ASUS Mars II review

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

Overclocking the graphics card

Overclocking the graphics card

As most of you know, with most videocards you can apply a simple series of tricks to boost the overall performance a little. You can do this at two levels, namely tweaking by enabling registry or BIOS hacks, or very simply to tamper with Image Quality. And then there is overclocking, which will give you the best possible results by far.

What do we need?
One of the best tools for overclocking NVIDIA and ATI videocards is our own AfterBurner which will work with 90% of the graphics cards out there. We can really recommend it, download here.

Where should we go?
Overclocking: By increasing the frequency of the videocard's memory and GPU, we can make the videocard increase its calculation clock cycles per second. It sounds hard, but it really can be done in less than a few minutes. I always tend to recommend to novice users and beginners, to not increase the frequency any higher than 5% on the core and memory clock. Example: If your card runs at 600 MHz (which is pretty common these days) then I suggest that you don't increase the frequency any higher than 30 to 50 MHz.

More advanced users push the frequency often way higher. Usually when your 3D graphics start to show artifacts such as white dots ("snow"), you should back down 10-15 MHz and leave it at that. Usually when you are overclocking too hard, it'll start to show artifacts, empty polygons or it will even freeze. Carefully find that limit and then back down at least 20 MHz from the moment you notice an artifact. Look carefully and observe well. I really wouldn't know why you need to overclock today's tested card anyway, but we'll still show it.

All in all... do it at your own risk.

Original	This sample	Overclocked
Core Clock: 607MHz	Core Clock: 782MHz	Core Clock: 850MHz
Shader Clock: 1215MHz	Shader Clock: 1564MHz	Shader Clock: 1700MHz
Memory Clock: 3414MHz	Memory Clock:4008MHz	Memory Clock: 4200MHz

Overclocking wise the card will allow itself to be clocked to roughly 850 MHz on the core without voltage tweaking. Voltage tweaking itself is a problem as we could only raise the GPU voltage from 1.050 V to 1.075 V, which is nothing.

Fact remains that even with so much raw horsepower under the hood, the differences will still be measurable -- yet small. You also need to question yourself whether or not to overclock at all, I mean what's the point if everything is already running silky smooth?

Above, Battlefield Bad Company 2, maxed out image quality settings as before with 8xAA 16xAF.

Above, 3DMark 11 - the Performance test and score. As you can see, an additional bump in this very GPU limited title, lovely.

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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 ?