Test System And Benchmarks, 3DMark Vantage
We wanted to test the Asus ARES against a host of different graphics card configurations in order to really see how it sits in the high-end hierarchy. We're pitting the card against a Radeon HD 5870, a GeForce GTX 480, a Radeon HD 5970, a Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire setup, and a GeForce GTX 480 SLI setup.
Without enough reference hardware on-hand, we ended up underclocking some non-reference models down to reference speeds for SLI and CrossFire benchmarking. While this works fine for performance testing, it doesn't work well for noise and temperature measurements because non-reference cards often have aftermarket coolers on them. For this reason, the noise and temperature measurements will only be done on the ARES, a GeForce GTX 480 reference card, and a Radeon HD 5870 reference card.
It is particularly important to note that we simulated reference Radeon HD 5970 performance by underclocking the ARES to reference Radeon HD 5970 specifications, 775 MHz core and 1000 MHz GDDR5 memory (4000 MT/s effective). While this change will emulate the clock speeds of the reference Radeon HD 5970, it will not emulate the 2 GB found on 5970 boards versus 4 GB on the ARES card. We do know from past investigations that it is very rare to see a larger frame buffer yield increased performance, but this is something to keep in mind when looking at the benchmarks.
We ran the tests at the highest settings at which we felt these cards could deliver playable performance. This means that some games were complemented with high levels of anti-aliasing if the graphics cards could handle it, but that anti-aliasing was turned down if the cards were struggling. With high-end cards like these, we only tested 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 resolutions, although we did add a 5760x1080 triple-monitor test, too.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Graphic Test System |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i7-920 (Nehalem), 2.67 GHz, QPI-4200, 8 MB L3 CacheOverclocked to 3.06 GHz @ 153 MHz BCLK |
| Motherboard | ASRock X58 SuperComputer Intel X58, BIOS P1.90 |
| Networking | Onboard Realtek gigabit LAN controller |
| Memory | Kingston PC3-10700 3 x 1,024MB, DDR3-1225, CL 9-9-9-22-1T |
| Graphics | Asus ARES Radeon HD 5870 X2 4 GB GDDR5(also representing Radeon HD 5970 when underclocked)Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 1536 MB GDDR5Zotac GeForce GTX 480 AMP! Edition 1536 MB GDDR5Reference Radeon HD 5870 1 GB GDDR5Gigabyte GV-R587SO-1GD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB GDDR5*all clock rates have been set to reference specifications for the purpose of benchmarking |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital Caviar WD50 00AAJS-00YFA, 500 GB, 7200 RPM, 8 MB cache, SATA 3.0 Gb/s |
| Power | Thermaltake Toughpower 1200 W1200 W, ATX 12V 2.2, EPS 12v 2.91 |
| Software and Drivers | |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit |
| DirectX version | DirectX 11 |
| Graphics Drivers | Catalyst 10.6, Asus ARES Custom Driver, Nvidia GeForce Drivers 257.21 (normal use) and 258.69 (Triple-monitor) |
| Benchmark Configuration | |
|---|---|
| 3D Games | |
| Crysis | Patch 1.2.1, DirectX 10, 32-bit executable, Benchmark Tool, High Settings, No AA, No AF |
| Far Cry 2 | DirectX 10, in-game benchmark, Ultra-High Settings, 8x AA, No AF |
| Aliens vs Predator | DirectX 11 Default Benchmark, no AA, No AF |
| World In Conflict: Soviet Assault | DirectX 10, Timedemo, Very High Details, 4x AA/4x AF |
| DiRT 2 | DirectX 11, Timedemo, Ultra Details, 8x AA/4x AF |
| Synthetic | |
| 3DMark Vantage | Version: 1.01, Total System score |
3DMark suggests that the Asus ARES performs very closely to a pair of Radeon HD 5870 cards in CrossFire. That's not much of a surprise, since this is more or less what the ARES card is. This benchmark also suggests that the ARES is about 13% faster than a Radeon HD 5970 (not quite the 30%+ that Asus mentions in its marketing materials).
