Asus GeForce STRIX-GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5 256 Bit Graphics Card, 4 GB GDDR5

Product Information

Cooling modern video cards is becoming more and more difficult, especially with users asking for a quiet cooling solution, which is why engineers are now paying much more attention to the power consumption of new graphics card designs. An optimized fan-profile is also one of the few things board vendors can create to impress with reference designs where they are prohibited from making changes to the thermal solution or components on the card. DVI to VGA adaptor, 2x twin Molex to 8-pin PCI Express adaptors, Mini USB to internal USB header cable

The Asus GTX 970 DC Mini is designed specifically for Mini-ITX gaming PCs and home theatre systems, and Asus has managed to reduce the length of the card to just 170mm. The single fan might have to work a little harder, and make slightly more noise than cards such as the Asus STRIX GTX 970, but scores of 118.2fps in Dirt Showdown, 77.3fps in Tomb Raider and 44.8fps in Metro: Last Light suggest this card would be overkill for a 1,920×1,080 display. As with the other GTX 970 cards, gaming at 2,560×1,440 is possible in the most demanding titles at sky-high detail levels, and 3,840×2,160 gaming is on the cards if you reduce detail levels slightly. Multi-monitor: Two monitors connected to the tested card, both using different display timings. Windows 7 Aero sitting at the desktop (1920x1080+1280x1024) with all windows closed and drivers installed. Card left to warm up in idle mode until power draw was stable. When using two identical monitors with same timings and resolution, power consumption will be lower. Our test represents the usage model of many productivity users, who have one big screen and a small monitor on the side. On the memory front, I wasn’t able to match the GTX 980’s 7,750MHz, but came close with 7,700MHz. GTX 970 (1440p) In practical terms, however, applications see the full 4GB of RAM and the video driver balances out the load. Only after the first 3.5GB is requested, to fill up the entire high performance segment, will the 512MB segment get used. At this point, Nvidia’s video driver attempts to put the least important data in the slower segment. Although the final 512MB is much slower than the high-performance segment, it is still fast enough for the graphics card to use it rather than rely on swapping data with system RAM.In gaming, the GTX 970 shows impressive power consumption numbers that seemed impossible just a few months ago. The card is fast yet incredibly power efficient at the same time. This is, in my opinion, the key improvement in Maxwell, as power and heat are no longer an issue when it comes to scaling up GPU performance. These improvements will also serve as a foundation for improvements in laptop and mobile gaming, where battery life is a crucial factor. GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER, GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER, GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, GeForce GTX 1660, GeForce GTX 1650 For this test, we measure the power consumption of only the graphics card via the PCI-Express power connector(s) and PCI-Express bus slot. A Keithley Integra 2700 digital multimeter with 6.5-digit resolution is used for all measurements. Again, the values here only reflect the card's power consumption as measured at its DC inputs, not that of the whole system. GeForce GTX 690, GeForce GTX 680, GeForce GTX 670, GeForce GTX 660 Ti, GeForce GTX 660, GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST, GeForce GTX 650 Ti, GeForce GTX 650, GeForce GTX 645, GeForce GT 640, GeForce GT 635, GeForce GT 630

Instead, one of the GTX 970’s four memory controllers is only partially enabled, meaning only 1.75MB of the L2 cache is switched on. As a result, the video memory is split between a high-performance segment containing 3.5GB and a low-performance segment with the remaining 512MB. The low-performance segment is significantly slower to access than the high-performance segment, hampering performance.

Graphics Card

We use Metro: Last Light as a standard test representing typical 3D gaming usage because it offers the following: very high power draw; high repeatability; is a current game that is supported on all cards; drivers are actively tested and optimized for it; supports all multi-GPU configurations; test runs in a relatively short time and renders a non-static scene with variable complexity. Peak: Metro: Last Light at 1920x1080, representing a typical gaming power draw. Highest single reading during the test. GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2080, GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2070, GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER, GeForce RTX 2060