Asus has revealed the latest addition to its Republic of Gamers range today, with the ludicrously over the top Mars II graphics card. Replacing the dual-GPU GTX 590 3GB at the top of the Nvidia tree, the card features two Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 GPUs, both overclocked to 782MHz. Each GPU has the usual 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory, which operates at the default 4.008GHz (effective).
Asus says that the Mars II has ‘
22 per cent faster performance than reference’ in comparison to a stock GTX 590 3GB. However, as the GPU configuration of the Mars II is an un-official one, it may require a special driver - previous cards of a similarly unofficial design have suffered from such issues. We’ll have to see when we get our hands on the card and run it through our test suite.
We can’t argue with some of the other hardware aboard the card, from the three 8-pin PCI-E power connectors to the chunky triple-slot custom cooler. With other single-GPU cards requring triple-slot coolers, the triple-slot size of the cooler is reasonable. The card is 13in (330mm) long and 6.2in (157mm) wide, so you’ll need a large case.
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The cooler uses Asus’ DirectCU II design, to produce ‘
60 per cent greater airflow and [be]20 per cent cooler than reference.’ The cooler incorporates two 120mm fans that ‘
move up to 600 per cent more air than the reference GTX 590 design.’ A Turbo fan button instantly ramps the fan speed to 100 per cent, for heavy overclocking sessions. We can’t see how many heatpipes are included, but there is 21-phase power delivery under the cooler that uses ‘
Asus Super Alloy Power technology, which utilizes a special alloy mix for power delivery components that resist heat and material fatigue far beyond the norm.’
There’s no word on pricing or availability yet, but is that a reason to stop being excited about the Mars II, or are you going to wait for some benchmarks before you start saving? Let us know in the
forum.
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