ASUS MARS review - Test Environment & equipment

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 09/05/2009 02:00 PM [ ] 0 comment(s)

Test Environment & equipment

Here is where we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system plus the software we used.

Mainboard

ASUS X58 ROG edition Rampage II Extreme

Processor

Core i7 965 @ 3750 MHz (3.6 + Turbo mode).

Graphics Cards

Diverse

Memory

6144 MB (3x 2048 MB) DDR3 1800 MHz OCZ @ 1500 MHz

Power Supply Unit

1200 Watt

Monitor

Dell 3007WFP - up to 2560x1600

OS related software

Windows Vista 64-bit SP2
DirectX 9/10 End User Runtime
ATI Catalyst 9.7 WHQL
NVIDIA GeForce 190.38 WHQL

Software benchmark suite

Far Cry 2
Fallout 3
Call of Duty 5: World at War
Mass Effect
Crysis WARHEAD
Tom Clancy's HAWX
Anno 1404
3DMark Vantage

A word about "FPS"

What are we looking for in gaming performance wise? First off, obviously Guru3D tends to think that all games should be played at the best image quality (IQ) possible. There's a dilemma though, IQ often interferes with the performance of a graphics card. We measure this in FPS, the number of frames a graphics card can render per second, the higher it is the more fluently your game will display itself.

A game's frames per second (FPS) is a measured average of a series of tests. That test often is a time demo, a recorded part of the game which is a 1:1 representation of the actual game and its gameplay experience. After forcing the same image quality settings; this time-demo is then used for all graphics cards so that the actual measuring is as objective as can be.

Frames per second	Gameplay
<30 FPS	very limited gameplay
30-40 FPS	average yet very playable
40-60 FPS	good gameplay
>60 FPS	best possible gameplay

So if a graphics card barely manages less than 30 FPS, then the game is not very playable, we want to avoid that at all cost.
With 30 FPS up-to roughly 40 FPS you'll be very able to play the game with perhaps a tiny stutter at certain graphically intensive parts. Overall a very enjoyable experience. Match the best possible resolution to this result and you'll have the best possible rendering quality versus resolution, hey you want both of them to be as high as possible.
When a graphics card is doing 60 FPS on average or higher then you can rest assured that the game will likely play extremely smoothly at every point in the game, turn on every possible in-game IQ setting.
Over 100 FPS? You have either a MONSTER graphics card or a very old game.

ASUS MARS

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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 ?