ASUS Ares II Overkill3D Review
Introduction and Technical Specifications
Published: 30th January 2013 | Source: ASUS | Price: £1200 |
Introduction
ASUS have long been ploughing a lone furrow in the world of the truly insane graphics card. From the original Mars, the first Ares, through the Mars II and now the Ares II, if you were recently a city banker or happened to win the lottery then there was a single company out there asking for your money.
The original Ares was two full-fat HD5870s on a single PCB with a seriously gorgeous cooler. Of course it was hilariously expensive, but you had some exceptional packaging and lots of little bits and bobs to help soothe the pain. More importantly the performance was incredible. So often dual-GPU cards are cut-down versions of the high-end GPUs, but with the ASUS range you had totally un-trimmed graphics.
Now it's time to take a look at the next in the range, the Ares II. With two full-on HD7970s beating beneath a self-contained water-cooling loop, it certainly has the potential to break our benchmark records.
As always it wouldn't be an OC3D review if we didn't push it that extra mile and today we're not only going to be looking at the performance available from a single Ares II, but what you can get from the insanity of Crossfired Ares II's.
Technical Specifications
There is no denying that the Ares II is right up there with the best single PCB solutions available. This isn't the first time we've seen the Tahiti XT duplicated on the same board, as the PowerColor Devil13 HD7990 did the same thing. The main changes between the PowerColor and the ASUS offerings is the increased speed of both the GPUs and the GDDR5 on the Ares II, as well as the cooling solution of course.
Whereas the HD7990 had DVI, DisplayPort and HDMI connections the Ares II relies solely upon DVI and DisplayPort to provide it's output. Although if you've got the requisite £1200 to buy the card we assume you're already rocking some serious DisplayPort monitors.
Most Recent Comments
Not my cup of tea with the whole AIO WC though..... i like modding, but to buy it like that, seems odd
The card looks great and benches even better..That is a lot of CASH
I do miss the Crysis benchmark where you blow the hell out of the chopper
Ron
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Originally Posted by kejser11
That does it! I´ll stick to Devil 13, where You do get the accessories at a much lower price and virtually the same power. I will NOT pay £500 - 600 for a metal suitcase worth around £50! Come again, Asus. You know better!!!
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However after googling furiously for ~ 2 minutes I could not find a place that actually sold the Devil13, save for a few "new" ones on eBay, and of course you can see the flaw in siding with a product that is not readily available at this moment, and is labelled as 'discontinued' on Newegg.
That is a real shame, considering that the card was only revealed around the end of September last year....
Hopefully this AIO monstrosity does not stick, as it is clearly a huge hindrance to anyone who buys it and a disastrous design choice.
"You can't take it with you can you" as Ofan said, and not for any E-Peen thing, but for the hell of it...
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Originally Posted by DifferentClone
It's alright saying that, and normally I would agree wholeheartedly with you. The price is not justified at all, and can be considered rather insulting to those who realise where the extra money is going. The Devil13 is certainly the better buy.
However after googling furiously for ~ 2 minutes I could not find a place that actually sold the Devil13, save for a few "new" ones on eBay, and of course you can see the flaw in siding with a product that is not readily available at this moment, and is labelled as 'discontinued' on Newegg. That is a real shame, considering that the card was only revealed around the end of September last year.... Hopefully this AIO monstrosity does not stick, as it is clearly a huge hindrance to anyone who buys it and a disastrous design choice. |
P.S: That price is about 40% of an ARES II, so I will defenitely not go there...
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