ASUS MARS II Review: GTX 580 SLI On One PCB
Test Setup & Unigine Heaven v2.5
How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards in this article on a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 motherboard powered by a Core i7 980X six-core processor and 6GB of OCZ DDR3-1333 RAM. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the system BIOS and set all values to their "optimized" or "high performance" default settings. Then we manually configured the memory timings (DDR3-1333, CAS 7) and disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The hard drive was then formatted and Windows 7 Ultimate x64 was installed. When the installation was complete we fully updated the OS and installed the latest DirectX redist, along with the necessary drivers, games, and benchmark applications.
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Hardware Used: |
Relevant Software: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 DirectX April 2011 Redist ATI Catalyst v11.8 NVIDIA GeForce Drivers 280.26 Benchmarks Used: Unigine Heaven v2.5 Futuremark 3DMark11 FarCry 2 Just Cause 2 Alien vs. Predator Metro 2033 Lost Planet 2 F1 2010 |
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Unigine's Heaven Benchmark v2.5 is built around the Unigine game engine. Unigine is a cross-platform, real-time 3D engine, with support for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11 and OpenGL. The Heaven benchmark--when run in DX11 mode--also makes comprehensive use of tessellation technology and advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion) It also features volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm and a dynamic sky with light scattering. |
Do you see these two graphs? The ones with the longer bars in attached to the Asus MARS II entry? Get used to 'em, because the Unigine Heaven Benchmark isn't the only one that the Asus MARS II dominated. As you can see, Asus' powerhouse outran both the GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990 by a wide margin here.
