14 DAY TRIAL // The GeForce GTX 980 graphics card is pretty strong by default, being better than the GTX 780 Ti and AMD's Radeon R9 290X in some tests, despite the real bigwigs of the GTX 900 series (the Ti cards) not expected to debut until 2015 at some point.
That hasn't stopped NVIDIA's various OEMs from releasing custom-cooled and overclocked versions of that video board though.
Not that we ever expected such a thing. Indeed, it would have been strange if more than two weeks went by without one new model being launched, by this or that company. Even now, almost three months after the initial launch.
ASUS is one of NVIDIA's most famous partners in this, and already has a pair of factory-overclocked boards: the GTX 980 Poseidon, and the GTX 980 Strix OC.
The company nonetheless created a third card, which it has not unveiled, under the name of GTX 980 ROG Matrix Platinum.
The ASUS GeForce GTX 980 ROG Matrix Platinum
You might also find it sold under the simpler name of GeForce GTX 980 ROG Matrix. It is a video card with a top clock of 1,342 MHz.
ASUS, oddly enough, did not reveal the stock frequency of the graphics processing units, though we still assume it is better than the 1,126 MHz of the original.
For comparison, ASUS's Poseidon and the Strix OC reach 1,178 / 1,279 MHz frequencies, with just the cooler setting them apart, mostly.
Speaking of the cooler, the new ASUS GTX 980 Matrix has 10 mm-thick copper heatpipes, which are as overkill as you could possible get on a market where 8 mm heatpipes are considered thick.
Two fans disperse whatever heat can't be handled by the high-density fin-stack alone. One is an ASUS-designed CoolTech hybrid fan, which pushes air both axially and laterally.
The 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM memory, meanwhile, were left alone to operate at the usual 7 GHz.
Availability and pricing
The ASUS GeForce GTX 980 ROG Matrix Platinum video card will ship with a backplate and the ROG-themed GPU Tweak utility starting at some point in the near future.
Unfortunately, the OEM did not see fit to specify what price we should look forward to (or dread). It's bound to be a fair bit higher than the $549 / €549 needed by NVIDIA's stock card. The DIGI+ VRM power control with 14-phase Super Alloy Power and Black Metallic capacitors demand no less, everything else notwithstanding.
