Sometimes ODMs like to pursue the quest of the holy grail in the enthusiast market. ASUS for example every now and then chunks up a product that will bring a smile to your face, while on the other side you know it doesn't make any sense. Yea correct, x-factor products !

When we apply that logic to their graphics cards, I think most of you can remember our ASUS MARS review, a product totally out of well .. any league, expensive, noisy, hot, limited edition  .. but it was brilliant marketing as news of that MARS graphics card spread like fire through the web. And for ASUS that meant, mission achieved.

These uber-high-enthusiast targeted products are intended to create a lot of buzz and potentially have a lot of marketing value. But face the factthat there is also a small group of end-users actually really interested it in, regardless of price and deficits. So with this round of realizing something fun, extra ordinary and sure very steep prices, ASUS went back to the drawing board. They came up with a dual-GPU design solution based off the Radeon 5970, but an overall better design, new PCB, higher clock frequencies on GPUs and more memory (2GB per GPU). Then they threw in improved voltage regulation management into the mix and added a new cooler with the weight of a small baby on top of the GPUs to deliver something really special.

Now remember the MARS I just mentioned ? The end result and little baby GPUs is now called ARES - ARES as in the ancient Greek god of war, a son of Zeus and Hera, identified by the Romans with Mars. Now if you think through the naming so deeply ... this product must be something really special.

So it should come as no surprise that today we'll review the retail sample of a limited edition ASUS ARES. Have a peek at the photo, and then let's onward into an exclusive review.