Asus Rumored to be Crafting Insane Dual-Hawaii Ares III Card

A couple of months ago, we heard first word of the R9 290X-X2, but at that time it was nothing more than a simple report stating that AMD was planning on making a dual-Hawaii XT graphics card. According to a new report from VR-Zone, that rumor is still standing. Next to this, the sometimes questionable website has stated that Asus is building the Ares III graphics card, which would feature -- you guessed it -- two of the GPUs found on the AMD Radeon R9 290X.

That Asus would be building such a graphics card isn't particularly surprising; in fact, it was just a matter of time. Whether it is actually happening is still questionable, but it shouldn't be all too surprising.

Asus' older Ares II graphics card

The Ares II was a graphics card that carried two of the GPUs found on the Radeon HD 7970 graphics card from AMD. It was a hybrid-cooled graphics card, which was cooled by both air and water. VR-Zone has stated that cooling for the card remains uncertain, though the PCB design will be largely the same.

Of course, the card will also be carrying 8 GB of GDDR5 memory, though that will still be 4 GB per GPU.

There was no word on what either AMD's reference solution or Asus' Ares III cards would cost, though the report did indicate that Asus will be showing off its solution at the Computex show, from June 3 through June 7, 2014.

Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

  • icraft
    "Guys, look at my mining farm with 8x290x2!" *Turns on* *Powergrid goes down*While this might work for a tech savvy person, I don't think the average miner should get one. Average US wall socket only manages ~1800w anyway.
    Reply
  • Bondfc11
    Ares has to be the dumbest name. Ares yous guys coming to the partay? Really stupid.
    Reply
  • fil1p
    "Guys, look at my mining farm with 8x290x2!" *Turns on* *Powergrid goes down*While this might work for a tech savvy person, I don't think the average miner should get one. Average US wall socket only manages ~1800w anyway.
    You say that "I don't think the average miner should get one." and I would agree, as mining is the reason why AMD cards are so horribly overpriced at the moment. This card should be used for gaming, rather than having miners buy out all the cards causing prices to spike to insane levels. On a side note I am interested to see how Asus will handle the heat should they release this beast!
    Reply
  • Josiah Ramirez
    It's pronounced air rees
    Reply
  • MaxImus009
    Ares has to be the dumbest name. Ares yous guys coming to the partay? Really stupid.
    Pronounced "Eries", he is the god of war.
    Reply
  • firefoxx04
    Ares is a great name. Derp.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    12829020 said:
    Average US wall socket only manages ~1800w anyway.
    It usually takes around 18A to actually trip a 15A breaker so with 80+Gold/Platinum PSUs, it should be possible to put one of these per dedicated 15A/115V circuit without too much trouble... but someone re-wiring their home specifically for high-power mining might as well wire for 230-240V and squeeze another 1-3% efficiency out of their PSU.
    Reply
  • fil1p
    Ares is a great name. Derp.
    I agree, its a pretty cool name. Nothing says powerful GPU like the god of war. The naming scheme for these cards matches the cards quite well.
    Reply
  • KosherGrimace
    Of course you know, this means war.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    12829223 said:
    Ares is a great name. Derp.
    I agree, its a pretty cool name. Nothing says powerful GPU like the god of war. The naming scheme for these cards matches the cards quite well.
    They could have thrown a curved ball and named it Eris instead - there is plenty of chaos to go around in the GPU market with miners buying off large chunks of the supply.
    Reply