ASUS ROG Striker Platinum GTX 760 4GB SLI Review

Introduction It isn't very often that the ASUS Republic of Gamers brand brings a graphics card to a fairly mainstream price point. However, with the ASUS ROG Striker Platinum GTX 760 that's exactly what ASUS did - well, kind of. As you might expect it certainly will cost you a bit more than a "bog-standard" GTX 760, 20% more in fact, but you do get a fair bit more for your money. The stand-out difference is that your RAM gets doubled from 2GB to 4GB, but there's also a hefty GPU overclock and a custom ROG-styled cooling solution. This features a full aluminium backplate, the new Direct CU II design with 10mm heat pipes and the ASUS CoolTech fan design. ASUS have also upgraded the power delivery components over the standard GTX 760 reference design with their DIGI+ VRM black metallic capacitors, an 8 phase Super Alloy Power implementation and extra POSCAPs behind the GPU to filter power further. Being an ROG product it wouldn't be cool without some extra gadgets and trinkets so ASUS have added a colour-coded ROG logo which changes colour depending on the GPU load. Looking at the raw specifications we can see exactly how the GTX 760 Striker Platinum fares against a normal GTX 760. More importantly for us though, is how SLI GTX 760 Striker Platinums do against a GTX 780 Ti. ASUS were kind enough to send us a pair of these GTX 760s and they recommended taking on the GTX 780 Ti : a pair of these GTX 760 Striker Platinums costs $600 compared to the $700 of the GTX 780 Ti. Packaging and Bundle The usual ROG theme is offered on the packaging and the term "Gaming Graphics Card" is used with this product: for once ASUS isn't really targeting overclockers with this product. Around the back we get some more details about the product with a labelled exploded diagram, similar to the slide we've already shown you. The bundle is fairly modest with a speed setup guide, driver and utility DVD, SLI cable (which we're actually using for once!) and a dual 6 pin to 8 pin power adapter. A Closer Look What a fantastic thing to look at! A pair of these ASUS GTX 760 Striker Platinum graphics cards look pretty darn awesome. Even though two is better than one, let's take a closer look at one of the cards first. As we have mentioned there is a full aluminium backplate and the ASUS STRIKER branding is actually written the right way around so you can read it properly when it is inside your case. At the top we get a glimpse of the 8+6 pin power connectors (the normal GTX 760 has dual 6 pins), the 10mm heat pipe and the ROG LED. At whole unit is encased in a black and red stylised plastic shroud. The design is fairly chunky but still manages to stick to dual slot thickness. The fan closest to the rear I/O is the ASUS CoolTech fan which combines the characteristics of a blower and downward firing fan. The other fan is of a more standard downward firing style. Around the rear I/O we find a little ventilation, dual DVI (an I for VGA support and a D) as well as HDMI and Display Port. Test Systems and Procedures Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to overview our test system and thank those sponsors who kindly provided us with test equipment to make our work possible. We offer our thanks to: Intel for supplying us with a Core i7 4960X processor, which we reviewed here. ASUS for supplying us with a Rampage IV Extreme motherboard, which we reviewed here. Be Quiet for supplying us with a Power Zone 1000W modular power supply. Kingston for supplying us with a Hyper X 240GB SSD, which we reviewed here. AMD for supplying us with a Dell U2711 Ultra Sharp monitor. Corsair for supplying us with a Hydro Series H100i liquid CPU cooler, which we reviewed here, and the Corsair Vengeance Pro Series 1866MHz 16GB memory kit, which we reviewed here. Lian Li for supplying us with a PC-T60A test bench. Noctua for supplying us with NT-H1 thermal compound. Test System Motherboard - ASUS Rampage IV Extreme X79 LGA 2011 Motherboard Processor - Intel Core i7 4960X at Stock 3.6GHz with Turbo Mode disabled RAM - 16GB (2 X 8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro Series 1866MHz at 9-10-9-27 CPU Cooler - Corsair H100i with Quiet Fan Profile with Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Compound Power Supply - Be Quiet Power Zone 1000W Main Storage Drive - Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD Chassis - Lian Li T60 Test Bench Displays - Dell U2711 Ultra Sharp Operating System - Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit Driver Details ASUS GTX 760 Striker Platinum - Nvidia GeForce 340.52 WHQL Gigabyte GTX 780 Ti GHz Edition - Nvidia GeForce 340.52 WHQL Hardware Used "Killawatt” style electricity usage meter wall plug Benetech GM1351 decibel meter Games Used Batman Arkham Origins Battlefield 4 Bioshock Infinite Hitman Absolution Metro Last Light Tomb Raider Software Used Unigine Heaven Unigine Valley Furmark CPU-ID HWMonitor 3DMark 11 "3DMark 11 is the latest version of the world’s most popular benchmark. Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads." From 3DMark.com 3DMark "The new 3DMark includes everything you need to benchmark your hardware. With three all new tests you can bench everything from smartphones and tablets, to notebooks and home PCs, to the latest high-end, multi-GPU gaming desktops. And it's not just for Windows. With 3DMark you can compare your scores with Android and iOS devices too. It's the most powerful and flexible 3DMark we've ever created." From Futuremark.com Batman: Arkham Origins "Batman: Arkham Origins is a 2013 action-adventure video game developed by Warner Bros. Games Montréal and released by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for Microsoft Windows and the PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360 video game consoles. Based on the DC Comics superhero Batman, it follows the 2011 video game Batman: Arkham City and is the third main installment in the Batman: Arkham series. The game, played from a third-person perspective, focuses on Batman's combat and stealth abilities, detective skills, and gadgets for combat and exploration. Arkham Origins is the first game in the series with multiplayer capability." From Wikipedia. Battlefield 4 "Battlefield 4 is coming to PC, powered by the advanced technology of DICE’s proprietary Frostbite 3 engine. Blur the line between game and glory in Battlefield 4. With dynamic destructable environments, vehicular combat, and the chaos of all-out-war with 64 players, Battlefield 4 on PC will be an unmatched interactive experience. In addition to its hallmark multiplayer, Battlefield 4 features an intense, dramatic character-driven campaign that starts with the evacuation of American VIPs from Shanghai and follows your squad's struggle to find its way home. There is no comparison. Immerse yourself in the glorious chaos of all-out war, found only in Battlefield." From Battlefield.com Bioshock Infinite "BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter like you’ve never seen. Just ask the judges from E3 2011, where the Irrational Games title won over 85 editorial awards, including the Game Critics Awards’ Best of Show. Set in 1912, players assume the role of former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to the flying city of Columbia on a rescue mission. His target? Elizabeth, imprisoned since childhood. During their daring escape, Booker and Elizabeth form a powerful bond -- one that lets Booker augment his own abilities with her world-altering control over the environment. Together, they fight from high-speed Sky-Lines, in the streets and houses of Columbia, on giant zeppelins, and in the clouds, all while learning to harness an expanding arsenal of weapons and abilities, and immersing players in a story that is not only steeped in profound thrills and surprises, but also invests its characters with what Game Informer called “An amazing experience from beginning to end." From Bioshockinfinite.com Hitman Absolution "Hitman: Absolution is the fifth title in the Hitman series by producer, IO Interactive, published by Square Enix and co-published by Eidos. The game was released for thePlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows on November 20, 2012. Hitman: Absolution runs on IO Interactive's proprietary Glacier 2 game engine, combining classic Hitman game mechanics with new mechanics." From hitman.wikia.com Metro Last Light "Metro: Last Light (formerly Metro 2034) is a first-person shooter and horror video game developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released in May 2013. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and features a mixture of action-oriented and stealth gameplay. The game exists in the universe of the novel, Metro 2033, and its sequels, written by Russian author, Dmitry Glukhovsky, but does not follow any direct storylines from the books. Metro:Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the canonical ending from the novel, ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones.Metro: Last Light features technology which boasts of lighting effects and improved physics claimed to set a new graphical benchmark on the PC and consoles." From Wikipedia.org Tomb Raider "On 5 March 2013, Square Enix released Tomb Raider, billed as a reboot of the franchise. In Tomb Raider, the player is confronted with a much younger Lara Croft who is shipwrecked and finds herself stranded on a mysterious island rife with danger, both natural and human. In contrast to the earlier games Croft is portrayed as vulnerable, acting out of necessity, desperation and sheer survival rather than for a greater cause or personal gain." From Wikipedia.org Noise Levels The noise levels produced by a graphics card is an increasingly important consideration for PC users and Gamers these days. While fan noise is unlikely to ruin the gaming experience, no one likes a noisy graphics card and no one will argue with the fact that quieter is better. Many users are willing to sacrifice temperatures to gain a noise advantage, but with better cooling solutions being developed it is increasingly common to be able to get both better cooling and better acoustic performance than a reference solution on most custom cooled graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD partners. That said both AMD and Nvidia have stepped up their game too with regards to acoustics on their reference coolers. Ultimately, acoustics will always be a big deciding factor when there is often very little differentiation between graphics cards using the same GPUs. To acquire the noise levels of graphics cards in our benchmarks we run three different load scenarios for 5 minutes and take an acoustic reading using our decibel meter at the end of those load scenarios. The measurement is taken approximately 30cm horizontally away from the graphics card and the CPU fan is disabled and other background noise minimised to reduce interference. The three load scenarios are desktop idle, Furmark load and Unigine Heaven load. The reading in Unigine Heaven is always taken in the first scene of the sequence after one loop is completed. Power Consumption With electricity becoming increasingly expensive across most parts of the world the need for computer components to become power efficient has never been more relevant. Graphics cards are often the most power hungry components inside a desktop system so having an efficient graphics card is very important to keeping power bills under control. Power is often correlated to heat and so lower power consumption means a graphics card is likely to run slightly cooler and put out less heat into your system meaning your other components will run cooler with improved longevity. AMD and Nvidia have both made power consumption an integral part of the way graphics cards dynamically overclock so the need for graphics card vendors to use efficient VRM and PCB designs is becoming important to maximise performance. We take power readings after 5 minutes of three different load scenarios: desktop idle, Furmark load and Unigine Heaven load. Temperatures The cooling solution which graphics card vendors choose to implement is one of the main differences that consumers have to contend with when choosing a graphics cards. Apart from their acoustic properties, the thermal properties of graphics card coolers are extremely important. Lower temperatures are always better and with AMD and Nvidia opting to use dynamic overclocking algorithms that take temperature into account it is important that graphics card vendors use high performance cooling solutions in order to maximise performance. The era of graphics cards reaching dangerous temperatures are now in the past but the importance of lower temperatures still remains. Lower temperatures mean better stability, longer component longevity and lower fan speeds .We take temperature readings after 5 minutes of three different load scenarios: desktop idle, Furmark load and Unigine Heaven load. We always record actual temperatures and make a note of the ambient. In the case where more than 1 GPU is used an average is created. Final Thoughts Pricing (accurate at the time of writing) The ASUS GTX 760 Striker Platinum retails for $299.99 at Newegg and $299.99 at Amazon in North America. In the UK it costs £229.99 at Amazon and £230 at Scan Computers. The product is offered with a 3 year warranty. Overview It is interesting to see a graphics card vendor take a fairly mid-range GPU and do something special with it. Aside from the ASUS GTX 760 Mars dual-GPU graphics card the last time I can personally remember another vendor apart from ASUS doing something fun with a mid-range GPU was EVGA when they released their dual GTX 560 Ti EVGA 2Win. The ASUS GTX 760 Striker Platinum is actually a very nice graphics card, sure it is priced on-par with cheaper GTX 770s and most R9 280Xs but ASUS ROG products were never meant to be price to performance kings. What the GTX 760 Striker Platinum does offer is an absolutely stunning looking graphics card that performs really well for a GTX 760, although we've mainly tested these cards with SLI in mind. As an SLI pairing the ASUS GTX 760 Striker Platinums consistently matched the Gigabyte GTX 780 Ti GHz Edition graphics card that costs more than 20% extra. It also manages to run slightly cooler and quieter (under realistic gaming loads, see Unigine results) which is even more impressive when you consider SLI configurations are normally hot and noisy, there was only a single slot space between these two cards and yet they kept cool and quiet - that is testament to the quality of the cooling solution ASUS have designed. As we haven't tested these cards individually, it's difficult to comment on their merits as individual cards, but if you're in the market for a GTX 780 Ti you may well be wise to consider the ASUS GTX 760 Striker Platinums in SLI. Pros Stunning aesthetics Great SLI performance LED lighting effects Backplate SLI Cheaper than a GTX 780Ti but performs similar 4GB frame buffer Cons Expensive Higher power consumption than single GPU rival "Pairing up two GTX 760s in SLI to match a GTX 780 Ti might sound like a bit of a bonkers idea but with the ASUS GTX 760 Striker Platinums it is a real possibility as these aren't just "any old" GTX 760s. They come with excellent out-of-the-box performance, doubled up video memory, an excellent cooling solution and all the bells and whistles of the ROG series on the power delivery side. Oh, I almost forgot to mention they are cheaper too! " Thank you to ASUS for providing this review sample.