Published: March 30, 2017 | Source: ASUS | Author: Tom Logan

ASUS GTX1080 Ti Strix OC Graphics Card Review

Conclusion

It’s an absolute monster.

When the we looked at the Founders Edition of the nVidia GTX 1080 Ti we were pretty staggered by how much extra performance nVidia had managed to squeeze from their flagship GPU, despite it already being very impressive.

Now nVidia will tell you that their cooling solution is a match for any partner card one, but we know that’s not the case. Maybe they know that very few people purchase their own model and they’ll make more money selling PCBs to the partners than they ever would selling Founders Editions, or maybe they really believe a single ‘waterwheel’ fan is a match for two or three 92mm fans. Either way, these partner cards in the form of the MSI Gaming, EVGA FTW, Gigabyte Windforce or today’s review the ASUS Strix OC are the ones that shift big numbers.

Shifting big numbers is the perfect segue into the performance of the Strix OC.

As you would imagine a GTX 1080 Ti that has had a huge factory overclock installed is very likely to push some major frame rates, and the Strix OC definitely gets the job done in that department. We found in a few of our titles that there was very little to choose between either the Founders Edition or the Strix OC in the 1080P tests, but once we moved up to the increasingly popular 1440P or even the ‘still for the enthusiasts’ 4K resolution then the Strix OC romped off into the distance, usually by five or six frames per second which is a significant advantage.

There are a couple of main reasons for this. On the one hand the Strix comes with a beefy factory overclock which brings the performance benefits you’d expect, but secondly the cooler on the Strix OC is so good that it enables the nVidia GPU Boost technology to really stretch its legs, and at the high end of demanding games with heavy detail levels and high anti-aliasing then every megahertz is a boon, and the Strix OC has plenty of them. That excellent cooler doesn’t just help in raw performance terms though. The Founders Edition cooler had the GPU around 84Â°C and quiet, but not inaudible. The Strix cooler though didn’t go above 65Â°C and was significantly quieter even under harsh loading.

Once you marry this quality of life factor from the cool temperatures and quietness with the performance and the glorious ASUS AURA lighting you end up with a graphics card that should find itself in top position on peoples wish list. For such a complete product it has to win our OC3D Enthusiast award.

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