Asus ARES Dual Radeon HD 5870 4GB Review

pwhittak:

I have the standard 5970 and its miles better i think. I would rather buy a card that dose not take up more than one slot, is half the price, costs less to run and i can run crossfire with ease. hmmm? just like my 2 5970's ive alrdy got? dont c why u would buy one of these cards

If anybody remembers correctly, the 5970 was inbetween the 5870 and the 5850. This card has got two 5870 GPU's built onto the card and I just think that it's what the 5970 should of been all along, two 5870 GPU's put together.

jturnbull65:

With the stratospheric price, I know the targeted customer base comprises those that will spare no expense for top-of-the-line components.  However, that doesn't mean they won't have misgivings about paying for superfluous things like the briefcase and mouse, which definitely look like they added to the total price tag as opposed to just being "freebies".  I understand that ASUS is proud of their product, but they shouldn't expect that pride to be put on the customers' tab.  I bet if they offered this as a limited edition bundle and a standard edition without the mouse and briefcase for $50 less, not many people would opt for the extras.

I agree. Most of these gamers already have a gaming mouse, why would they need an additional one? I admit that the briefcase looks cool but it is a bit overkill. What they should of done was 86' the extras and just offer the thing in an attractive cardboard box like all the other graphics cards do.

lifeskills:

This is a beast.  Really didn't think the price was going to be 1200.  Does anyone know if these double cards are ever bottlenecked by PCI-E bandwidth?  Wouldn't it be better to run two 5870's in separate x16 slots?

I don't think so. PCI-E bandwith is very plentiful, and they wouldn't make dual GPU cards if the bandwith wasn't sufficient enough. Besides, where will the MicroATX users go to get their Dual GPU fix? The two additional slots have to be used by something you know.

so basically its a 5970

jbauman38:

so basically its a 5970

A 5970 is two 5850s basically.  The Ares is a "true" dual 5870

Asus did this with the MARS as well which was a "true"  dual GTX 285 instead of the GTX295's dual GTX275.

The GTX 295 is actually dual 260s. :-)

It's more like dual, Radeon HD 5870 2GB cards in CrossFire with a quieter cooler.

Marco C:

It's more like dual, Radeon HD 5870 2GB cards in CrossFire with a quieter cooler.

Yes, with a gigantic price premium thrown in too. When are you gonna give it away Marco?

I don't know about giving it away... but I would be particularly shocked if this card went missing from the HH lab ;-) lol

I was stunned by the pricetag I completely forgot to look at how good the cooling on this thing is. lol

BTW that makes me think, why are the video card designs "underneath" (on the heatsink) where nobody can see it and we don't see enough backplate art when that is the side that is visible most of the time.

For that price you could buy 2 x 5970's. Regardless of how good the cooling is the price is much too high.

slugbug:

  For that price you could buy 2 x 5970's,............ 

For that price you could build an entire system, one that works wonderfully and has a good video card and quality components in it.

thats exactly my point i have 2 5970's and they r gr8 an miles cheaper

TaylorKarras:

I don't think so. PCI-E bandwith is very plentiful, and they wouldn't make dual GPU cards if the bandwith wasn't sufficient enough. Besides, where will the MicroATX users go to get their Dual GPU fix? The two additional slots have to be used by something you know.

good point, never really considered a dual-GPU for my microATX. probably because the 5970 cost more than the rest of the system combined!  I remember some speculation on weather or not the 890fx chipset could support two 16x cards at once(before it dropped).  Thats what got me thinking about the bandwidth on dual-GPU cards.  I guess this is a non-issue.

TaylorKarras:

PCI-E bandwidth is very plentiful, and they wouldn't make dual GPU cards if the bandwidth wasn't sufficient enough.

PCI-E bandwidth is limited on some platforms. The socket 1156, P-55 chipset has the PCI-E controller on the CPU and it has limitations as to allocated bandwidth. All of it's resources are available at full X16 speed when you have only one device on the PCI-E bus. But add another card, any type of card, and the P-55 chipset automagically throttles the available X16 speed to x8 for each device. It gets even worse when you add another card to the bus. So in this case, the single, but dual GPU graphics cards are the only truly viable solution for Crossfire/SLI effect. Having a fast, powerful single GPU card works rather well too.

Somebody mentioned crossfire so here it is http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/ARES_CrossFire/