The Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti uses three low-noise 90mm fans. They’re also IP5X-certified, which makes them dust resistant. Asus’ card is significantly larger than the Founders Edition and measures 11.73x5.28x2.07 inches. You’ll want to measure the innards of your case for clearance before you decide to purchase this puppy. The primary reason it’s so big is that it features an aluminum heatsink that offers 40 percent more heat dissipation area than Nvidia’s reference model. The card also uses five 6mm heat pipes. Asus asserts that it runs 30 percent cooler and three times quieter than Nvidia’s reference design. One slight issue that we encountered when we tried to install the graphics card was that we needed to slightly bend the two teeth on the bracket to squeeze it into our system. It wasn’t hard to do, but it was an oddity.

　　Asus' 1080 Ti card offers a 1708MHz boost factory overclock, which is 126MHz faster than the Founders Edition. The video RAM here is also overclocked by 100MHz, which brings the VRAM speed to 11.1Gbps. The Strix also offers different overclocking presets that you can enable with Asus’ software.

　　While Asus’ card is still a 250-watt solution, it does require two 8-pin power connectors (Unlike the Founders Edition, which requires one 6-pin and an 8-pin). The card also includes a PWM fan header that allows you to automatically or manually adjust thermals. In addition, the card offers an RGB header that uses Asus’ Aura Sync software so you can control the RGB LEDs on the card to breath, strobe, and more.

　　The card ran very quiet and cool and generally stayed in the low 70 degrees Celsius in our testing.

　　In terms of ports, you get five on the Strix: 1x Dual-link DVI-D, 2x HDMI 2.0, and 2x DisplayPort 1.4. It retails for $780, which is a hefty $81 more than the reference card.

Testing Methodology

　　We tested all of the GPUs on the same system, which is a custom rig equipped with an Intel Core-i7 6700K CPU, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 RAM clocked at 2133MHz, and a Gigabyte GA-170X-Gaming 7 motherboard housed in NZXT’s H440 case. Full test bench details are located below.

4K Benchmarks

　　In our GTA V benchmark, only the Asus and Zotac cards were able to cross the 100 average FPS threshold. They were also the only two models that allowed our rig to hit over 60 average FPS in the Witcher 3.

VR Benchmark

　　Running Valve’s SteamVR Performance Test, all of the cards here earned a “very high” score of “11,” which is the highest score. The test does provide more granular data that takes into account the amount of frames that are rendered within the benchmark, however. The more frames a GPU is able to render, the better. Again, here the pecking order remains the same.

Conclusion

　　While Asus’ Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is definitely faster than Nvidia’s Founders Edition variant, it’s a bit hard to recommend the card at its $780 retail price, especially when you consider that Zotac’s Amp Extreme board is slightly faster and cheaper. Click here to check out the other GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cards we reviewed.