Asus R9 285 Strix

amazon Asus R9 285 Strix reviews

“Strix” – in ancient Greek – means “owl”. The owl is a nighttime bird with a strong hunting instinct. Their prey is usually small animals such as rats, squirrels … They are all victims of night vision, ears, hearing, patience, fast reflexes.

Inspired by animals with many characteristics of … gamers, Asus has launched Strix game series with a very wide coverage from computer hardware to Gaming Gear: graphics card, mouse, keyboard Headset and touchpad.

As part of the Strix brand, the product I’m introducing today is the Asus R9 285 Strix – a graphics card targeted at AMD’s high-end gaming segment.

Asus R9 285 Strix

The card I got was our sample, without the case. Smiling into my eyes immediately was a … owl, eyes wide open, looking good.

As a premium segment, card is relatively long and sturdy. In particular, the circuit board is supported by a thick back plate. This piece is responsible for helping the circuit board support the weight of heat dissipation, anti-war absolute.

The card requires two 6-pin auxiliary power sources, which means maximum power consumption falls to 225W – 75W lower than the R9 280X brother. Users will need a real power supply of around 500W to use R9 285.

From these two angles, I counted a total of three large diameter copper heat-pipes. All are nickel plated with antioxidant. Copper is particularly susceptible to dullness due to oxidation, especially with a VGA operating temperature of 80 ° C.

11 large-diameter radiator fan, smooth and efficient operation.

Output ports include: 2 DVI ports, 1 HDMI port and 1 DisplayPort port.

The Strix version is overclocked to 954/1375 MHz, 4% higher than AMD’s 918/1375 MHz.

Radiators & Components

The card is equipped with 5 large power phases for the GPU. Each phase is filtered by two filter capacitors. In addition, when heavily loaded mosfet array is very hot or hot Asus should be attached a heat-sink.

2 phase power supply for IMC and memory located at the right edge of the circuit board. The two phases are also equipped with a large capacitance sensor and three mosfets that control each phase.

8 memory chips 256MB Elpida are located around the GPU, making it a 2GB memory.

The GPU is glued to the heatsink thoroughly. Looking at the glue layer can see the GPU very well exposed to the heatsink.

The heat sink is carefully machined. The glossy aluminum foil is all over.

Three copper heat pipes come in direct contact with the GPU.

Configure the test

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4

Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K @ 4.5 GHz

Memory: 2 x 4 GB Kingston HyperX T1 1866

Hard Drive: Kingston HyperX 240 GB SSD

Source: 660W

Graphics card:

– Asus R9 270 DCII OC – 975/1400 MHz (original AMD 900/1400 MHz)

– Asus R9 285 Strix – 954/1375 MHz (original AMD 918/1375 MHz core)

– Sapphire R9 280X Dual-X – 1020/1400 MHz (original AMD pulse 1000/1500 MHz)

– Gainward GTX 760 Phantom – 1072/1550 MHz (native Nvidia 980/1502 MHz)

– Zotac GTX 660 – 993/1502 MHz (native Nvidia 980/1502 MHz)

– Zotac GTX 770 – 1059/1753 MHz (native Nvidia 1046/1753 MHz)

Overclocking – temperature – noise level

When my test took place when Hanoi was not cold, the room temperature was 27 degrees Celsius.

The Asus R9 285 Strix radiator operates in a very special mode:

– Below 64 degrees Celsius: both fans do not spin.

– 64 -> 66 degrees C: only 1 fan active.

– 67 degrees Celsius or higher: both fans operate.

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ASUS STRIX Radeon R9 285 Overclocked 2 GB DDR5 256-bit DisplayPort HDMI 1.4a DVI-D DVI-I Graphics Card: Buy it now

Asus STRIX-R9285-DC2OC-2GD5 AMD Radeon R9 285 OC 2GB GDDR5 2DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort PCI-Express Video Card: Buy it now

Due to such an operation mode, the card is absolutely silent when the user crashes at night, does not disturb sleep. Even when playing 45% fan game, I did not hear any animated noise from even the smallest card. Must use software to speed up the fan to 60% I started to hear the small wind. On the silence of operation, Asus R9 285 is a perfect card.

Performance is close to R9 280X and maximum power consumption is less than 75W, the OC capacity of R9 285 is not much. I only pull up 1040/1500 MHz (compared to the original 954/1375 MHz). Performance increased 8.2%:

Operating temperature of Asus R9 285 Strix (room temperature 27 degrees C, benchtable):

– Idle: 40 degrees C.

– Gaming (Default 954/1375 MHz): 74 degrees C; 44% fan.

– Gaming (@ 1040/1500 MHz): 75 degrees C, 47% fan.

Summary

Strix heat sink is a break in design of Asus. The card has a unique form of fancy, and most importantly extremely quiet operation with excellent heat dissipation performance. With fan operation mode, users can be assured of the absolute quiet of the Strix, as well as the temperature of the GPU. After contact with R9 285 Strix, my sympathy for the name Strix increased a lot.

As for R9 285, this is a normal p / p product in the GTX 760, GTX 770 and R9 280X segments. Card has the ability to battle most offline games now with the highest settings. If you are not able to reach the GTX 970 but GTX 660 is not enough demand, you should put R9 285 Strix into the selection list.

Pros:

– Cooler, absolute quiet.

Cons:

– Overclocking capability is not high.