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.


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Presentation

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).

Specifications

	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

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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