ASUS ROG MARS 2 Review

ASUS ROG MARS 2 Review

Introduction

The successor to the original mental card, the MARS, has been a long time coming.

Back when we first previewed it over a year ago it was a twin GTX480. Since then not only have we seen a twin HD5870 nutter called the ASUS ARES, but equally the GTX480 didn’t exactly endear itself to either the public, or those who have to keep the things cool. ASUS, never one to rest upon their laurels took the brave, but wise, step of going right back to the drawing board and designing a card that took advantage of nVidias rapid update.

So now, after much gestation, the MARS 2 is here and in its final form it comes bearing two GTX580s, the far cooler/quicker evolution of the Fermi GF100.

Of course a card with this much power has to be released under the Republic of Gamers branding and with a suitable £1000+ price-tag. The question is, how good is it?

Technical Specifications

As befits a card with eye-opening capabilities, the twin GF110 GPUs are backed up by 3GB of GDDR5. Otherwise it’s fairly standard stuff, if the combination of two GTX580s on a single board can ever be considered standard.

Graphics Engine NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580×2
Bus Standard PCI Express 2.0
Video Memory GDDR5 3GB
Engine Clock 782 MHz
CUDA Core 1024
Memory Clock 4008 MHz ( 1002 MHz GDDR5 )
RAMDAC 400 MHz
Memory Interface 384-bit x2
Resolution D-Sub Max Resolution : 2048×1536
DVI Max Resolution : 2560×1600
Interface D-Sub Output : Yes x 1 (via DVI to D-Sub adaptor x 1)
DVI Output : Yes x 2 (DVI-I)
HDMI Output : Yes x 1
Display Port : Yes x 1 (Regular DP)
HDCP Support : Yes
Accessories 1 x Extended SLI cable
2 x Power cable
1 x DVI to D-Sub adaptor
Software ASUS Driver and Utility
ASUS Features DirectCU Series
Super Alloy Power
Dimensions 13 ” x 6.2 ” x 2.5 ” Inch

 

Let’s get a good look at her shall we.