ASUS Strix Edition GeForce GTX 970 Graphics Card Review

With the results seen on the previous page, we learned that all three of the cards included can handle today’s games at the resolution of 2560×1440 without much issue. In most cases, the detail levels in each game can be cranked right up, and I think it’s safe to say that you’ll probably get liveable framerates by doing that with any modern game (let’s ignore Crysis 3 at Very High detail for a moment).

As great a resolution as 1440p is, though, it’s only 3.68 megapixels. Contrast that to our multi-monitor resolution of 5760×1080, which is 6.22 megapixels. Clearly, that will require even more GPU horsepower to tear through, so let’s see how all of these cards fare.

	Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
	Minimum		Average
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980	52		60
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Environment:	Very High	Shadow:	High
	Texture:	High	Reflection:	High
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	God Rays:	Low
	Ambient Occlusion:	Off	Volumetric Fog:	On
	Motion Blur	On
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti	48		59
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Environment:	High	Shadow:	Normal
	Texture:	High	Reflection:	Normal
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	God Rays:	Low
	Ambient Occlusion:	Off	Volumetric Fog:	On
	Motion Blur	On
ASUS GeForce GTX 970 Strix	53		61
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Environment:	High	Shadow:	Normal
	Texture:	High	Reflection:	Normal
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	God Rays:	Low
	Ambient Occlusion:	Off	Volumetric Fog:	On
	Motion Blur	On

Almost all of the settings here had to be dropped a bit to hit 60 FPS – the only notable setting not touched was AA. Still, as you can see from the screenshot, you’re not exactly killing the detail to get great framerates on the GTX 970.

	Battlefield 4
	Minimum		Average
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980	51		63
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Texture Quality:	High	Texture Filtering:	High
	Lighting:	High	Effects:	High
	Post Processing:	High	Mesh:	High
	Terrain:	High	Terrain Decoration:	High
	Anti-aliasing Deferred:	Off	Anti-aliasing Post:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	HBAO
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti	43		55
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Texture Quality:	High	Texture Filtering:	High
	Lighting:	High	Effects:	High
	Post Processing:	High	Mesh:	High
	Terrain:	High	Terrain Decoration:	High
	Anti-aliasing Deferred:	Off	Anti-aliasing Post:	Medium
	Ambient Occlusion:	HBAO
ASUS GeForce GTX 970 Strix	45		56
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Texture Quality:	High	Texture Filtering:	High
	Lighting:	High	Effects:	High
	Post Processing:	High	Mesh:	High
	Terrain:	High	Terrain Decoration:	High
	Anti-aliasing Deferred:	Off	Anti-aliasing Post:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	HBAO

All three cards are playable using the same settings, although I admit I sacrificed a 4 FPS in order to retain all of these settings. Those needing 60 FPS will be able to hit it by dropping HBAO to SSAO. Disabling AO entirely will allow you to increase some of the other details back up to Ultra.

	Crysis 3
	Minimum		Average
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980	40		58
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	Texture:	Medium
	Effects:	Medium	Object:	Medium
	Particles:	Medium	Post Processing:	Medium
	Shading:	Medium	Shadows:	Medium
	Water:	Medium	Anisotropic Filtering:	x16
	Motion Blur:	Medium	Lens Flares:	Yes
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti	42		57
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	Texture:	Medium
	Effects:	Medium	Object:	Medium
	Particles:	Medium	Post Processing:	Medium
	Shading:	Medium	Shadows:	Medium
	Water:	Medium	Anisotropic Filtering:	x16
	Motion Blur:	Medium	Lens Flares:	Yes
ASUS GeForce GTX 970 Strix	45		57
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Anti-aliasing:	Disabled	Texture:	Medium
	Effects:	Medium	Object:	Medium
	Particles:	Low	Post Processing:	Low
	Shading:	Low	Shadows:	Medium
	Water:	Medium	Anisotropic Filtering:	x16
	Motion Blur:	Medium	Lens Flares:	Yes

With both the standard Crysis 3 testing as well as the best playable 1440p result on the previous page, we saw that the GTX 780 Ti somehow made an exception to the rule and performed better than the GTX 970. That carried on straight through to our multi-monitor testing. While the 780 Ti here could retain medium detail levels all around, the 970 had to sacrifice some detail levels – especially shading and post-processing – to give us a great framerate.

	GRID 2
	Minimum		Average
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980	55		61
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Multisampling:	4x MSAA	Night Lighting:	High
	Shadows:	Ultra	Advanced Fog:	On
	Particles:	Ultra	Crowd:	Ultra
	Cloth:	High	Ambient Occlusion:	Ultra
	Soft Ambient Occlusion:	On	Ground Cover:	High
	Vehicle Details:	High	Trees:	Ultra
	Objects:	Ultra	Vehicle Reflections:	Ultra
	Water:	High	Post Process:	High
	Skidmarks:	On	Advanced Lighting:	On
	Global Illumination:	On	Anisotropic Filtering:	Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti	57		63
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Multisampling:	4x MSAA	Night Lighting:	High
	Shadows:	Ultra	Advanced Fog:	On
	Particles:	Ultra	Crowd:	Ultra
	Cloth:	High	Ambient Occlusion:	High
	Soft Ambient Occlusion:	On	Ground Cover:	High
	Vehicle Details:	High	Trees:	Ultra
	Objects:	Ultra	Vehicle Reflections:	Ultra
	Water:	High	Post Process:	High
	Skidmarks:	On	Advanced Lighting:	On
	Global Illumination:	Off	Anisotropic Filtering:	Ultra
ASUS GeForce GTX 970 Strix	47		58
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Multisampling:	4x MSAA	Night Lighting:	High
	Shadows:	Ultra	Advanced Fog:	On
	Particles:	Ultra	Crowd:	Ultra
	Cloth:	High	Ambient Occlusion:	High
	Soft Ambient Occlusion:	On	Ground Cover:	High
	Vehicle Details:	High	Trees:	Ultra
	Objects:	Ultra	Vehicle Reflections:	Ultra
	Water:	High	Post Process:	High
	Skidmarks:	On	Advanced Lighting:	On
	Global Illumination:	On	Anisotropic Filtering:	Ultra

Not much had to be changed here to attain 60 FPS (or at least seriously close) on the GTX 970 – the ambient occlusion just had to be dropped from Ultra to High. To surpass 60 FPS, I’d recommend disabling global illumination for a quick boost of at least 5 FPS.

	Sleeping Dogs
	Minimum		Average
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980	70		85
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Anti-aliasing:	Normal	High-res Textures:	On
	Shadow Resolution:	High	Shadow Filtering:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	High	Motion Blur:	High
	World Density:	Extreme
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti	51		78
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Anti-aliasing:	Normal	High-res Textures:	On
	Shadow Resolution:	High	Shadow Filtering:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	High	Motion Blur:	High
	World Density:	Extreme
ASUS GeForce GTX 970 Strix	60		77
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Anti-aliasing:	Normal	High-res Textures:	On
	Shadow Resolution:	High	Shadow Filtering:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	High	Motion Blur:	High
	World Density:	Extreme

With the High anti-aliasing setting, framerates were not ideal, but dropping it to Normal fixed everything – hitting 60 FPS on the minimum is just what I like to see.

	Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist
	Minimum		Average
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980	56		72
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Texture Detail:	Ultra	Shadow:	Ultra
	Parallax:	On	Tessellation:	On
	Texture Filtering:	16x	Ambient Occlusion:	Field AO
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti	53		71
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Texture Detail:	Ultra	Shadow:	Ultra
	Parallax:	On	Tessellation:	On
	Texture Filtering:	16x	Ambient Occlusion:	Field AO
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA
ASUS GeForce GTX 970 Strix	52		66
Graphics Settings & Ingame Screenshot Resolution: 5760×1080	Texture Detail:	Ultra	Shadow:	Ultra
	Parallax:	On	Tessellation:	On
	Texture Filtering:	16x	Ambient Occlusion:	Field AO
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA

Like the other two cards, ASUS’ Strix had to see the AO dropped down to the standard Field AO setting to hit 60 FPS. As you might suspect, this is a difference that would require side-by-side screenshots to spot, so it’s a minor loss.