Today ASUS lifted the NDA for the new GeForce GTX 980 Matrix Platinum graphics card. This new and monstrous high-end card comes with a shedload of features, which are not only supposed to be interesting to gamers but also for overclockers. At this point we’re really curious to find out what this card can do in our review.
ASUS has recently announced its newest ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Matrix Platinum graphics card and today we have a chance to check out if the the new ROG MATRIX graphics card can live up to its name and the level of both performance and manufacturing quality expected from a Republic of Gamers MATRIX edition graphics card.
ASUS provided the GeForce GTX 980 Matrix Platinum with a really steep factory overclock. This GPU on this particular card is set to run a 1241 MHz base clock and a whopping 1342 MHz boost clock. In the case of the maximum boost clock, which is actually achieved while gaming we see our sample running at 1392 MHz. The clock speeds we’re only lower when we were running Furmark and it this case the card was still capable of pushing out 1392 MHz. If you keep in mind, that NVIDIA’s reference card runs 1126 MHz base clock and 1216 MHz boost clock you see that ASUS’s maximum boost clock is more than 14.5 percent higher and this is going to make for a well measurable difference.
Unfortunately ASUS did not overclock the 4GB of GDDR5 memory although there is quite some potential slumbering in the chips the maker is using they’re set to run at 1’753 MHz (7’012 MHz effective).
| ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Matrix Platinum | GeForce GTX 980 | GeForce GTX 780 | |
| Chip | GM204 Maxwell | GM204 Maxwell | GK110-300 Kepler |
| Process | 28 nm | 28 nm | 28 nm |
| Transistors | 5.20 billion | 5.20 billion | 7.10 billion |
| GPU clock | 1’241 MHz | 1’126 MHz | 863 MHz |
| GPU Boost clock | 1’342 MHz | 1’216 MHz | 900 MHz |
| Memory GDDR5 | 4’096 MB | 3’072 MB | 3’072 MB |
| Memory clock | 1’752 (7’010) MHz | 1’750 (7’000) MHz | 1’502 (6’008) MHz |
| Memory interface | 256 Bit | 256 Bit | 384 Bit |
| Memory bandwidth | 224’000 MB/s | 224’000 MB/s | 288’400 MB/s |
| Shader Cores | 2’048 (12 SMX) | 2’048 (12 SMX) | 2’304 (12 SMX) |
| TMUs | 128 | 128 | 192 |
| ROPs | 64 | 64 | 48 |
| TDP | >165 Watt | 165 Watt | 250 Watt |
| PCB Type | Custom Design | Reference Design | Reference Design |
| Slots | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Cooler | DirectCU II | NVIDIA Reference | NVIDIA Reference |
| Launch Price | $ | $599 | $649 |