ASUS MARS review -
Photos - ASUS MARS 4096MB (2)
Only a thousand cards are made in the first batch, yes .. we have number 54. I so wished I would have gotten #69.
Once we flip around the card the dual-PCB design becomes a little more apparent. Please realize that you'll need a lengthy PC chassis to be able to fit the graphics card. Also here we can see a SLI finger, but two and go quad-SLI ;)
But that would be somewhat a waste of money -- after 3-way SLI scaling slowly becomes an issue. Also, I was hoping to see the backside have a back plate as well, but that's not the case. You are looking at the PCB directly.
Okay one last look before we pop the card into our test system,
So overall it's a pretty clean looking setup really, nothing too flashy. It is time to wrap up the photo shoot and commence a series of military drills on this graphics card, yes... it's time for our benchmark session, daddy needs COD 6 Modern Warfare 2 *sighs*
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 ?