Triple-Monitor Performance
We're using Far Cry 2 to demonstrate Eyefinity (ATI) and Surround 2D (Nvidia), both being marketing terms for triple-monitor setups:
Here we see the ARES leading the pack when it comes to driving three 1920x1080 monitors. Surprisingly, the GeForce GTX 480 cards in SLI seem to lose a great deal of traction at this triple-monitor resolution. It may be that the huge frame buffer of the ARES card is helping it out here. Note that the single GeForce GTX 480 card has no triple-monitor result; this feature is only available on GeForce cards when SLI is used.
We should also note that the GeForce cards require the beta 258.69 driver in order for triple-monitor gaming to work (as of this writing; Nvidia has since released a driver that enables it). We used this beta driver for the 5760x1080 resolution, but we used Nvidia's WHQL 257.21 drivers for all other benchmarks.
[EDIT] Further investigation shows that the GeForce GTX 480 SLI result should probably be much higher than 63 FPS at 5760x1080--in our Nvidia 3D Vision Surround: Is This The Future Of Gaming? article we achieved an average of 92.4 FPS using a pair of GeForce GTX 480s in SLI. We are looking into this discrepancy and will report our findings here when our investigation is complete. [/EDIT]
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I want that briefcase!
On the second page, that should be Radeon 5970, not Radeon 5890. There isn't any card on the market as 5890.
it actually looks quite small
BTW, it would be really cool to see a 5890, for that would give the GTX 480 a run for its money, something it is already not earning!
This card is so overkill for most of us, but so awesome.
Great review,
However i agree with Tom's about that there are better options in terms of price/performance ratio.This card looks good and packs lots of power but i wish that it had a lower price.
I was excited, but after reading the article, I'm dissapointed.
Maybe they set the bar too high when they made the MARS, a $1200 GTX285x2.
I wish the MARS/ARES came with waterblocks though.
Sounds like the card needs some better drivers.
Well, the card is heavy, power consuming and expensive, but its performance is truly great. BTW, they could have kept the Sapphire Toxic 5970 in the benchmark tests for the sake of immediate comparison. Anyway, this is a great review.
Lets see if Southern Islands top offering can take on this monster.
Where's the Radeon HD 5970 Crossfire?
With the I7 in the test bed OC'd to just a bit over 3 Ghz I have to wonder how close the CPU is to bottle necking the GPU.
Can it play Cr
What an epic triple slot cooler... Awesome suitcase too.
Why do the sli 480 benches for Crysis look completely off? In Crysis at 1920x1080, a single 480 gets the exact same performance of 480s in sli And at 2560x1600, sli 480 gets better performance than at 1920x1080. That doesn't make any sense. Driver issues were mentioned for alien vs preditor, but not for Crysis.
it actually looks quite small
Excuse me, we are talking about graphic cards here, not elephants.
Why do the sli 480 benches for Crysis look completely off? In Crysis at 1920x1080, a single 480 gets the exact same performance of 480s in sli And at 2560x1600, sli 480 gets better performance than at 1920x1080. That doesn't make any sense. Driver issues were mentioned for alien vs preditor, but not for Crysis.
Crysis and SLI don't go well together all the time. When I built my 8800GT SLI rig bck in 07' I got worse performance with SLI enabled than without. After many many drivers and game updates, I finally managed to get 6 extra frames with SLI. FYI, I was running a Q6600 OC to 3.4ghz, and the cards worked fine in other games
Can it play Mafia II ?
waiting for the Kratos edition.
you really have to water cool if you want to up the voltage of a 5870 or 5970... the noise from that 80mm fan running 100% is atrocious...
i think it will be April Fool before april