Ingenious card despite false praise by Nvidia

Before I get to my review I would like to comment briefly on the GTX 970 scandal.
This graphics card is part of Nvidia touted wrong. The update released by the market leader for GPU product data sheet has since been found to be faulty, what Nvidia has also added about a month ago. So 512 MB of 4 GB VRAM are decoupled and installed at a slower connection. Furthermore the card also features less shader multiprocessors than originally indicated. This architecture can in many cases cause framerate drops:
- At high Ultra-HD resolutions
- At supersampling / downsampling
- When too much the switched graphics Tools and the associated filling VRAM than 3.5 GB

The way was called communicates above by Nvidia, as well as very cheap attempt by Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang to pull off the hook, angry all buyers who purchased in good faith that card, becoming aware of the limitations, absolutely rightly ,
I too have bought the card a few weeks before the GTX 970 scandal for the working and PC games, which I zusammenbaute at this time. Why did I keep the card yet and me is worth it even 5 star, you read here.

Design and thermal solution
The card has in my opinion, by far the best design of the GTX 970 cards, more than the MSI Gaming 4G can match yet. However, this one has no backplate, which covers the board in the form of a chic gray aluminum plate with Asus lettering. The fans have the eye shape of an owl, and are manufactured to the two red dots in the middle of radiators made of gray aluminum. This is definitely by far the fanciest graphics card, which I have ever had.
Under the cooling is Asus DirectCU II specially developed heat pipes which lie directly on the board and away from the extremely low power dissipation of the 900 series, are responsible for the brilliant Silent Design. The heat development is namely thereby so low that the fans of Strix to work by default start quietly until just over 65 degrees. This was important to me because I mainly use the computer for work and it has to be quiet here. Similar fan designs of current graphics cards can still be found in the 900 versions of the Palit Jetstream and the MSI Gaming 4G.

Power consumption and connectivity
Asus gives the card to a power consumption of 225W, this is based on an 8 pin connector. In practice, should, depending on the processor, already rich a high-performance 550W power supply to operate this card.
The image is output via two dual DVI ports, one DisplayPort 1.2 connection and a HDMI connection. This solution was perfect for me, since I run two monitors via dual DVI and a TV via HDMI on my PC. However, if you for example want to run. 4 monitors without HDMI, the Multi can not use monitor support without a workaround.

Clock and overclocking
The Asus GTX 970 Strix uses a default clock speed of 1114 MHz and a boost clock of 1253 MHz, this makes almost 70 MHz faster than the reference design from Nvidia. The clock of GDDR5 RAM remains at 1750MHz.
I myself have the card has not yet been overclocked, but Hardwareluxx was a power increase of 11% from the Asus GTX 970 herauskitzeln Strix when overclocking test, which is quite remarkable.

Total system and gaming performance
Housing: Phanteks Enthoo Pro Full-Tower
Processor: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3
RAM: 2x 4 GB Corsair Value Select CL9 1333MHz
Motherboard: Asrock Z97 Extreme 4
HDD: 2TB Seagate Desktop SSHD
PSU: 700W Be Quiet Straight Power 10
Nvidia driver 347.09 triple buffering enabled globally
Operating System: Windows 7 SP2

It is played either on my older Acer 24 120Hz Monitor in 1080p or on my LG 42 3D TV also in 1080p.

Far Cry 4: Maximum Settings 60FPS
Wolfenstein The New Order: Maximum Settings 60FPS
Dying Light: Maximum settings 50 -60 FPS
Ryse Son of Rome: Maximum settings Supersampling disabled 30-60 FPS (at Supersampling activated due to extreme jerking not playable)
The Witcher 2: Maximum settings Supersampling activated 30-60 FPS

With above setup and the GTX 970 Strix I reach in the 3DMark benchmark Firestrike performance a score of 9729, which corresponds approximately to the performance of a GTX 780 TI. Accordingly, in the top list of the GTX 970 has 3dMark manufacturer Futuremark Rank 8 the highest performance cards.
The temperature was at no time in my tests exceeded 66 degrees, which is why the fans were turned off and the noise was extremely pleasant. This I run but, in addition to the excellent cooling solution on the Full-Tower Design my body back.
Who wants 970 generally assess even better the performance of the GTX, can sometimes watch the Youtube Channel of ARTIS_SvK. This has numerous LetsPlays, uploaded, including frame rate display of current games with a GTX 970.

Conclusion
In my practical test was particularly evident in Ryse that the GTX 970 is no allround graphics card for resolutions beyond 1080p or supersampling. Although like many games running in 1440p or even 4k with maximum details, much of the already published and yet to come in the near future is the title but is no longer expected. Here would be for example The Witcher call 3 to which, given the performed by us Supersampling tests with Ryse and The Witcher 2, probably not in Ultra with supersampling or resolutions beyond 1080p by the GTX 970 Strix can be fired.
And yet, the Asus GTX 970 Strix remains in my opinion the perfect compromise between price and performance in a range of resolutions to 1080p. For currently 365 you get a very high-quality processed yet extremely power-saving piece of hardware with a maximum power dissipation which is the current AMD cards far superior. The cooling system has convinced me with the silent and Design for Silent lover this card is absolutely perfect. It should be mentioned even as a side note, that the Asus GTX 970 Strix is ​​already prepared for the upcoming DirectX 12, which Microsoft released in combination with the new Windows 10, which is why you quite some time to have fun with this video card.