Asus Reveals Limited Edition Ares III Card, G-SYNC Monitor

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By Kevin Parrish
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On Tuesday, in addition to revealing motherboards and gaming PCs, Asus Republic of Gamers also unveiled a new water-cooled gaming graphics card and the ROG Swift PG278Q gaming monitor. The graphics card is a limited edition, while the monitor sports Nvidia's G-SYNC technology.

According to the company, the new Ares III is the world's fastest gaming graphics card, and because it's a limited edition, only 500 units will be made. The Radeon Hawaii XT GPUs are "hand-picked" and water-cooled, thus providing up to a 25 percent cooler performance when compared to the reference R9 295X designs. The card has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory and a custom-designed EK water block and ROG design details.

In addition to the card, the company is showcasing the Swift PG278Q gaming monitor. Asus ROG indicates that this will be the world's first premium 27-inch monitor that supports Nvidia G-SYNC technology at refresh rates up to 144 Hz. Additional features include a resolution of 2560 x 1440, a fast response time of 1 ms, and a dedicated Turbo key. This key allows gamers to select 60 Hz, 120 Hz or 144 Hz on the fly without the need to dig into the monitor's on-screen display settings.

Additional information such as hard specs, pricing and availability should be revealed this week, so stay tuned.

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21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ubercake
    Finally my 2560x1440 G-sync monitor.... I'm hearing rumors of availability in July. Where can I pre-order?
    Reply
  • weilin
    Why would you ever run that monitor at something other than 144Hz?
    Reply
  • ubercake
    13428691 said:
    Why would you ever run that monitor at something other than 144Hz?

    Good question. Does make you wonder why they'd call it a 'Turbo' button. Does this mean we're overdriving the normal panel refresh rate with no guarantees of operating 100% of the time at 120 or 144Hz like those 2560x1440 "120Hz" IPS panels already out?
    Reply
  • CraigN
    13428691 said:
    Why would you ever run that monitor at something other than 144Hz?

    Good question. Does make you wonder why they'd call it a 'Turbo' button. Does this mean we're overdriving the normal panel refresh rate with no guarantees of operating 100% of the time at 120 or 144Hz like those 2560x1440 "120Hz" IPS panels already out?

    Should be more than good enough to run 144Hz all the time. Likely they're calling it that for Marketing reasons.

    The nice part about being able to hot-switch the Refresh rate would be for using ULMB (Ultra Low Motion Blur, aka LightBoost) or 3D Vision (have to be at 120Hz for this) without having to go into the control panel. Also, some people may want to lock their framerate (GSync sets the Framerate cap based on your refresh rate) at 60 Hz for recording purposes perhaps, so this is also handy to have for that reason.
    Reply
  • Evolution2001
    Why would you ever run that monitor at something other than 144Hz?
    Marketing? Or for the same reason my original PC's had a Turbo button to go from 8Mhz to 12Mhz or whatever it was? Of course, back then, occasionally to play some of the CGA games, you had to slow down the system otherwise the on-screen action was too fast to control. Ahhh, the good ol' days!
    Maybe there's some technical reason, such as those alluded to above. Kinda like how some LCD projectors have a "Bright" mode which makes the picture better, but reduces bulb life. Same principal in the monitor somehow (but not related to the bulb)? Dunno...
    Reply
  • CraigN
    Also - some games (Skyrim, I'm looking at you) misbehave horribly when run over 60 FPS. Since the monitor is G-sync enabled, if you're running on GSYNC and want to lock your FPS to 60 fps to keep those games from bugging out, it's a quick switch to do that instead of having to go into NVIDIA Control Panel, switch to 60 Hz, apply, screen flicker, say yes, etc.

    It's just a quick-switch feature for convenience with a marketing name thrown on top of it.
    Reply
  • Durandul
    Does anyone else find it ironic that they're showcasing an AMD card, with a NVIDIA powered display? Not that they don't work well together, but still.
    Reply
  • DarkSable
    Been waiting for this monitor since it was first announced, jeeze!
    Reply
  • chimera201
    13428691 said:
    Why would you ever run that monitor at something other than 144Hz?

    Running at a lower refresh rate reduces power consumption and also leads to lower GPU temperatures. It's very useful for people living in countries where the room temperature hits 40 degrees Celsius like me
    Reply
  • wtfxxxgp
    Does anyone else find it ironic that they're showcasing an AMD card, with a NVIDIA powered display? Not that they don't work well together, but still.

    I had a good LOL about that too. The irony of it was worth a mention
    Reply