ASUS GTX780 Ti Matrix Platinum Review

ASUS GTX780Ti Matrix Review

Conclusion

Reviewing these exceptionally high-end cards is always a difficult balancing act. On the one hand we’re very aware that the type of person who has a cannister of liquid nitrogen around and wants to cool their graphics card with it are exactly the sort of people who have a sponsorship and so wont really be coming to a review site, even one as brilliant as OC3D. Equally if you aren’t going to cool your card with DICE or LN2 then the majority of the features and expense that come with a card such as the Matrix are unnecessary. On the other hand we know many people who wont accept anything but the best, and it’s to them that we really have to write.

In our introduction we said how it would be nearly impossible to produce a bad card if you base it around the GTX780Ti, and sure enough the Matrix is anything but a bad card. It’s fantastic actually.

It’s difficult to start anywhere but with the looks. The Matrix comes in a monster piece of packaging and opening it up is quite an event. The card itself is one of the best looking ones we can recall. The use of angles and a tightly fitting cooler really give a glimpse to the build quality of the card, one that only continues as you take in the details. The heatpipes are anodised black for goodness sake, and if that isn’t something that gets your heart racing we’ll be surprised. The addition of monitoring points, a molex power input to defrost the memory under extreme cooling situations, and a safe mode reboot to get you quickly up and running after pushing your luck too far are all features that clearly indicate the Matrix is aimed at the extreme enthusiast. 

Under air-cooling though how does it perform? It wasn’t often the card at the absolute top of our graphs, but conversely it didn’t have any aberrations either. Every test ran smoothly and gave a very good result. This was surely helped by the incredible overclocking capabilities. 7400MHz on the GDDR5 is hardly poor, and getting towards 1300MHz on the GPU Core itself was so bananas that we almost couldn’t believe our eyes.

Yes there is a big price to pay for all these features, around £80 more than a normal GTX780Ti, but this is a card designed for those who seek the very best regardless of cost. If you can’t live without the kudos that the Matrix brings then it’s an easy recommendation and definitely worthy of our OC3D Performance award.

      

Thanks to ASUS for supplying the GTX780Ti Matrix for review. Discuss your thoughts in the OC3D Forums.