Conclusion

Conclusion

Both AMD and Nvidia are not releasing a lot of new GPUs at the moment, and to remain competitive and diverse in the market you will see a handful of graphics card manufacturers release respin products to keep you guys on your toes and active in a rather sleeping market. The ASUS GeForce GTX 780 STRIX 6 GB is precisely that, a respin product based on a GPU that has been launched precisely 12 months ago. Meanwhile Nvidia addresses the market with a Titan black respin and the what slowly seems to be plagued Titan Z, both these product are so expensive that 99.98% of you guys can't or would not even consider purchasing it anyway. So for high-end that leaves the GTX 780 Ti at 700 USD and the GTX 780 at 550 USD in the enthusiast market. Price wise the GTX 780 obviously makes the most sense, especially with the newly release 6GB SKUs. The ASUS GeForce GTX 780 STRIX is an interesting product if you ask me, in fact it intrigues me. First let me just state that I would have preferred to see this makeover on a GTX 780 Ti, but that was a choice of price positioning. Next to that all partners are basing their re-spin on that 'regular'GTX 780, this means that Nvidia is blocking the 780 Ti respin for 6GB. It makes sense as the GTX 780 Ti would kill the market for that insanely expensive Titan Black.

What makes the ASUS GeForce GTX 780 STRIX so special then ? Well three things really. First off, and the timing could not have been better, all of the sudden there is a demand for 4GB and higher cards. Thus 6 GB on the ASUS GeForce GTX 780 STRIX is pretty sweet when you pick up Watch Dogs (read our performance review and challenges here) and want to play with Ultra quality textures and image quality settings. Secondly admittedly I like the new 0 DBa feature where the fans will not spin until the GPU reaches 70 Degrees C. Last but not least, the overall looks have improved very much with the new cooler design. These specs combined make Strix an interesting product.

Aesthetics

I think we all agree that the new look for this ASUS product is great, the STRIX has a custom PCB,  quality components and yeah it is a great looking product alright. I can see myself building a nice PC based on a dark theme motherboard in this all red/black design, pop in this baby and the looks would killer. Great design, everything makes sense and it comes with a nice sturdy back plate as well. Make no mistake though, the cooler is still the DirectCU II design, its housing however has been stylized in a very positive manner.
 

Cooling & Noise Levels

The NVIDIA reference coolers are pretty good, but they follow the temperature target of 80 degrees C. With the Strix DirectCU II based cooler the GPU will get roughly 400W of cooling power thrown at it. As a result the temperature target might remain 80 degrees C, but you hardly see the GPU pass 70~75 Degrees C. Once sidenote, under heavy stress the VRM area, as shown on our thermal images, run extremely hot over 100 Degrees C. We find that to be a concern, it is not the first time I have to mention this with ASUS graphics cards.

Noise wise you are good to go as up-to 70 Degrees C there isn't any (the fans do not spin) Once your GPU passes that threshold you can hear a bit of airflow when the GPU is under stress. It's close to nothing but you can hear a tiny bit of airflow coming from your PC. It remains a cooling solution that can be compared to the competition in terms of performance. Overall though, the cooling solution is really good,  e do have another remark here, up-to 70 degrees C the fans do not spin. But once the GPU reaches that 70 Degrees threshold, the fans start to spin at 100% for a few seconds, this is very noisy. A few seconds later they will throttle back down towards a lower and acceptable RPM, but I find this to be an annoying side effect of the cooling solution. It happens once the fans activate from 0 RPM to active.

Power Consumption

Once again not bad, we measure roughly 240 to 250 Watts (under full stress). But at this performance level, that is absolutely okay. That 250 Watt TDP also will make running multi-GPU solutions a bit more easy. With two cards we think an 800 Watt PSU would be sufficient. So while it's not great to have a GPU sucking up 250 Watts it could have been a lot worse, really. If you look at the dual-GPU based ARES II for example, that card alone draws 500 Watts / 250 Watts per GPU. So, perspective is the word I'd like you to keep in mind.

Game Performance

The ASUS GeForce GTX 780 STRIX can be considered to be almost as fast as the Geforce GTX Titan. Compared to a GTX 680 it seems 30% faster. Drivers wise things have settled and have been developed for a year now. We can't complain at all, we did not stumble into any issues. And with a single GPU there's no micro-stuttering (if that ever bothered you) and no multi-GPU driver issues to fight off. Performance wise, really there's not one game that won't run seriously good at the very best image quality settings. Gaming you must do with a nice 30" monitor of course, at 2560x1440/1600. I mean Battlefield 4 at Ultra quality is still oozing out 60+ FPS there.

Now we can discuss the advantages of a 6GB framebuffer, but after the Watch Dogs launch this week we hopefully can all agree, 6GB is justified when you keep games like GTA and Watch Dogs in mind. The latter one eats away in framebuffer tremendously if you activate Ultra quality settings and apply a few hip AA settings, the game will easily pass 3GB graphics memory utilization -- real fast.

Overclocking

The card (if you purchase the OC edition) is already factory clocked for you at 889 MHz (854 = reference clock) and boosts to 941MHz. That factory tweak is a little shy though as the GPU can go much faster. This GPU can take 1150 MHz easily really, and at that stage you've added another 10% performance already. Our tweaks made the GPU run at roughly 1100 MHz whilst boosting over 1200 MHz (depending on temperature, power draw and load). This result is fairly similar on all GTX 780 and 780 Ti cards though as Nvidia Limiters make sure there is an upper plafond in tweaking.

Concluding

The GeForce GTX 780 has been out for precisely a year now and has proven itself to be an excellent GPU for today's most hip and hottest game titles. You game in 2560x1440 with the very best image quality settings up-to the point where no console can ever come close in terms of graphics quality, candy for your eyes while enjoying that exquisite PC gaming experience. The 6 GB graphics memory is definitely going to help you out in a title like Watch Dogs versus a 2560x1440 monitor resolution and improved AA settings. But admittedly, the reality also is that for 98% of the games out there a 3 GB framebuffer is more then enough.

The new design for the Strix cards simply looks great and the product comes with nice cooling as well. It is a sturdily built, good component quality based product, it's darn fast in performance as it can even pass the mighty GeForce GTX Titan when you tweak it a little. We find the new 0 DBa fan solution to be interesting, though it'll be a normal spinning product once you start to game and stress the GPU. ASUS will need to address the issue I mentioned, going from 0 RPM to active results into a heap of noise for a few seconds. Though not annoying, it ain't comfortable to hear either. Once the fans spin down the noise levels will be fairly silent.

A GeForce GTX 780 with 6GB in return will offer you fluid framerates while gaming with the newest game titles and you get a reserve for titles that like 3GB+ in terms of graphics memory. Now, the card is a hint faster compared to the reference GeForce GTX 780 and is almost as fast as the GeForce GTX Titan, that's not a bad performance position to be in alright. Combined with new looks, low noise levels and the overall brute performance the GeForce GTX 780 STRIX is simply a great card to own. The pricing remains an obstruction for the high-end range of Nvidia products, but I do concur that compared to the reference GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti this product will be very appealing. It is a quality build, has excellent looks and good cooling. If you can find it for the right price, then go for it as it does come recommended by Guru3D.com 

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