Asus ARES: Is This The One Graphics Card To Rule Them All?

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Asus' new ARES immediately earns bragging rights as one of the fastest single graphics cards ever created. We put the beast through a gauntlet of tests to measure this product's true power. At the end of the day, we answer whether it's worth four digits.

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]  

Don Woligroski
126 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Tamz_msc
    I want that briefcase!
    Reply
  • rohitbaran
    On the second page, that should be Radeon 5970, not Radeon 5890. There isn't any card on the market as 5890.
    Reply
  • jasonz001
    it actually looks quite small
    Reply
  • rohitbaran
    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! :D
    Reply
  • thedreadfather
    This card is so overkill for most of us, but so awesome. :D
    Reply
  • Maziar
    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.
    Reply
  • anamaniac
    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.
    Reply
  • rohitbaran
    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.
    Reply
  • rohitbaran
    Lets see if Southern Islands top offering can take on this monster.
    Reply
  • JOSHSKORN
    Where's the Radeon HD 5970 Crossfire?
    Reply