ASUS MARS II Review: GTX 580 SLI On One PCB

Name: ASUS MARS II Geforce GTX 580 SLI
Brand: ASUS

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, August 26, 2011, 12:01 AM EDT

Performance Summary: Asus made summarizing the MARS II’s performance easy for us. The Asus MARS II is quite simply the fastest single graphics card we have ever tested, bar none. With the exception of Metro 2033 when run at 2560x1600, where the Radeon HD 6990 AUSUM (overclocked mode) finished less than 1 FPS ahead of the Asus MARS II, the MARS II finished ahead of every other card we tested in every benchmark. And in many cases the MARS II is upwards of 20% faster than its nearest competition.

Like Baby, the Asus MARS II Has Back

The Asus MARS II is a lot of things. It’s the fastest, single graphics card money can buy right now. It’s a limited edition product that’s going to cost a serious chunk of change, and it’s a physically imposing beast that uses a lot of power. From a technical standpoint, the Asus MARS II is arguably the most complex graphics card ever released and its specifications put it in a class all its own. The Asus MARS II is extreme in every sense of the word.

The Asus MARS II isn’t for everyone (obviously) though, and it's difficult to justify it's high price. The card’s physical dimensions and power requirements alone will also significantly limit its audience. Couple those factors with the MARS II’s $1499 price tag and you’ll get an idea as to why Asus is only making 999 of these babies. At that price the MARS II is about $750 more expensive than a GeForce GTX 590 and about $600-$660 more expensive than a pair of GeForce GTX 580 cards, which would offer nearly identical performance. Heck, three GTX 580s would be cheaper, use the same number of slot locations, and offer more performance.

If you’re the type of user that would consider the Asus MARS II, however, you probably don’t care about any of those things. If you’ve got the coin and want the fastest graphics card available—no matter the price—the Asus MARS II is it. It may not be a good value and it consumes more power than a truckload of netbooks, but the Asus MARS II is as hot as geek porn can get. Gigity.

Great Performance
Quiet At Idle
Limited Edition
3D Surround From a Single Card
Overclockable

Simply Huge
Can Be Loud Under Load
Uses a TON of Power
Extremely Expensive

Tags: Nvidia, Asus, GeForce, Gaming, graphics, GPU, sli, mars, GTX 580

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com