ASUS’ GTX 960 comes in two flavours with the STRIX branded one that is featured here being their overclocked card with a twin-fan cooler. The other variant is a lot more compact with a single fan for smaller builds. Going by physical dimensions, the STRIX edition seems to be closer to the ZOTAC AMP! Edition than other SKUs that we’ve tested. And it’s ahead in terms of performance by a sliver and the peak load temperature topped out at 60 degrees Celsius which is what we’ve observed with most coolers on the GTX 960. This too, like the rest, has a cooling solution that shuts down at low temperatures.
The core clock is slightly greater than the ZOTAC GTX 960 but since we didn’t see it translate into a vast difference in performance the decision to pick one over the other comes down to the build quality. So you can purchase the ASUS SKU for a little extra money but the operating temperature is much lower which translates to a longer life or if you are going to be upgrading every year then the life of the product is less of a concern. Rather getting good seems to be the favourable approach. However, all of this is based on the MRP, the street price might be real close to the competitors. In that case, we’d prefer the ASUS SKU over other similarly sized SKUs.
Specifications
Chipset: GM206
Base clock: 1291 MHz
Memory clock: 1753 MHz
Stream processors: 2048
Texture Units: 128
ROPs: 64
Manufacturing process: 28
nm, PCIe 3.0, 4096 x 2160 digital resolution support, 2 GB Memory
DirectX support: 12
OpenGL support: 4.4
Power Connectors: 6Pin
TDP: 120 W
Warranty: 3 years
