ASUS STRIX GeForce GTX 970 4GB Graphics Card Review
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 silence 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.
Wow! This card is crazy quiet. At idle, there’s no additional noise above the background noise level. Under the most strenuous Furmark loading the STRIX 970 barely even wakes up: that’s some impressive acoustic performance. Did the temperatures suffer to keep it that quiet?
It may be an effective and quiet cooler but it is one butt ugly appendage.
I love how this is not in stock anywhere
None of the 970 are, I’m looking to buy one at the moment but can only find vendors with out of stock or way too expensive ones.
Same problem here
super quiet and cool at 40% fan speed, noisy since 50% xd , kinda huge card, my previous palit 770 with 3 fans is the same length, very efficient card, goes up to 1316mhz on core boost. one webshop told me it’s hard to get these ones, they ordered 20 asuses 3 months ago, but they have got only 8, 6 of them already sold
i wonder how the evga 780 sc would fair up in that benchmark. The evga has a good 10/12 fps boost over vanilla 780’s. couldn’t be far behind they 970’s. My 780 stays very very cool.
i wonder how the evga 780 sc would fair up in that benchmark. The evga
has a good 10/12 fps boost over vanilla 780’s. couldn’t be far behind
they 970’s. My 780 stays very very cool as.
why isn’t anybody telling us about the backplate problem? why everywhere you look search about gtx 970 thay say it’s the coolest? i bought the other day the gtx 970 strix. why? well my 7870 saphire can’t handle games on ultra, it’s an old card that is going hard at it even now, but most of the AA titles require more powerfull gpus so i decided to upgrade. i had to choose between gygabite g1 gaming, msi and asus strix all 970s. i started searching the web for reviews and benchmarks. everywhere they said, that the strix has the less performance but it runs the coolest. so i sayd to myself, ok i will buy the strix because i don’t give a fuck about oc and 10 more fps. i want a card that runs cool. i bought it (300 pounds including delivery) i got the card the other day, swapped my 7870 with the 970 installed everything, entered gta v cranked up all the settings to ultra played for about 10 15 minutes, everything nice and dandy, i opened my cased to touch the gpu, to see how hot it is. guess what, that piece of shit backplate was 100 degrees celsius hot! it acts like a fucking insulator . in gpu tweek it says my gpu runs at 68 degrees but i can tell you that is bullshit, because i can’t touch my backplate for 1 minute because it burns. my 7870 when i play games it gets to 66 degrees and i can keep my hand on it without feeling like i’m getting burned. i am not a fanboy! i just told you my story ! do whatever the fuck you wanna do ! but keep in mind: buy from a retailer who has a good customer service so if what i said happens to you, you can return the card and get a refund. when you buy it be careful to open the box and not to damage it. buy it->test it-> touch it-> if it feels ok to you keep it if not->return it! again i am not a fanboy, i am trying to help others! i searched the web and everybody speaks about the good things nobody says anything about the shitty things! search on google: asus strix 970 backplate hot and you will see.my advice don’t buy it! get another card g1 gaming 970 or i don;t know