Unboxing & Review: ASUS ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum

It's been awhile since we last reviewed a graphics card from the green camp so thanks to ASUS Malaysia for sending over us their ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum for today's review. Graphic cards from ASUS's ROG lineup usually comes pre-overclocked to a higher base clock compared to reference design. Factory overclocked to a whooping 1085 MHz base clock, the ASUS ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum gained an extra 105 MHz boost compared to the reference design NVIDIA GTX 760 with a base clock at 980 MHz.

Retailed at RM 1239, the ASUS ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum is not a budget friendly option; but let us put aside the pricing for now and take a closer look at its performance.

Specifications

Unboxing

ASUS' usual approach with the packaging for their ROG product line: keep things simple without losing its premium touch. 

A brief but detailed description on the specifications, construction of the ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum and the I/O options can be found at the back of the box.

The front lid of the box is secured with 2 pieces of velcro pads and flipping it over reveals the key features of the ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum in detail - 10% extra performance compared to reference GTX 760, cooler operating temperature thanks to the cooling performance of the DirectCU II cooler and CoolTech fans, color coded indicator to indicate the load status of the graphics card and more.

The new DirectCU II cooler now comes with a whole new fan design and one of the fans has a unique design known as CoolTech. CoolTech fan's design is made up of inner radial blower and outer flower-type blades to provide multi-directional airflow to ensure effective heat dissipation.

A quick overview on the DirectCU II cooler, the base of the cooler is made up of 3 pieces of nickel plated copper heatpipes than runs through a total of 45 aluminum fins for optimal heat dissipating performance.



The heart of the ASUS ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum, NVIDIA's GK104 that yields 1152 CUDA cores, 96 texture units, 32 ROPs and 256 bit memory interface.

DIGI+ VRM power design with 8-phase Super Alloy Power’s Japanese-made Nichicon GT-series 10K Black Metallic Capacitors on ASUS' custom PCB design is able to deliver better efficiency and reliability compared to reference PCB design from NVIDIA.

The SK Hynix H5GQ2H24AFR is used on the ASUS ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum.

Aside of being capable of 3 way SLI configuration, there's also an extra feature known as the ROG Color-Coded Load Indicator that reflects the load level of the ASUS ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum during operation.

The ASUS ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum comes pre-installed with a backplate that not only looks good, but also provide extra protection by improving the rigidity of the card itself, reducing the common sagging or PCB bending issue.

Powering up this card requires a 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connector, juicy!

The ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum comes with a total of 4 output display connector to satisfy your needs for multiple display monitor - DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI-D and DVI-I.

Performance Test

Test Rig Configuration
CPU Cooler	Corsair H100i
CPU	Intel CoreI7 4790K @4.5 GHz
Motherboard	ASUS Z97-Pro
Memory	Corsair Vengeance Pro @ 1600MHz
Primary Hard Drive	Crucial M500 120GB
Power Supply	SilverStone ST60F-P 600W
Chassis	Vector Bench Case

In this test, we will be comparing the  ASUS ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum with a reference  design NVIDIA GTX760 as a quick comparison on both cards. Both cards is installed to our test rig with the above configuration and room temperature of 31C°.

Performance
We ran a few graphically demanding games and synthetic benchmark in our possession at the resolution of 1920 x 1080, 4x Anti-aliasing.The final result of each benchmark is presented in the form of the graph below:

From the benchmark result, it is proven that the ASUS ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum indeed performs at least 10% faster compared to the reference GTX 760. Here's a summary to spare you viewers the ehadache:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2: 13.3%
• GRID 2: 21.1%
• Tomb Raider: 13.5%
• Crysis 3: 13.8%
• Far Cry 3: 15.8%
• Battlefield 3: 15.9%
• Unigine Valley 4.0: 13.8%
• Unigine Heaven 4.0: 13.3%

Overclocking and Temperatures

Due limited voltage adjustment, we've only managed to push the ASUS ROG Striker GTX 760 Platinum to its highest stable clock with the following values:

• 1223 MHz on the base clock
• 6408 MHz on the memory clock
• 1.2V on the voltage for GPU

In our test, anything that goes beyond the above configuration will lead to a systems crash due to instability.

There's not much performance gain, but here's the difference that we've observed in each benchmark after overclocking the ASUS ROG Stricker GTX 760 Platinum:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2: 5.0%
• GRID 2: 4.6%
• Tomb Raider: 11.9%
• Crysis 3: 6.0%
• Far Cry 3: 6.8%
• Battlefield 3: 5%
• Unigine Valley 4.0: 8.1%
• Unigine Heaven 4.0: 8.1%

Temperature wise, the highest temperature that we hit from all these benchmarks are as below:
Reference GTX 760: 81°C

ASUS ROG Stricker GTX 760 Platinum: 73°C

ASUS ROG Stricker GTX 760 Platinum (OC): 76°C

Final Thoughts

Appearance wise, the ASUS ROG Stricker GTX 760 Platinum is undoubtedly aesthetically appealing - far better than the reference design GTX 760. Its performance is as what has been stated (to be at least 10% faster than the reference GTX 760), but we were a bit disappointed that the voltage adjustment has been limited to a maximum of 1.212V.

As for the price tag, even though it stands superior in its league, we feel that it's still pretty insane for one to pay RM1239 for it as there are the GTX770 that perform far better can be had with a minor top up.

Pros

• Good looking aesthetics
• Factory overclocked
• Better cooling performance with DirectCU II Cooler with the new Cool Tech fans
• Use of quality components with good overclocking potential
• Comes with a metal backplate to enhance the PCB strength

Cons

• Hefty price tag
• Limited overclocking capability due to NVIDIA's Green Light Program