 As usual, Nvidia's recent graphics card launch was dominated by coverage of their new flagship GTX 980. And we were guilty of focusing on it too, but I think in some ways, the lower-priced GTX 970 could actually be much more interesting from a regular gamer's perspective. Especially if its performance is similar enough to its beast of a big brother. Welcome to our GTX 970 review featuring the Strix Direct-CU2 from ASUS. Cooler Master Neptune Series CPU coolers are available in a variety of radiator sizes to perfectly suit your next build. Click now to learn more. We'll start with a brief overview of how the reference GTX 970 stacks up against the GTX 980. The memory config is identical. It's got the same 256-bit memory bus with the same 4 gigs of VRAM clocked at the same 7 gigahertz. But the core is where Nvidia has opted to cut their second-tier card down this time around. The GTX 970 gets 13 SMs compared to 16 on the 980, giving it about 80% as many CUDA cores and texture units. And it comes with a lower clock speed out of the box. But that's about it, and ASUS takes care of one of these things right off the bat by delivering their non-reference card with a factory increased boost clock of 1253 megahertz. Actually higher than a reference 980. Of course, as usual, we aren't going to be running the card at its factory speeds anyway, so we're more interested in how the rest of ASUS' alterations, including that their latest version of GPU tweak, their overclocking utility, supports automatic GPU BIOS updates on certain cards now, are going to affect the performance. We'll start with a general physical overview. ASUS has increased the height of the card, especially near the SLI connector that supports up to 3-way SLI configurations. They've changed out the dual 6-pin PCIe connectors for a single 8-pin connector. They've changed the stylized backplate to a sexy brushed aluminum jobby. They've swapped out the, in my opinion, much better I.O. config for a more conventional one with DVI-D, DVI-I, HDMI 2.0, and DisplayPort 1.2 ports, of which you can use all four at the same time in a three surround and then one auxiliary configuration. And finally, they've increased the length of the card slightly to 11 inches to accommodate the much larger heat sink design. And the cooler probably deserves its own little overview here. ASUS is using a dual 92mm triple heat pipe direct CU type cooler. That means the heat pipes make direct contact with the GPU core with an open air design. ASUS quotes 220% as much overall surface area compared to reference, so this should give us better card temps compared to a reference cooler at the cost of internal system temps if you're not using a case with solid airflow. Pulling the cooler off the card by removing the four screws around the core at the back reveals one large 10mm diameter heat pipe flanked by a couple of 8mm ones, and this also gives us a better look at the PCB for the card, revealing the final advantage that non-reference cards often have over normal ones. ASUS's six-phase super-alloy power and digital VRM design is made to increase the lifespan and efficiency of the card and lower random electrical noise. And while it's difficult for us to observe the first two directly, especially without a reference 970 to compare against, our experience with ASUS DirectCU cards lately, including this one, has been that they are extremely quiet with no observable coil whine. Which leads us to what I think is the coolest feature of this card, and presumably the one that led to the OWL logo for it. The 970 Strix has a 0dB idle fan mode, so the fan doesn't spin at all with the system powered on, and it can actually stay off even in games, as long as they aren't very demanding. So games like League of Legends are perfect candidates for this. Of course, it'll ramp up like any other card when overclocking or pushing it hard, but it speaks volumes about the efficiency of the cooler and the efficiency of the Maxwell-based GM204 GPU that this card is equipped with that it can do this at all. So along with GeForce experience, ShadowPlay game recording, GameStream, network gaming on shield devices, and automatic game optimization and driver updates, Nvidia has added some very interesting new technologies to 900 series cards, including third generation Delta color compression to make better use of memory bandwidth, dynamic super resolution, a way of running less demanding or older games at higher res than downsampling for better visuals, MFAA, a less demanding anti-aliasing mode with pretty much the same visual quality as MSAA, and auto-asynchronous warp, a VR feature that should improve the experience for users of the Oculus Rift or similar head tracking head-mounted displays who are prone to motion sickness. You can get more in-depth explanations of these technologies in my GTX 980 video linked here. For now, the big thing we want to know is how the GTX 970 stacks up against the competition from a price to performance standpoint as well as from an efficiency standpoint. Take it away, Luke. All right, guys, just a reminder that we're running all of our benchmarks overclocked and that our per graphics card overclocking settings are laid out in the graphics card overclocking dock in the description below this video. Speaking of which, first up, we have overclocking. Due to the 970 not being equipped with the auto-balancing power rails that bless the 780Ti and 980, the overclocking of this card is fairly straightforward. Apply some voltage, increase the power level allowance, jack up the core and memory clock speeds, set attempt target, and voila, you're hopefully running at a range of 1403 to 1459 or above. When it finally came to running actual numbers, I was happy with how well it performed. In essentially every test, it slotted itself snugly between the 770 and 780, which is good considering it costs pretty much the same as a 770. But just like the GTX 980 before it, the 970 isn't exactly earth shattering in terms of raw performance when compared to the already existing big dogs. But what it is is a much better value. The price per performance of these cards is much stronger than the previous generation of heavy hitters, and this is especially true when talking about wattage. Coming in at a full system wattage of 305, the 970 is an extremely low power overhead card, which might actually make a noticeable difference on your power bill depending on what you're running. I'm looking at you GTX 480 owners. And that's not all. This card is running at a temperature of only 71 degrees while under load, while overclocked. Not bad at all if you ask me. Back to you, Linus. Alright, so with that out of the way, it looks like the GTX 970 is everything we hoped it would be. The 980 is interesting to folks who have $500 plus to spend on a GPU, but if you're on a tighter budget or upgrading an older system, both the power efficiency, even if you might not want to upgrade to a new power supply, and the frankly stunning performance of the 970 Strix make it a compelling choice for 2.5K or even light 4K gaming at a much lower price than its bigger brother. Speaking of much lower prices, nothing is lower than two weeks for free. So try out Hulu Plus. They are the only streaming service that streams new, current season episodes of popular shows from ABC, Fox, NBC, and other major networks with shows like Modern Family, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Once Upon a Time. With Hulu Plus, you aren't tied to your computer, so you can use your phone, tablet, smart TV, Roku, or game console to watch every episode of shows like South Park and Family Guy. You guys have heard me talk about Hulu Plus quite a bit already, and they've been a great supporter of the show, so if you haven't already, why not give it a try? If you use our code, you get a two-week trial instead of the standard single-week trial, and then you can decide if $7.99 a month is in your budget for hours of on-demand content. Guys, thanks for watching our video today. Like this video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment letting me know if you have suggestions for future videos or other comments that are just much more complicated than this or this. You can also find a link in the video description to support us if you want to buy a cool t-shirt like this one, give us a monthly contribution, or change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a small kickback whenever you buy, I don't know, GTX 970s or whatever else the case may be. Thanks again for watching, and as always, don't forget to subscribe.