Just as soon as I thought all of the video card introductions from the Nvidia 700 series cards were over Asus tossed out another one. This time it was something a little special, the Striker. The Striker is a GTX 760 but they went a little above and beyond from their standard cards. This is actually a little bit of an unusual launch, typically special cards are limited to the highest end GPUs (like this Mars and Poseidon models), but they did something special with that GPU that more people can afford. Now lets dig in and see how the Striker holds up against the competition. 

Product Name: Asus GTX 760 Striker Platinum

Review Sample Provided by: Asus

Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

 

Specifications

Graphics Engine

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760

Bus Standard

PCI Express 3.0

Video Memory

GDDR5 4GB

Engine Clock

GPU Boost Clock : 1150 MHz

GPU Base Clock : 1085 MHz

CUDA Core

1152

Memory Clock

6008 MHz ( GDDR5 )

Memory Interface

256-bit

Interface

DVI Output : Yes x 1 (DVI-I), Yes x 1 (DVI-D)

HDMI Output : Yes x 1

Display Port : Yes x 1 (Regular DP)

HDCP Support : Yes

Power Consumption

up to 300Wadditional 6+8 pin PCIe power required

Accessories

1 x Power cable

1 x SLI Bridge

Software

ASUS GPU Tweak & Driver

Dimensions

11.3 " x 6 " x 1.6 " Inch

28.7 x 15.24 x4.064 Centimeter

 


Packaging

The exterior of the packaging for the Striker doesn’t look any different than the rest of the ROG video cards. It has the same red and black theme that all ROG products have. The front basically has the product name and then the GPU model on it. The front does open up though with Velcro to hold it closed the rest of the time. Inside the door I expected a window like a few of the manufactures have gone with. Asus opted to not go with a window but to pack in information about what makes the striker special. I will get into this a little more later but basically they have things broken down in sections with a photo or graph to go with the small info text. The back of the box is very similar to what was inside of the front cover, there is a large breakdown image of the Striker, the specifications, and an image that shows all of the video connections on the back of the card.

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Once you take the outside off there is actually another box inside. Inside you will find yet another box filled with all of the Strikers accessories. When you pull that out and pull out the protective foam padding the GTX 760 Striker is hanging out in its cut out foam housing that keeps it safe when shipping. To give you an example of how well protective todays video cards are, generally when I get the cards shipped in from the manufactures they come in a box that perfectly fits around the packaging with no packing materials.  

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Inside of the accessories box you get a small user manual and the driver/software disc. Asus also included a power adapter cable and an extra-long SLI bridge. The SLI bridge is especially interesting because it is blacked out with the ROG logo on it. It a small detail but I love when manufactures black out the SLI and Crossfire bridges, there isn’t anything worse than having a nasty copper bridge with the rest of your build all matching.

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Card Layout and Photos

The GTX 760 Striker manages to keep the Asus ROG styling with its red and black design while changing up the look completely from their standard lineup. Actually the styling is a lot like the Poseidon but without the water cooling. What is really interesting about the design is its height. If you look below, there is about a half inch of additional height from the top of the PCI slot to the start of the fan shroud but the highest point is actually even higher than that over on the right. I love the look of the card though.

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Asus really went all out on the cooling considering this is a GTX 760, they aren’t typically known for running SUPER hot. Anyhow as you can see in the breakdown below they slipped in a MOSFET heatsink up under the heatsink that runs the length of the card for the GPU. Speaking of that thing, they only used one heatpipe but at 10mm thick they don’t need multiple heatpipes to pull the heat away from the GPU. What I found the most interesting about the design was the two different fan designs used. The fan on the left is what Asus calls their CoolTech fan design, it was used on their DirectCU Mini because of its small form factor. The small fins on the inside actually blow air out while the normal blades push the air down. This helps push some air out the back of your PC as well, something most aftermarket designs don’t bother to do.

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The Striker is more than a nice cooler on a reference card like most other video cards. Asus went with all Nichicon GT-Series Black Metallic capacitors, hardened MOSFETs, and concrete core chokes. That means the Strikers capacitors have 5 times the life expectancy of a standard capacitor. They also handle temperatures both on the low and high side helping with overclocking on the low side. You shouldn’t have to worry about the Striker getting up to 125 degrees Celsius, but if it does these capacitors can handle it where normal caps peak out at 105. They also include their DIGI+ voltage regulator module with 8 phase power

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Here at the front of the card we can see the GTX 760 Strikers two SLI bridge connections. You can see just how much taller the PCB and fan shroud are over the top edge of the PCI slot, keep that extra height in mind if you are planning on packing the Striker in a case with limited clearance.

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One of the key features of the Striker is the backlit Republic of Gamers logo on the top edge of the card. This is the most visible area of the card when it is installed in your case. The key to the backlighting though is that it changes colors as you put the card under load. Light load glows blue, medium load is orange/gold, and then heavy load is red. This photo also does a great job of showing how the fan shroud covers some of the heatpipe but also goes under it at its peak.

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Also along the top are the two power connections. The Striker requires an 8-pin and a 6-pin power connection to get things rolling. With that large heatpipe running right over them there isn’t much space for getting your fingers in there so Asus actually flipped the plugged around backwards and notched out the PCB for the clips.

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I absolutely love that Asus included a backplate on the Striker. Not only do that add to the appearance but they also help protect the card and adds rigidly. Asus included their branding as well as the Striker name on the backplate as well with both facing the wrong way if you sit the card up like in the first picture below but once installed you can read the branding through your side panel window.

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It’s a small touch, but I love the small Asus logo down on the PCIe slot. They are able to do this because not only do they make their cooler, but they also manufacture the PCB. Many manufactures buy their cards and tack on their cooler design.

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On the end of the card the GTX 760 Striker has standard video connections. You get two DVI, one full sized HDMI, and one full sized DisplayPort. There is also a small rear vent for a little extra ventilation. Paired up with the unique fan design I would expect this to add a little to the cooling where normal coolers wouldn’t benefit from the vent.

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Our Test Rig and Procedures

Our Test Rig

CPU

Intel i7-3960X

Memory

Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM Quad Channel  (4x4GB)

Motherboard

Asus Rampage IV X79 Motherboard 

Cooling

Intel Active Thermal Solution RTS2011LC

Power Supply

Cooler Master Gold Series 1200 Watt PSU

Storage

Kingston Hyper X 120 SSD

Seagate Constellation 2tb Hard drive 

Case

High Speed PC Test Bench

Our Testing Procedures

Bioshock Infinite

Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Bioshock Infinite on the “Xtreme” quality setting. This has a resolution of 1920x1080, FXAA turned on, Ultra Texture detail, 16x Aniso Texture Filtering, Ultra Dynamic Shadows, Normal Postprocessing, Light Shafts on, Ambient Occlusion set to ultra, and the Level of Detail set to Ultra as well. We also run this same test at 2560x1440 using the same settings as mentioned above.

Tomb Raider

Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Tomb Raider on the “Xtreme” quality setting. This has a resolution of 1920x1080, Exclusive Fullscreen turned on, Anti-Aliasing set to 2xSSAA, Texture Quality set to Ultra, Texture Aniso set to 16x Aniso, Hair Quality set to TressFX, Shadow set to Normal, Shadow Resolution on High, Ultra SSAO, Ultra Depth of Field, High Reflection quality, Ultra LOD scale, Post Processing On, High Precision RT turned on, and Tessellation is also turned on.  We also run this same test at 2560x1440 using the same settings as mentioned above.

Hitman: Absolution

Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Hitman: Absolution on the “Xtreme” quality setting other than the MSAA setting is turned down from 8x to 2x. That setting puts the resolution at 1920x1080, MSAA is set to 2x, Texture Quality is set to High, Texture Aniso is set to 16x, Shadows are on Ultra, SSA is set to high, Global Illumination is turned on, Reflections are set to High, FXAA is on, Level of Detail is set to Ultra, Depth of Field is high, Tessellation is turned on, and Bloom is set to normal. We also run this same test at 2560x1440 using the same settings as mentioned above.

Sleeping Dogs

Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Sleeping Dogs on the “Xtreme” quality setting. That means our resolution is set to 1920x1080, Anti-Aliasing is set to Extreme, Texture Quality is set to High-Res, Shadow Quality is High, Shadow Filter is set to high, SSAO is set to High, Motion Blur Level is set to High, and World Density is set to Extreme. We also run this same test at 2560x1440 using the same settings as mentioned above.

F1 2013

We use the built in benchmark for F1 2013. We set our resolution to 1920x1080 and then use the “Ultra” setting.

Total War: Shogun 2

Direct X11 Benchmark High setting 1080p

Crysis 2

Using Adrenaline Crysis 2 benchmark.  1080p, 4x Anti-Aliasing, DX11, Laplace Edge Detection Edge AA, on the Times Square map, with hi res textures turned on.

Sniper V2 Elite

1920 x 1080 resolution, graphics detail set to ultra

Dirt Showdown

1920 x 1080 resolution, 4x MSAA multisampling, Vsync off, Shadows: ultra; Post Process: High; Night Lighting: High; Vehicle Reflections: Ultra; Ambient Occlusion: Ultra; Water: high; Objects: Ultra; Trees: Ultra; Crowd: Ultra; Ground Cover: High.

Metro Last Light

Using the included benchmark tool. The settings are set to 1920x1080, DirectX 11, quality is set to very high, Texture filtering is untouched at 4x, and motion blue is set to normal. SSAA is unselected, PhysX is unselected, Tessellation is off. We run through scene D6 three times to get an average score.

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Tested using the “Very High” setting at 1920x1080 and 2560x1440

3DMark

The same goes for the most current version of 3DMark using the Fire Strike benchmark in both normal and extreme settings

Unreal Heaven Benchmark 4.0

Using the “Extreme” preset

Unreal Heaven Benchmark 4.0 heat testing

We run through Unreal Heaven using the “Extreme” preset for 30 minutes to test in game cooling performance.

Power Usage

Using Unreal Heaven Benchmark 4.0, we get our “load” power usage number from the peak power usage during our test. We get our numbers from a Kill-A-Watt connected to the test benches power cord.

Noise Testing

Our Noise testing is done using a decibel meter 3 inches away from the video card on the bottom/fan side of the card. We test an idle noise level and then to get an idea of how loud the card will get if it warms all the way up we also turn the fan speed up to 100% and test again. The 100% test isn’t a representation of typical in game noise levels, but it will show you how loud a card can be if you run it at its highest setting or if it gets very hot.

 


Synthetic Benchmarks

As always, synthetic benchmarks don’t show you what to expect for actual in game performance but we keep a few around because they are a good at comparing card to card overall. Anyhow In 3DMark the Striker performed well but came in just slightly below the GTX 760 Hawk. Given the Hawk had a base clock speed of 1111MHz and the Striker has a base clock of1085 MHz it does make sense. The other GTX 760’s came in farther down the charts on both the standard and extreme runs. In Heaven Benchmark 4.0 the results were similar again but with the Hawk pulling ahead a little farther than what was noticeable on the 3DMark scores.

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1080p In-Game

When running the GTX 760 Striker through our in game benchmark suite I tested it at both 1920x1080 and 2560x1440. Because that made for an overwhelming number of graphs I broke things up into two sections to make it a little easier. Of the 10 games tested at 1080p 6 of them had an average FPS of over 60, what I consider to be the ideal FPS. The 5 that came in below 60 didn’t do too badly though, each was above 30 FPS and a few were actually just shy of 60FPS. Compared to the other GTX 760’s the Striker came in well ahead of everything but the Hawk. With a few games the Striker came in slightly ahead of the Hawk but this is most likely related to small improvements in the driver. With the Hawk having a higher clock speed it wasn’t a shock that it pulled slightly ahead overall.

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1440p In-Game

Our 2560x1440 testing was only recently introduced so I am still working on retesting past cards. Even so, it is great to be able to see the difference in performance when upping the resolution. Sadly with the settings cranked all the way up the GTX 760 bogs down slightly on most of the benchmarks. At this resolution with everything turned all the way up including AA it is really asking a lot. Bioshock though still managed to pull over 60 FPS. The other games came in just below what I would consider a playable FPS at 30. What I did find really interesting was the Strikers performance in Thief. There was almost no difference in performance between 1080p and 1440p.

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Cooling, Noise, and Power

With its unique cooling design and changes to the VRM and capacitors I was really excited to test the Striker in this section. Here I could see if it had more power draw, better temps, and even see how much noise the two different fans put out. Starting with power consumption the Striker pulled 417 watts at peak when running through Heaven Benchmark 4.0. The reference GTX 760 pulled 364 and the other GTX 760’s tested pulled at most 389 so it is obvious that the Striker is pulling more power when loaded. This is actually only slightly under the reference GTX 780, so keep that in mind when picking out your power supply to go with the Striker.

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For noise, the Striker actually comes in at the middle of our charts when the fans are turned all the way up. This is lower than a few of the GTX 760’s but still louder than the reference card. At 50% fan speed we can get a better idea of what to actually expect in everyday use, here it is actually down near the bottom of the charts.

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Now to temperature testing, I ran the Striker and all of the other cards through Heaven Benchmark 4.0 on a loop with the room temperature set to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The Striker ran quiet and settled at 70 degrees quickly. The reference GTX 760 ran at 81 degrees and the other GTX 760’s came in slightly lower but with their lower power usage this isn’t a huge shock. More power means more heat to deal with.

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Overclocking

Even though the Strikers performance was great with its stock overclock, I couldn’t leave things alone, I had see what it is capable of overclock wise. To do this I split the overclocking up and test the GPU clock speed and the memory clock speed, then once I know what they can do I put them together and see if the card is capable of running them together. Starting with the GPU I started by running the Striker through at its stock speed, with the boost that gave us a clock speed of 1150MHz. I quickly bumped that up to 1250MHz and then finally 1300 where I maxed out what GPU Tweak would let me do without actually running into a hardware limitation.

On the memory side things were similar. I overclocked the Striker up to 6608 where I maxed out what GPU Tweak would let me do without having any crashes or artifacts. It wasn’t until I attempted to run both overclocks together that I had any trouble with crashing. After toying with it, dropping the GPU clock speed down slightly took care of the problem, but honestly I wouldn’t even bother with trying to overclock the memory. The FPS of the GPU overclock alone was higher than with both combined. 

GPU Clock Speed Overclocking

GPU Clock Speed

Pass/Fail

FPS Result

Notes

1150MHz

Pass

42.2

 

1250MHz

Pass

44.82

 

1300MHz

Pass

46.39

Maxed out GPU tweak

Memory Clock Offset Overclocking

Memory Clock Speed

Pass/Fail

FPS Result

Notes

6200MHz

Pass

42.30

 

6300MHz

Pass

42.39

 

6400MHz

Pass

42.42

 

6500MHZ

Pass

42.50

 

6608MHz

Pass

42.52

Maxed out GPU tweak

GPU and Memory Overclocks Together

GPU Clock Speed

Memory Clock Speed

FPS Result

Notes

1300MHz

6608MHz

N/A

Driver Crashed

1300MHz

6500MHz

N/A

Driver Crashed

1250MHz

6608MHz

45.32

 

 


Overall and Final Verdict

So is the Striker special enough to justify its name? Well Asus really stepped up and put together a nice package. The cooler on the GTX 760 Striker is drastically different from standard Asus cards with its extremely large heatpipe, unique fan, and the tall design that helps fit a larger heatsink. To top it all off the fan shroud is a nice upgrade from past ROG cards while still keeping the styling that makes ROG so popular.

The cards performance was great in all of our tests but I would love to see Asus bump up the clock speed slightly to push the Strikers performance up over the Hawk. Beyond that, the only other downside was the amount of power the Striker pulled when under load, the upgraded power circuitry pushed the Striker up near the power draw of the GTX 780. For software, Asus bundled their GPU Tweaker software to make it easy to bump up the clock speed yourself. They have also been working on their own streaming software for people who want to stream on twitch while playing on their new card. I was able to use GPU Tweaker to push the Striker’s limits a little but I still wasn’t able to really push it as far as I know it’s capable of.  

As for price, the Striker actually comes in at a fairly good deal when compared to other GTX 760’s. When you are looking at 4GB cards with an overclock the Striker is priced the same as the comparable cards from EVGA and MSI. The only problem is when you look at the other cards near it in performance and price range. The GTX 770 gives you a noticeable bump in performance for around $20 more and on the AMD side of things you can pick up an R9 280X for a little less and it is going to outperform this card as well. At that point, you are paying a price premium for both this being a good card design with components that should hold up well over time and you are also paying for Nvidia’s premium software. Is it worth it? It will really depend on where your priority’s are. Personally, I really love what Nvidia is doing right now with their software, but the price difference between this and the comparable 270X would make it a hard for me to throw down the extra money. This isn’t Asus’s fault of course, this is just where the market is at right now. That said, this is one of the coolest GTX 760's out there!

fv3

Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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garfi3ld replied the topic: #35076 23 Jun 2014 20:49
Hey everyone, hope you had a good weekend. Today I have a review of the GTX 760 Striker from Asus. Enjoy!

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