Rating: 8.0.

1. Introduction 2. Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini 3. High Res Gallery (w/ Asus Maximus VII Impact) 4. Testing Methodology 5. 3DMark Vantage 6. 3DMark 11 7. 3DMark 8. Unigine Heaven Benchmark 9. Tomb Raider (1080p and 1440p) 10. Grid AutoSport (1080p and 1440p) 11. Thief (1080p and 1440p) 12. Metro: Last Light Redux (1080p and 1600p) 13. Total War Rome II: Emperor Edition (1080p and 1600p) 14. Thermal Dynamics/ IR Thermometer Readings 15. Acoustics Performance 16. Power Consumption 17. Overclocking 18. Closing Thoughts 19. View All Pages

An increasing percentage of our readers have been building systems for use next to a high definition television set, inside compact cases. Our review product today – the Asus GTX 970 DC Mini is designed for just such a scenario. This diminutive solution is just 170mm long and will fit inside the smallest cases available on the market today.



Above, the Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini is pictured installed on the Asus Maximus VII Impact motherboard. This is a fabulous little mITX motherboard, which we reviewed back in December 2014. You can read our full analysis if you missed it, over HERE.

GPU GeForce GTX 750ti (Maxwell) GeForce GTX 960 (Maxwell) Geforce GTX 970 (Maxwell) GeForce GTX 980 (Maxwell) Streaming Multiprocessors 5 8 13 16 CUDA Cores 640 1024 1664 2048 Base Clock 1020 mhz 1126 mhz 1050 mhz 1126 mhz GPU Boost Clock 1085 mhz 1178 mhz 1178 mhz 1216 mhz Total Video memory 2GB 2GB 4GB 4GB Texel fill-rate 40.8 Gigatexels/Sec 72.1 Gigatexels/Sec 109.2 Gigatexels/Sec 144.1 Gigatexels/Sec Memory Clock 5400 mhz 7010 mhz 7000 mhz 7000 mhz Memory Bandwidth 86.4 GB/sec 112.16 GB/sec 224 GB/s 224 GB/sec Bus Width 128bit 128bit 256bit 256bit ROPs 16 32 56 64 Manufacturing Process 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm TDP 60 watts 120 watts 145 watts 165 watts

Above, a table detailing Nvidia’s latest Maxwell cards (Titan X – review forthcoming).



Above, an overview of the Asus GTX970 Direct CU Mini. Asus have enhanced the Base Clock speed from 1,050mhz to 1,089mhz. Boost clock speed is subsequently increased to 1,228mhz. The 4GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1,753mhz (7Gbps effective). This memory is connected via a 256bit memory interface.



The GM204 GPU is manufactured on the 28nm process. There are 56 ROPS, 104 Texture units and 1,664 CUDA Cores.

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