ASUS Mars II review
Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 09/22/2011 01:00 PM [ 0 comment(s) ]
We've been receiving numerous requests if it was possible to include the following two DX11 titles, Alien vs predator and Lost Planet 2. Initially we left these two titles out as AVP is really ATI optimized and Lost planet 2 is rather NVIDIA savvy. None the less, we will start gathering results from them in a single chart kind of way. But bare in mind that we find both titles a little biased to either of the manufacturers.
DX11: Alien Versus Predator
As with many of the already released DirectX 11 benchmarks, the Aliens vs. Predator DirectX 11 benchmark leverages your DirectX 11 hardware to provide an immersive game play experience through the use of DirectX 11 Tessellation and DirectX 11 Advanced Shadow features. In Aliens vs. Predator, DirectX 11 Geometry Tessellation is applied in an effective manner to enhance and more accurately depict HR Gigers famous Alien design. Through the use of a variety of adaptive schemes, applying tessellation when and where it is necessary, the perfect blend of performance and visual fidelity is achieved with at most a 4% change in performance. Your DirectX 11 hardware also allows for higher quality, smoother and more natural looking shadows as well.
DirectX 11 Advanced Shadows allow for the rendering of high-quality shadows, with smoother, artifact-free penumbra regions, which otherwise could not be realized, again providing for a higher quality, more immersive gaming experience.
You can try the benchmark yourself, download here.
We measure in 1920x1200 at 4xAA and 16X anisotropic filtering to more heavily stress the graphics cards being tested and all image quality settings have been set to the highest possible with the help of a customized configuration file.
Over time of course this chart will build up with more and more results.
DX11: Lost Planet 2
The Lost Planet 2 Benchmark can be downloaded here, you can measure the performance of your system and see first-hand how DirectX11.
A decade has passed since the first game, and the face of E.D.N. III has changed dramatically. Terra forming efforts have been successful and the ice has begun to melt, giving way to lush tropical jungles and harsh unforgiving deserts. Players will enter this new environment and follow the exploits of their own customized snow pirate on their quest to seize control of the changing planet.
Guru3D utilizes test B - The primary purpose of Test B is to push the PC to its limits and to evaluate the maximum performance of the PC. It utilizes many functions of Direct X11 resulting in a very performance-orientated, very demanding benchmark mode.
We measure in 2560x1600 to stress the title a little more. We apply 4xMSAA and 16X anisotropic filtering to more heavily stress the graphics cards being tested and all image quality settings have been set to the highest possible.
Here as well over time of course this chart will build up with more and more results.
We've seen the original brutal Mars, the exemplary ARES but ASUS is at it again with the all new Mars II, yep that's right. The x-factor products makes it prodigal return to manage a little bump and grinding. Money aside, the dual-GPU product tested today is uber cool though. It's the stuff that make my digitized ticker go tick a little faster -- and once you have it in your hands, you'll make a nervous giggle. Ah well, talk is cheap, have a look and then we'll head onwards into the review of the Lucifer of graphics cards.
ASUS MARS review
If you have been living under a rock and don't know what the ASUS Mars is .. let me give you an easy breakdown. You take two GeForce GTX 285 graphics cards, stick 4 GB of memory on there (2GB per GPU), sandwich them, SLI them up, market it as MARS, slap a limited edition label on there and make only a 1000 units. That in a nutshell is the product we'll be testing today. So without making a long and boring introduction, let's pop one of these little frackers into our finest test system and see where it ends up performance wise .. will this really be the fastest graphics card in the world anno September 2009 ?
