Asus Ares hands on WORLD FIRST

Introduction

If you're one of my Youtube subscribers, you'll know what's coming. If not, why not? And anyway, sometimes pictures you can spend an age lusting over beat out a live video.

Today we have a World First again here at OC3D. This time it's the first ever hands on of the ASUS Ares. A card we've all been eagerly anticipating.

So desperately have we been clamouring to get our sweaty mits on this that when it arrived in the office everything stopped.

Of course you're all wondering why, if we have it in our hands, we aren't doing the normal Overclock3D brilliance and getting a review out to you faster than all the rest? Well unfortunately we have ASUS lawyer standing over us wielding a big stick and we're not allowed to let you know any of the juicier details yet. However we know that you all want to see the ins and outs of this as much as we want to show them to you, so let's crack on.

ASUS Ares

What is the Ares then? Even if you've been living under a rock or similar you'll be aware that one of the most popular ways to introduce maximum performance on a single card is to implement a dual-GPU solution. Some of the best cards ever made have been dual GPU, from the 9800GTX2 through the absolutely mighty HD4870X2.

So popular is this method of doing it, and so big is our love for these cards, that ASUS introduced the truly insane MARS a while back. The MARS was a twin GTX285 with huge bells and whistles retailing around a thousand pounds. Understandably with that kind of price-tag it was very much a limited edition. Despite that it sold out amazingly quickly and here at Overclock3D we became the only place in the world to give one away when we had our New Year competition.

The problem is that the GTX285 was a monster card, but for the last generation. What if you wanted to get similar performance and exclusivity, but on the best cards around today? This is a question ASUS asked, and answered in the form of what we have here today, the Ares.

This absolute beast has twin 5870s!!!

Enough flannel. Enough waffle. Let's go and have a look shall we? Kleenex at the ready.