Oh yes. The time has come. The NDA is lifted. Here is the moment you've been gagging for. Benchmarks!

Continue ReadingQuote

Great review Tom, I thoroughly enjoyed reading through that.

It performs even better than I expected. There's even more headroom for OCing, impressive. Your conclusion hits the nail on the head though, fantastic product, but the price. It's not for everyone, in fact, it's only for a few.

Is this the future of the high end GPU market?Quote

Id say this is Asus own arena atm tbh, the other manu's making Extreme 5970's are weak as its just a stock card with more memory. The original 5970s biggest problem was power delivery and heat, this solves both. How XFX can charge a grand for their card amazes me as its nothing compaired to this.

Ill get off my soap box quick as Im in the mood for bashing!Quote

I have but one thing to say. LOL.Quote

Excellent review, really hope I can get one when I get back from Miami. Please may the GPU Gods keep one on the side for me lolQuote

great work tom, but I'm kind of disappointed the Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 4GB Toxic has the same performance and its spec is:

• Graphics processor 2 x ATI Radeon HD 5970, 900MHz

• Pipeline 2 x 1,600 stream processors (900MHz), 2 x 32 ROPs

• Memory 2 x 2GB GDDR5, 4.8GHz effective

• Bandwidth 2 x 153.6GB/sec, 256-bit interface

and runs cooler too and has more headroom for overclocking because of its three fan setup and retails in the UK for 969 £ but the positives for the ARES are:

it looks better

great package (suitcase+mouse+card)

its more quiet than the Toxic which is very important to some people

and the most important thing to me personally is that my two GTS 480 in sli scored 30990 in 3D Mark Vantage GPU benchmark compared to ARES (overclocked) which was 30301 and my GTX 480's were running at stock and physx was turned off and bear in mind I only paid 736 £ (2X368)for them but as you know tom I have to put up with the GTX 480 noise and ridicules temperatures.

l have read several reviews today about the ARES from different websites and I think you are the best overclock3d and most honest keep on the good work guys and best of luck to you tom.Quote

Cheers dude, I dont rate the Saphire or the XFX cards, they were rushed through when they found out Asus had a non reference no holds barred card coming. The other brands are just rebadged reference cards tbh.

The ARES review was completed by both me and Bryan aka VonBlade, we both lost alot of sleep over the weekend while testing the cards, its been a big task to get it all ready including all the vids ect in under a week!Quote

any your hard work is greatly appreciated guys! well done on another great job

looking forward to the next 'FIRST' video lolQuote

I think when it comes to 4way crossfire the bottleneck is the CPU the same problem happened when the GTX 480 was tested in 4way SLI it’s just too much cores for the CPU to send data to.Quote

another amazing view mate this thing is totally prolific in price and performance!Quote

You should have really OCd the 5970 to 5870 speeds :-o. And at least got the 900Mhz thats easy for themQuote

We did in the original review but we cant have everything in our graphs.Quote

Is it less ownage? At least close to the stock ares?Quote

Completely destroyed everything in its path.Quote

That card is beast in all departments!Quote

Yeah but I bet you don't regret a single moment Kids in a sweetshop Quote

I’ve just read a review on a website that I don’t want to name because I don’t trust them which claims this:

The noise levels coming from the card are very high and loud, in idle the card will remain nicely quiet at 36 DBa, barely even hearable really.But once the two GPUs start to really heat up, the fan RPM will rise upwards fast. The card then reaches roughly 52 DBa measured at that 75cm distance. This is a big negative alright as a product of this caliber with this price tag should not require that much brute force fan activity at all. Loud, really loud.

Is this true tom?Quote

Watch the video mate........... Quote

WTF that is discustingly powerfull,and with Xfire WOW just WOW ;-);-);-);-);-)Quote

tom you really look tired in the video this review must have taken a lot of effort, oh and I really like the on fire t-shirt it suits the video topic, lovely stuffQuote

Can someone tell me where i can pick one these up in the USA?Quote

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/ARES/...noise_load.gif

Found this, 1dB lower than the ATI oneQuote

It seems that there aren’t any retailers in the US that have the card for sale yet, here in the UK we have the http://www.overclockers.co.uk they are listing it for £1021.27 ex VAT and £1199.99 inc VAT and the ETA is Overdue according to them I don’t know if they will ship it to the US and if you will have to pay the VAT like us poor Brits which 17.5 % but you can give them a call on (International +44 871 200 5052) and find out, I will keep on looking maybe I’ll find someone in the US and give you a bell.Quote

Wow we actually get something before the USA. I shall rub my eyes in disbelief.

10/10 Asus, love ya Quote

thanks ill look into itQuote

ASUS are marketing strong in the EU and that’s because EVGA & BFG have decided to leave EU.Quote

love the review. much drooling.Quote

We're the gamers now man. Especially the Germans. Apparently they buy more games than any one else for the PC.

I'm glad Asus give us priority though. I've always liked their products.Quote

I was wondering whether the Ares has a unique serial number like the ASUS MARS?Quote

No it doesnt dude, something to do with superstitions in Asia or somethingQuote

OCUK have 5 in stock now. Quote

I read something about that the other day ! Apparently they won't use the number 4 because of the way it sounds when they say it. Apparently it sounds like something really bad.Quote

the number 4 sounds similar to death or in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Believe it or not, about a lot of buildings skip numbering the floor if it has a 4 in it.Quote

Well they could have had the serial numbers without the number 4 after all there is only 1000 of these cards and please do you really believe that, so what did they do when they numbered the ASUS MARS with the unique serial number. Throughout history serial numbers have always given items special status; they have done it with money, guns, cars, diamonds, I think it is a pity they didn’t do it with the ASUS ARES someone who will pay 1200 £ would like something special about the card apart from its performance, the suitcase and mouse was a great idea it give the ARES class and you feel that you are buying something special that only a few fortunate people can do that’s what the ARES is all about, Its ASUS engineers showing you what they can do, I bet it cost much more than 1200 £ to make these cards. Thing is, I can’t understand if ASUS can do this what was NVIDIA doing for the last six months, please don’t tell me they couldn’t have come up with a better cooling solution then the one the put on the GTX 480, I have two of the GTX 480 because they are incredible cards but the noise guys it’s like a hover going on all day and 70 degrees idle (unbelievable) please can someone please tell me what is going on.Quote

Yeah ! that's the stuff. Crazy man.Quote

anyone know what interconnect bridge the ares is using?Quote

It’s a normal crossfire bridge it comes with the card in the suitcase, if you take a look at the picture of the inside of the suitcase you can spot it.Quote

should of made myself more clear, trying to find out what interconnect chip are they using to bridge the two 5870 chips togetherQuote

I would imagine that and the schematics are top secret and any one who does know will be under a pretty harsh NDA*

*Non disclosure agreement.. In other words "If I tell you I will have to kill you" Quote

I'd suppose they are using the same one which is used in all the HD 5970 series, I don't think it would make a difference to the performance, the main thing is the enhanced clocks and better power distribution in addition to excellent cooling solution. by the way it's been a few days now since overclockers have had 5 in stock and no one has bought one yet seems that all the rich guys are sticking with NVIDIA,I remember when the ASUS MARS first came to the UK they disappeared immediately and especially when NVIDIA have now allowed in their new driver the uses of physx with the ATI cards so now you can use the ARES as the main display and NVIDIA card for the physx.Quote

Nvid havnt allowed that, it was a one off error that they removed matey.Quote

really, how could NVIDIA make such a errorQuote

The wonderfull world of marketing fella......Quote

Sneaky barstools.

Does any one have this fabled driver per chance? The thought of putting that 8800u along side the 3870x2 has definintely aroused me Mind you, the 8800u is quite probably history.Quote

the 257.15 Beta ForceWare driver set from NVIDIA accidently had the ability for ATI users to again use an NVIDIA card as a second to do PhysX. The whole ordeal created a bit of drama around the web; as soon as it was discovered by NVIDIA they yanked the driver and put another one up that disabled the ability.Quote

In the last page, score table - do you think 'Price' column is actually appropriate at all to this gpu? That you given it a wrong score is not what I think. Scoring it on price is what i think makes the review look not properly done?Quote

Found it on hotfile. Grabbing now. Could be well worthwhile putting my 8800u in there if its not toast.Quote

Question !

I got two ARES luckly and having problem with Asus ATI driver.

Getting BlueScreen casued by ati driver...

I wonder how did you test with them?

Anyway Great Review. Good job Quote

i dont know if you've seen the vid for the review. But he actually mentions its a nightmare to run crossfire with them. And mentions the many BsoD he gets.Quote

Well the 10.7 drivers are comming out soon, so hopefully that will add stability. make sure to get the drivers and the profiles. And also, invite me over to gawk at them!Quote

Its the Ares drivers not the normal CAT 7's fella.Quote

Well I hope they update the ares drivers just as often as catalyst. Are they atleast based of the stock ATI 1s?Quote