ASUS is amongst the first manufacturers, which have a GTX 960 card in their portfolio. This particular STRIX card comes with a decent factory overclocker and a very capable cooler.


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Presentation

ASUS is amongst the first Nvidia add-in-card (AIC) partners that have decided to introduce a new custom GTX 960 graphics card that will use NVIDIAs latest and greatest GM206 chip. For this graphics card, ASUS makes use of a custom PCB paired up with its own custom STRIX cooler and on the flip-side of the card, there is also a backplate. A quick look at the specs also reveals that the card ships factory overclocked.


As you can see from the GPU-Z screenshot below, ASUS decided to use quite a high factory-overclock on the new GTX 960 Strix OC Edition. Actually these settings make it one of the fastest GTX 960 on the market. While the reference GTX 960 GPU is set to work at 1'126 MHz for the base GPU and 1'178 MHz for the GPU Boost clock, the ASUS GTX 960 Strix OC Edition works at 1'253 MHz for the base clock and 1'404 MHz for the Boost GPU clock.

With this card ASUS is overclocking the memory of the new GTX 960 Strix by a little bit. The chips are actually running at 1'800 MHz (effective 7'200 MHz), which means 50 MHz (effective 200 MHz) overclocking.

While the typical Boost clock is set at 1'253 MHz, the maximum Boost of 1'404 MHz was achieved quite easily. These clocks are reached thanks to the capable custom cooler as well as a good TDP target (Nvidia's Boost technology being based on both temperature and power on this card, the latter being predominant). While running Furmark we noticed the card is still running at 1'254 MHz and the voltage is set at 1.083V without any throttling.

Specifications

	ASUS GTX 960 STRIX OC Edition	GeForce GTX 960	GeForce GTX 970	GeForce GTX 760
Chip	GM206-300-A1	GM206-300-A1	GM204 Maxwell	GK104 Kepler
Process	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm
Transistors	2.94 billion	2.94 billion	5.20 billion	3.54 billion
GPU clock	1'253 MHz	1'126 MHz	1'051 MHz	980 MHz
GPU Boost clock	1'404 MHz	1'178 MHz	1'178 MHz	1'033 MHz
Memory GDDR5	2'048 MB	2'048 MB	4'096 MB	2'048 MB
Memory clock	1'800 (7'200) MHz	1'750 (7'010) MHz	1'750 (7'010) MHz	1'500 (6'000) MHz
Memory interface	128 Bit	128 Bit	256 Bit	256 Bit
Memory bandwidth	115'200 MB/s	112'160 MB/s	224'000 MB/s	192'200 MB/s
TMUs	85	85	104	96
Shader Cores	1024	1024	1'664	1'152
ROPs	32	32	64	32
TDP	120 Watt	120 Watt	150 Watt	170 Watt
Slots	2	2	Reference Design	Reference Design
Cooler	DirectCU II	NVIDIA Reference	NVIDIA Reference	NVIDIA Reference

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Page 1 - Presentation / Specifications	Page 13 - Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Page 2 - The card	Page 14 - Thief
Page 3 - Photo Gallery / Delivery	Page 15 - GRID Autosport
Page 4 - Test Setup	Page 16 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 5 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 17 - Metro Last Light
Page 6 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 18 - Assassin’s Creed Unity
Page 7 - Borderlands - The Pre-Sequel	Page 19 - Far Cry 4
Page 8 - BattleField 4	Page 20 - Power Consumption
Page 9 - Watch Dogs	Page 21 - Temperatures / Noise Levels
Page 10 - Tomb Raider	Page 22 - Performance/Price & Performance/Watt
Page 11 - Sniper Elite 3	Page 23 - Prices
Page 12 - Crysis 3	Page 24 - Conclusion