ASUS Mars II review - DX11: 3DMark 11

Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 09/22/2011 01:00 PM [ 0 comment(s) ]

DX11: 3DMark 11

3DMark 11 is the latest version of what is probably the most popular graphics card benchmark series. Designed to measure your PCs gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

These are the requirements:

3DMark 11 requires DirectX 11, a DirectX 11 compatible video card, and Windows Vista or Windows 7.
OS: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7
Processor: 1.8 GHz dual-core Intel or AMD CPU
Memory: 1 GB of system memory
Graphics: DirectX 11 compatible graphics card
Hard drive space 1.5 GB
Audio Windows Vista / Windows 7 compatible sound card

Graphics Test 1

Based on the Deep Sea scene
No tessellation
Heavy lighting with several shadow casting lights

Graphics Test 2

Based on the Deep Sea scene
Medium tessellation
Medium lighting with few shadow casting lights

Graphics Test 3

Based on the High Temple scene
Medium tessellation
One shadow casting light

Graphics Test 4

Based on the High Temple scene
Heavy tessellation
Many shadow casting lights

Physics Test

Rigid body physics simulation with a large number of objects
This test runs at a fixed resolution regardless of the chosen preset

We test 3DMark 11 in performance mode which will give us a good indication of graphics card performance in the low, mid-range and high end graphics card segment. The application is DirectX 11 only, meaning only so many cards are compatible. Here's a selection.

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ASUS Mars II review
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 ?