Asus is celebrating the company’s 20th anniversary by releasing the 20th Anniversary Gold Edition GTX 980 Ti. It’s golden and it’s massive, with a design that plays on brick nostalgia.
Asus claims that this is the fastest GTX 980 Ti on the planet, which in turn would make it one of the fastest consumer GPUs in the world. It’s packed with a 1266MHz base and boosts itself up to 1,367 via overclocking, and it’s got a whopping 6GB of VRAM clocked at 7,200 GT/s. The power section is a 14-phase design that is supposed to help with overclocking by optimizing the workload. In that spirit the card is also equipped with a set of Japanese capacitors that are said to reduce buzzing and whining noises, also during heavy workloads.
An aluminium backplate has been fitted to the Gold GTX 980 Ti as well as a heat sink with 10mm heat pipes. Since the manufacturer obviously doesn’t have the common man in mind with this GPU, some of its features are more useful to those who spend an equal amount of money on other components. Hardware enthusiasts who cool their computers with liquid nitrogen will likely appreciate the built-in Memory Defroster which enables better performance during subzero overclocking and, according to Asus, eliminates cold bugs.
In case you forget the settings for the GPU, there’s a reset button which reverts it to its default clocks. The GPU load is displayed via an LED indicator in the card’s side panel which shows the lowest load level in blue, the medium load level in orange, and the high load level in red. Asus says that the card is designed to be overclocked. Its Digi+ voltage regulator module (VRM), 14-phase power, and digital voltage regulation provide support for the durability of the card via software-based optimization. Hardware isn’t left behind either, with long-life Super Alloy Power II capacitors, concrete-core chokes, and hardened Mosfet to endure much greater stress and heat.
Asus says the 20th Anniversary Gold Edition GTX 980 Ti will be available soon, but there’s no official word on pricing yet.
