave]

what makes you say that Trustdesa

Google Gtx 970 coil whine
Go on MSI and EVGA official forums



And personal experience.

I have zero coil whine so far.

 

[maxtex]

What is your monitor like? I bet those two 970s in SLI can handle 4K gaming, triple-monitor setup or a 120/144Hz one 😛

 

[maxtex]

I did another Heaven-test too, with an overclock this time, but only +100 MHz as I didn't wanna go crazy yet. Here the result: (also found out f12 is the screenshot button for Heaven, not Prt Scr xD)

 

[Jonathan Cave]

i have 3 x LG monitors and play as many games as i can @ 5760 x 1080 - i personally think 2 x 970's will struggle with 4k with alot of benchmarks pointing towards the 30 - 40 FPS (Crysis etc...) and as more advanced games/engines come along over the next year, i'll wait it out and buy the next gen gpu and hopefully 4k monitors will come down in price alot by then - personally it's too early to game at 4k right now.

 

[Zagreth]

Hi Jonathan. Thanks for the review - it's very useful. Does the GPUTweak software work ok with two cards in SLI?

 

[azzazel_99]

Way too early for 4k.

 

[unknownofprob]

I would actually say otherwise, hence the reason for my purchase of a 4k screen by samsung.

Hardware wise it is too early for 4K, graphics cards struggle.

Software wise it's too early - games usually scale the resolution form 1920x1080 to fit.

Multitasking wise for me - best. I Have the ability to have so many more windows open, and text is not too small either.

3D Rendering- gives a whole new dimension and depth of detail, compared to 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 (I have both used before, and 1440p I still have (Asus PB278Q)). Doing the majority of work I do today, I would not turn back to FHD/QHD resolutions.

 

[Jonathan Cave]

I haven't used GPU tweak but it works on the same principal on precision x that the SLI settings are synced/mirrored. - unless you de-select.