Asus Mars II Reviewed

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Madcatatlas

Madcatatlas

Golden Member
Feb 22, 2010
1,155
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greatlooking card! gonna read the review now.

edit: Holy cow that is one overpriced card. That review makes the Radeon 6990 shine all the more. 10% less performance on average, and beating the Geforce in several games for 750 dollars less... I am stunned. Even the turd card (GTX590 normal) which altough can expload, is better value by far than the Mars.

The Mars does look great though! :)


And lol at the bias..haha:

Conclusions:



Geforce 590

The ASUS MARS II is available online for $1499.

Extremely high performance
Much faster than GTX 590 and HD 6990
Robust PWM design
Good overclocking potential
Quieter than GTX 590 in idle
Software voltage control via I2C
Limited edition bragging rights
Hardware modding soldering pads
No NVIDIA power limiting system
Native full-size HDMI and DisplayPort output
Manual 100% fan speed switch
Support for DirectX 11
Support for CUDA / PhysX

Very high price
High power consumption
Noisy fan under load
Very limited voltage tuning options
Backplate attached to fan assembly blocks access to back of the PCB for modding




Radeon 6990:

According to AMD, the Radeon HD 6990 will retail at $699.

Fastest graphics card
Significant performance increase over previous generation
Likes synthetic benchmarks
Low idle power draw
Dual BIOS feature to activate higher clocks and voltage
Supports up to 5 displays on its own, 6 using DP multi-stream
Support for voltage control via I2C
Support for DirectX 11

Expensive
High load and Blu-ray power draw
Very noisy
Optimum performance depends on CrossFire profile support
AMD PowerTune and ULPS complicate advanced overclocking
Long card, might be difficult to fit in some PC cases
DirectX 11 relevance limited at this time
No support for CUDA/PhysX
 
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Skurge

Skurge

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2009
5,195
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71
500W peak and over 700W maximum power consumption? That is brilliant. 3 8pin connectors and it's still over spec?
 
StrangerGuy

StrangerGuy

Diamond Member
May 9, 2004
8,443
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106
perfdollar.gif


Lols.
 
S

skipsneeky2

Diamond Member
May 21, 2011
5,035
1
71
There will be a single performance card in the next few years that will smoke this while retailing for $500 while using a quarter of the power.

When that happens,we can laugh about this card.
 
F

Firestorm007

Senior member
Dec 9, 2010
396
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That card is breathtaking! It's certainly got the looks to back up all that raw power...very nice indeed!
 
S

Smartazz

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2005
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I don't quite understand why anyone would pay $1500 on this card. I'd much rather have a watercooled 6990 or similar and pocket the difference. However, I do realize that not everybody wants to water cool.
 
3

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
106
TakeNoPrisoners said:
$1500. At that price I expected 6GB of GDDR5. Nope.
Click to expand...

Forget about price. A card that's supposed to be the "be all end all" needs more than 1.5Gb/GPU. What happens when some reviewer (***cough [H] *cough-cough* [H] cough***) compares it with an HD6990 and cranks the AA until the RAM spits the dummy and promptly announces the card's a turd?

Skurge said:
500W peak and over 700W maximum power consumption? That is brilliant. 3 8pin connectors and it's still over spec?
Click to expand...

What? That's not what you expected it to be? Remove the power limiting and you've got 2x fully functioning GTX-480's. ;)

toyota said:
max power consumption of 729 watts just for the card. :eek:
Click to expand...

28nm can't get here soon enough. The card makers have thrown all common sense to the wind trying to get these monsters to perform.
 
TakeNoPrisoners

TakeNoPrisoners

Platinum Member
Jun 3, 2011
2,599
1
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3DVagabond said:
Forget about price. A card that's supposed to be the "be all end all" needs more than 1.5Gb/GPU. What happens when some reviewer (***cough [H] *cough-cough* [H] cough***) compares it with an HD6990 and cranks the AA until the RAM spits the dummy and promptly announces the card's a turd?
Click to expand...

It's just insane. You can buy almost three of these. You would then have more power and twice the memory. At this price range your looking at 1080x3 at the very least 1440x3 at the mid range and 1600x3 or even 1080x6 at the upper range. 1.5 GB just wont cut it for Nvidia surround. This is strictly a surround solution. Nobody would put this on a single 1080p monitor. It would be the best you can get at 1080p and 1600p but still this card is made for Nvidia surround. It is insane not to include at least 3GB of GDDR5 with each GPU.

It's like giving somebody a brand new ZR1 corvette with the tires off of a Prius. You got lots of power but as soon as you get fast enough those tires are going to pop.
 
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A

Arkadrel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2010
3,681
2
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AdamK47 said:
Sheeesh! $1500.
Click to expand...

Your forgetting that its ~12%! faster than a 6990!!!

239$ for a 6950 on newegg.

buy 2 for 478$ + overclock both cards, get within 10% of this "Asus Mars II"
for 1/3th the price.


toyota said:
max power consumption of 729 watts just for the card. :eek:
Click to expand...

power comes at a price...... and that price is..... expensive electric bills! and heating up your room to oven tempatures, and costing 1500$ to get all that power :p






Anyways.... Im willing to bet that performance wise:

3 x 6950 CF (717$) > Asus Mars II (1500$)
 
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Madcatatlas

Madcatatlas

Golden Member
Feb 22, 2010
1,155
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Bakwetu said:
There's a test of Mars II in SLI configuration at a Sweclockers. It's in Swedish, but let me know if anyone wants something explained or translated.
http://www.sweclockers.com/recension/14358-asus-rog-mars-ii-i-sli
Click to expand...





Look at the Crysis 2 numbers, Adding a second 6990 has no effect. 6990 CF and single 6990 have the same numbers.

With the near perfect scaling the 6xxx series has, the 6990 would likely be at 56-60 frames per second if CrossfireX worked in their review for Crysis2.

And talking about quad CrossfireX, is there an issue with Crysis2?
 
A

Arkadrel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2010
3,681
2
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1500$ for a graphics card....

buy 2 for 3000$ 's worth og GPUs!


reality check:

even with 2560x resolutions, and abit of AA, most of those games are in the 100 fps' ranges.

I only game at 1920x resolution at most... and I honestly dont care if I have 300 fps or 60 fps. What I do care about is how much its gonna cost me to get "playable" frame rates for games.

1500$ for a GPU is definately in the price range of HOLY FLYING COWS!

And its performance isnt enough to justify its huge price (and even if it was, what good is getting 300 fps in games?).
 
3

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
106
Arkadrel said:
1500$ for a graphics card....

buy 2 for 3000$ 's worth og GPUs!


reality check:

even with 2560x resolutions, and abit of AA, most of those games are in the 100 fps' ranges.

I only game at 1920x resolution at most... and I honestly dont care if I have 300 fps or 60 fps. What I do care about is how much its gonna cost me to get "playable" frame rates for games.

1500$ for a GPU is definately in the price range of HOLY FLYING COWS!

And its performance isnt enough to justify its huge price (and even if it was, what good is getting 300 fps in games?).
Click to expand...

Yeah. Next gen we'll have the same performance for ~$350.00. Still, a nice piece of kit if $1500.00 isn't a lot of money for someone.

Too bad they didn't see fit to give it 3Gb RAM per GPU. I saw one review where at 2560*1600 no AA in Crysis 2 the minimums were 4fps. That's not even in surround. $1500.00 for a card that chokes like that is a bit foolish, IMO.
 
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