I tried out Cyberpunk, Starfield and Control, just casual gameplay for a hour or so. I can now run Cyberpunk at 4K RT with medium RT lighting and DLAA scaling at 100+fps. It's at least 50% faster than the 4090 here. Path tracing is still too intensive and drops to 60fps, but does very little visually either. Control also runs at 120fps at native 4K with RT, the 4090 needed 2560 upscaled. The 600W usage only occurs in these games, otherwise it uses 300-400W at the same games and settings the 4090 got 120fps on.
The Astral model measures the power draw on the 12V 2x6 pins and prevents overcurrent, which is a big plus. However, the card is quite loud on the P bios and the fans go up to 2400rpm with 70-73C temps and 59db measured near the fans. It's way louder at 600W than the whisper quiet 4090 AIO or really anything I've used in the last 10 years. The fans have a very audible hum, not just an whoosing sound. But in 350W games it's silent. I'll need to try the Q bios, it has the updated version of that already. It boosts to 2780mhz without any oc. I will also try undervolting it. It actually causes the UPS to sound an alarm when total power goes above 1000W, but this can be disabled.
It comes with a cool metal badge and ruler, but is missing the support stand. Maybe that is why it was discounted so much, I have one already and don't mind. It may be that someone bought it and returned it after finding a cheaper model or a better OC model as you said. Or replacing Asus with MSI/Gigbyte to match their board's style, have seen many people do this. There were a couple of open box Astrals at other stores too but at $2600 or more. Generally the $3000+ cards are easy to find but the $2000 ones are sold out everywhere. I would say the upgrade was worth it for $350 but with a few caveats, mainly the noise.
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