ASUS GTX 960 STRIX DirectCU II Review

Fresh from the factory we sample ASUS’ latest GPU based on the new NVIDIA ‘Maxwell’ GTX 960 core.

Product on review: STRIX-GTX960
Manufacturer & Sponsor: ASUS
Street Price: £189.99 GBP

The new GTX 960 is finally here and with it comes NVIDIA’s latest GPU core – Maxwell. The new core has impressed is with both the GTX 980 and 970 siblings with some excellent power saving features. Today’s sample, the ASUS Strix arrives with a healthy factory overclock with the core running at 1291MHz (1317MHz Boost) and an impressive 7200 MHz memory overclock. ASUS claim this will give users an average 12% increase in gaming performance which is most welcome.

Perhaps most impressive with the ASUS card is the cooler. As we saw with the GTX 970 Strix, the cooler will run totally silent up to a given temperature due to the fans not spinning up so in idle state the ASUS card is totally silent. Start a heavy gaming session and put the GPU under load and the fans ramp up but are still an impressive 3x quieter than reference while also being 30% cooler.

ASUS on their Strix range:

Taken from the ancient Roman and Greek word for owl, Strix means the keenest hearing and sharpest eyesight. Strix means feeling your environment so that you detect and react to the slightest movement. Strix means survival on the very edge of instinct. Strix is in your blood, as it is in ours.

Specification

Model name STRIX-GTX960-DC2OC-2GD5
Graphics Engine NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960
Bus Standard PCI Express® 3.0
OpenGL OpenGL® 4.4
Video Memory 2GB GDDR5
GPU boost clock OC Mode : 1317 MHz
Gaming Mode: 1291 MHz
GPU base clock OC Mode : 1253 MHz
Gaming Mode: 1228 MHz
CUDA cores 1024
Memory Clock 7200 MHz
Memory Interface 128 bit
DVI Output 1x Native Dual-link DVI-I
HDMI Output 1x Native HDMI 2.0
HDCP compliant YES
DisplayPort 3x Native DisplayPort 1.2
Accessory Bundled 1x DVI to VGA Adapter
Software Bundled ASUS GPU Tweak & Driver
Dimension 215.2 x 121.2 x 40.9 mm

GTX 960 Features

Widely regarded as the sweet spot and backed up by statistical data from Steam users, the GTX760 and GTX660 are #1 and #2 most popular. So the market is clearly there and NVIDIA are clearly not oblivious to this fact as they’re hoping some of those users upgrade to the next generation in gaming graphics cards, the GTX 960.

Compared to the GTX 660, the GTX 960 offers a huge leap in terms of both performance and features including VXGI and MFAA along with support for Microsoft’s soon to be released DirectX. NVIDIA claim a 60% increase in performance which is a massive leap all things considered. MOBA games on 4K promise to run so much sweeter with the GTX960 when compared to the GTX 660 thanks to the extra grunt afforded to the GTX 960 and so using features such as 4K DSR instead of 8xMSAA, the GTX 960 gives a greater amount of clarity.

Feature wise, the GTX 960 retains all of the new innovations first presented with the GTX 980, the common theme being efficiency. The Maxwell SMM is partitioned into four distinct 32-CUDA core processing blocks, each with its own dedicated resources for scheduling and instruction buffering. Because each block is given its own instruction set the CUDA cores are utilised more often in an active state thus improving workload and efficiency. Enhancing efficiencies further, each of the SMM units feature their own 96kb of shared memory compared to the smaller 64KB of shared memory found on the previous generation Kepler core.

Broadly speaking, these changes mean that the GM206 is capable of delivering around 1.4x the performance per core of the GK106 Kepler while being twice as powerful per watt used. Pretty impressive when you consider that Kepler was hardly power hungry beast. There seems to be a common theme appearing in that NVIDIA are involved in a ‘tick-tock’ scenario. Tick being performance improvements (Kepler), Tock being power efficiencies (Maxwell). It is however worth noting that this time around Maxwell not only improves on efficiency but performance, as we will see, also gets a healthy boost.

Aside from the core, the memory sub-system has also seen a refresh thanks to NVIDIA’s third gen delta colour compression engine which allows the GPU to better utilise available memory bandwidth. This leap isn’t as significant as the improvements in the core design with the stock GM206 managing 148.8GB/s against 144.2/s in the GTX 660 (GK106).

NVIDIA are making some bold claims with the GTX 960. First they are claiming that the GTX 960 will offer a ‘great gaming experience’ at 1080p settings with the anti-aliasing turned up. Perhaps even more ambitiously, that it can churn out playable frame rates at 4K resolutions (albeit with less GPU intensive game types such as MOBA.

Stock speeds are levelled at 1126MHz on the core with a boost speed of up to 1178MHz and the memory speed (effective) will be set at 7010MHz. As with the GTX 970 and GTX 980 line of graphics cards we expect to see, as with this review, these levels to be raised in factory overclocked graphics cards.

The GTX 960 will replace the GTX 970 in NVIDIA’s current GTX line up with the entire family as follows:

GeForce GTX TITAN Z
GeForce GTX 980
GeForce GTX 970
GeForce GTX 960
GeForce GTX 750 Ti
GeForce GTX 750

DSR & MFAA

Dynamic Super-Resolution

Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing (SSAA) isn’t a new concept, but its adoption in games or graphics hardware over the years has been patchy due how processor-intensive the process is. It relies on sampling the scene at a resolution much higher than your native screen resolution and then blending pixels together to output a ‘normal’ resolution frame, reducing ‘jaggies’. It’s often colloquially referred to as the ‘king of AA techniques’, but has given way to MSAA, MLAA and NVIDIA’s own FXAA, each of which are faster and less computationally expensive even if the quality isn’t as good.

Progress in graphics technology and horsepower has meant that a game which would bring a GPU to its knees five years ago can be comfortably played on mid-range hardware these days, whilst top-tier hardware push frame rates well into the hundreds. That’s a lot of horsepower going to waste when it could, if the game supported it, be used to improve image quality significantly.

Relatively recently enthusiasts have used a homebrew technique to increase the resolution which a game engine renders at, and then apply post-processing techniques to reduce the output resolution down to the monitor’s native. Known as downsampling, it’s essentially a form of SSAA. Unfortunately it’s very hit-and-miss, often relying of 3rd-party applications and prone to throwing up OS-level errors; and of course it’s very computationally expensive. However the rewards – beautiful images from older game engines – make the effort worth it.

Today GPUs such as the GTX 780Ti and Titan are being produced which are capable of and designed for 4K resolutions in even modern titles. However most gamers still use 1080p monitors on a day-to-day basis, making a $500+ GPU obscene overkill for all but the most taxing of titles. Because of this NVIDIA are going to start to support downsampling at the driver level through a method they’re calling Dynamic Super-Resolution (DSR).

Composite scene, DSR sample on right

Using DSR (which can be enabled automatically through GeForce Experience or the driver application) the game is rendered at a higher resolution and then downscaled to the monitor native resolution. Unlike previous methods however tt’s fully integrated into the driver, meaning not only ubiquitous game support but also a far more stable process than the bespoke solutions previously used.

Whilst the potential image quality benefits are significant it’s also worth noting that DSR would be an excellent measure of assessing whether your setup is capable of supporting a higher resolution monitor in gaming. The performance impact of the downsampling process is apparently only 1-2% (i.e less than a frame per second), so the framerates you get running DSR at 4K on your 1080p monitor should be extremely close to those you get for 4K natively. We’re not sure if NVIDIA intended this, but we’ll certainly take it.

DSR is part of NVIDIA’s launch driver for the GTX 980 and 970, but will also be rolled down to Kepler in the near future. The current implementation is still a little rough around the edges and NVIDIA haven’t supplied a software means of easily showing the downsampled output frame as all in-engine screenshots will be at the supersample resolution, but it shows a great deal of promise.

Multi-Frame Anti-Aliasing

Optimised anti-aliasing techniques is one of the ways GPU manufacturers have sought to differentiate themselves beyond pure frame rates and GFLOP statistics. Recognising that MSAA was insufficient to the needs of shader-based rendering and SSAA was too expensive both AMD and NVIDIA have generated their own methods to combat aliasing, to greater or lesser success. NVIDIA’s most well-known iteration is Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA), initially requiring in-engine implementation but later enabled at the driver level. More recently Temporal Anti-Aliasing was debuted, cleaning up an image based on frame-by-frame changes to pixels around edges. Each has their pros and cons; a good way to get into a fight on enthusiast boards is to claim that one method is flat out better than the other.

Today Multi-Frame Anti-Aliasing (MFAA, not to be mistaken for AMD’s Morphological Filtering AA) is being announced as a Maxwell-exclusive feature. As the name suggests MFAA is a post-processing anti-aliasing technique which operates by analysing a frame within the context of the previous frame, checking aliasing and rendering colours based on a proprietary algorithm in hardware.

The foundation of MFAA is multi-pixel programmable sampling, a means by which the matrix of sampling positions can be randomised to reduce data processing artefacts caused by repeating the same sample position from frame-to-frame.

MFAA seeks to be as good as MSAA, but without the performance impact algorithms and with image characteristics that are substantially different from FXAA. The latter has garnered a reputation for slightly blurring images, reducing the overall image quality, and so an effective alternative is probably due at this point.

Sadly MFAA is not quite ready for prime-time and will be issued as part of a driver update at a later date. The obvious question-mark is just how high the image quality presented is, and if it can operate well when the differences between frames is relatively large. However NVIDIA have clarified that the technique will work in tandem with alternate-frame rendering, an SLI mode available when using two or more matched NVIDIA GPUs.

Packaging & Accessories

The familiar packaging found on the vast majority of ASUS graphics cards is found here and as we saw with the GTX 970 STRIX, the same ‘owl’ backdrop is employed.

The rear of the package goes into detail regarding the details of the product including the main feature set and specifications.

There isn’t a surplus of accessories included with the Strix. Aside from the installation guide and driver CD you get a VGA/DVI adaptor and a Strix sticker.

First Look

The card is a great looker. The metal frame is highlighted with red stickers/inserts so will look right at home with the ROG range of motherboards.

The rear of the card has a black brushed aluminium effect back plate which is nice to see and adds to the aesthetics of the card as well as protecting the PCB.

As you can see, this is an open style cooler so some of the hot air will be vented back into the PC enclosure however with the heatsink having longitudinal fins much of this hot air will be exhausted toward the rear.

The card is quite diminutive, measuring just over 21cm in length so will please users with mATX boards. Sadly it will still take up two PCi slots due to the width but there are few powerful GPUs that are in the single slot variety these days.

Amazingly, just one 6 pin PCIe power port is provided and ASUS recommend a 400w PSU with a 12v rail capable of delivering 38A. This is a great feature in that you are unlikely to have to upgrade your PSU. The previous GTX760 (reference) required 2x6pin ports so this hints at the power savings Maxwell core GPU’s will afford. A neat feature of the STRIX is that a small white/red LED will indicate whether the power cable is attached correctly to the card.

SLI is provided by a single tab meaning you can hook this card up with another from the same family provided you have an SLI capable motherboard and bridge.

Let’s take a closer look…

Closer Look

The card has 4 main components: Backplate, main heatsink, VRM heatsink and PCB. The main heatsink is derived from DirectCU II cooling technology which tells us that the heatpipes that dissipate the heat come into direct contact to the GPU core. We have seen in the past that this is a very efficient method of wicking away the heat so we see no reason not to believe this will be a very cool running GPU.

The back of the PCB with the backplate removed show us that ASUS have opted to add memory to both the front and back of the PCB. Neither module is however directly cooled by the backplate.

As you can see, the PCB itself is even smaller than the overall card dimensions. When you consider some graphics cards go beyond 35cm, this is a fantastic achievement. We almost felt short changed due to the lack of PCB length!

The VRM is comprised of a 4+1 power phase design made up of ASUS’ Super Alloy Power which give a 15% performance boost and last 2.5 times tradition power components.

The four 512MB modules hail from Samsung and carry the product code K4G41325FC HC28 which are normally found in a 4GB configuration so we expect to see some ‘special editions with the empty slots filled in the future.

The Maxwell core, as we have explored previously is very power efficient and while this core is trimmed back from the GTX 960’s bigger brothers, it should still give us some very good performance. I think it’s time we found out just how much…

Test Setup & Methodology

How we test graphics cards

Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphic card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and even out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and latest drivers so this does certainly need to be taken into consideration when viewing our testing results. Each game and benchmark is tested times with the lowest and highest scores omitted out of the 5 results and the average then taken from the three remaining to give us our final result for each resolution and setting used.

Frame Time Analysis
We have also seen the emergence of frame time analysis. We covered this in a separate article here: GPU Reviews: Why Frame Time Analysis is important so we won’t go into the reasoning again but to summarise, our testing comprises both FPS testing and perhaps arguably more importantly, frame time analysis. We also look at overall performance by equating averages across the games and finally before concluding our review we take a look at value for money.

HardwareWith the latest Intel chipset release we decided to update our ageing X79 setup to the very latest X99 chipset. Not only that but we will be using the flagship Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to a realistic, achieveable 4GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB (4x4GB) of GDDR4 at 2666MHz and a 500GB SSD there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.

High End Graphics cards on test:

ASUS GTX 960 STRIX DirectCU II
NVIDIA Forceware 347.25
GIGABYTE GTX 960 G1 GAMING OCNVIDIA Forceware 347.25
SAPPHIRE DUAL-X OC R9-285 OC(Catalyst 14.3)
XFX R9-280 Black Edition OC 3GB GDDR5(Catalyst 14.3)
PALIT GTX 760GB 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 340.52)

Special thanks go to Intel, Corsair, MSI and AOC for providing the extreme spec components used for our test bench:

Motherboard: MSI X99S GAMING 9 AC
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR RM Series™ RM1000
Hard Drive – CORSAIR Force Series™ LX 512GB SATA 3 6Gb/s SSD
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H105 240mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2868 PQU

Benchmarks
If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we have chosen:

Battlefield 4
Watchdogs
Company of Heroes 2
Thief
GRID: 2
Metro: Last Light

We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included 3 of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:

Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike

Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…

Temperature, Acoustics and Power Consumption

Power Consumption

To test for power consumption we take a measurement from the plug socket. It is important to note that the figures below represent total system power use and not just the GPU. The CPU was always in a fixed state (4GHz overclock) so did not affect the additional power load when the GPU was placed under 100% load using Furmark which was ran for 15 minutes at which point a load reading was taken. Idle readings were taken 5 minutes after system boot to ensure any background services and applications had loaded.

While tha vast majority of manufacturers ask us not to test a GPU using Furmark as it puts undue stress on the GPU and is excessive when compared to ‘real world’ gaming consumption. We however, like to explore the worst case scenarios and if a card fails this test then questions should be raised over the cards cooling/power management. Thankfully, the ASUS GTX 960 STRIX had no such issues here and hit a very low 223W.

Temperature

To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we would normally run Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained however we found that this throttled the card and resulted in spurious results. So we set Heaven running continuously for 20 minutes and used this as a temperature result as the card did not throttle with this application.

[fullimage=29431]

The DirectCU II cooler is one of the best on the market and that his proven once again here with temps barely reaching the 70c mark.

Acoustics

ASUS made a great deal of noise when introducing the STRIX models claiming that their coolers were 0dB*. The asterix/disclaimer is very important here because any item that moves air cannot claim to be 0dB. So while the card is idle then for sure, those claims may well be true but under most gaming scenarios, the fans will start to turn and thus create a measurable level of noise. We are however happy to report that you will REALLY struggle to hear the Strix above your own case fans, such is the volume level. A very quiet card indeed.

Overclocking

For overclocking today’s sample we will be using Sapphire’s TRIXX tool as this gives us all of the options we require included the additional voltage controls.

Above is a screenshot of GPU-Z showing the reference (factory overclocked) settings.

…and manually attained overclock speeds.

Overclocking pre-overclocked cards generally fields mixed results in that most pre-overclocked GPU’s leave so little left ‘in the bag’ that overclocking the card to give any tangible results is a waste of time and effort. Not so here. While our results were far from astonishing we did manage a further 150MHz on the care and 195MHz (480MHz effective) on the memory which was very gratifying.

Above we can see the resulting performance increase of the overclock via Unigine Heaven 4.0.

Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike (Synthetic)

Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremark’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.

Unigine: Heaven 4 (Synthetic)

Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.

Unigine: Valley (Synthetic)

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

Battlefield 4 (FPS)

Battlefield 4 is a 2013 first-person shooter video game developed by Swedish video game developer EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and published by Electronic Arts. It is a sequel to 2011’s Battlefield 3 and is perhaps currently the most popular online First Person Shooter for PC gamers. It has an extremely powerful gaming engine that will stress components more than most FPS titles available.

Watchdogs (Action/Adventure)

Watch Dogs is a 2014 open world action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. Set within a fictionalized version of Chicago, Illinois, the single-player story follows a hacker and his efforts to seek revenge after the accidental death of his niece. The open world design lets players freely roam Chicago, which includes the urban city, open countryside, and slums. The game is played from a third-person perspective and its world is navigated on-foot or by vehicle. As such this is a very demanding game, especially when graphical options are turned up.

Thief (Stealth)

Thief is a stealth video game developed by the Canadian video game developer Eidos Montreal, and published by Square Enix. It is a revival of the cult classic Thief series of stealth games, of which it is the fourth game. Thief is set in a dark fantasy world inspired by Victorian, gothic, and steampunk aesthetics. Using a modified version of the Unreal Engine 3 it makes for a challenging game to pitch against our range of components.

Company of Heroes 2 (RTS)

Company of Heroes 2 is a real-time strategy video game developed by Relic Entertainment. It is the sequel to the critically acclaimed 2006 game Company of Heroes.As with the original Company of Heroes, the game is set in World War II but with the focus on the Eastern Front, with players primarily controlling the side of the Soviet Red Army during various stages of the Eastern Front, from Operation Barbarossa to the Battle of Berlin. Company of Heroes 2 runs on Relic Entertainment’s proprietary Essence 3.0 game engine and is extremely demanding of both CPU and GPU.

Metro: Last Light (FPS)

Metro: Last Light is a single-player post-apocalyptic-themed first-person shooter video game with stealth and survival horror elements, developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Moscow, part of the universe of the novel Metro 2033 and its sequels, written by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. The second of our FPS titles, it runs on the 4A gaming engine which again, has the capability to stress even the best GPU components.

GRID: 2 (Arcade Sim)

Grid 2 (stylised as GRID 2 and known as Race Driver Grid 2 in Japan) is a racing video game developed and published by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008’s Race Driver: Grid. The game includes numerous real world locations and cities such as Paris. It also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility. It uses the EGO 3.0 engine which while not overly challenging, is representative of games of this genre.

Overall Performance

Here we take a look at the overall performance of the graphics card. This figure is determined by finding the average FPS across all of the settings used in a particular benchmark(game) to give us an overall value.

Conclusion

ASUS have done a fine job with the GTX 960. It certainly looks the part thanks to the Direct CU II cooler and discreet STRIX theme. The packaging is nothing to write home about but it protects the card well, ensuring it should reach you in perfect condition.

Performance is where it matters we’re sure you agree and here is where the ASUS STRIX GTX 960 delivers on all levels. The card runs very cool and also very quiet. This is to be expected thanks to the NVIDIA Maxwell core but this technology is exaggerated thanks to this cards cooling ability. A key feature of this card is the ability to run in an overclocked state without the additional 6pin power port found on both the GTX 760 and this card’s competitors. It is also quite small so will appeal to those who don’t have the largest of PC enclosures. So it is cool, quiet and looks the part but what about outright performance?

At this current time the STRIX GTX 960 sits with an SRP of £189.99 GBP but we expect resellers to list the card between £179.99 and £184.99. This is a nominal increase in price over the reference design which is just £159.99 GBP. For the extra cost you get a compact design, factory overclock and sleek custom cooling.

We weren’t expecting groundbreaking performance and sure enough we didn’t get it. This card is not going to compete with the flagship cards available, nor was it designed to but when you consider where we were 18 months ago with the GTX 760 it is safe to say that mid-range graphics cards have come a long way, especially if this sample is anything to go by. It destroyed its predecessor with ease and also frequently surpassed both overclocked editions of the AMD R9-280 and R9-285. Not only that but it was also faster out of the box and when a manual overclock is applied, than another GTX 960 on test – all the while consuming less power too. Fantastic! It is for this reason we have awarded the ASUS STRIX GTX 960 our Gold award which is well-deserved.

To summarise:
The ASUS GTX 960 STRIX is a very accomplished card comprising of the latest technologies. If you are looking for gaming at 1080p then we strongly advise you to consider this graphics card.

Pros
+ Good Performance
+ Great Cooling
+ Good looking
+ Fair price
+ Low power consumption/requirements

Cons
– Starts to suffer at higher settings