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

Futuremark 3DMark11

Synthetic DirectX Gaming

Futuremark 3DMark11

The latest version of Futuremark's synthetic 3D gaming benchmark, 3DMark11, is specifically bound to Windows Vista and WIndows 7-based systems due to its DirectX 11 requirement, which isn't available on previous versions of Windows. 3DMark11 isn't simply a port of 3DMark Vantage to DirectX 11, though. With this latest version of the benchmark, Futuremark has incorporated four new graphics tests, a physics tests, and a new combined test. We tested the graphics cards here with 3DMark11's Extreme preset option, which uses a resolution of 1920x1080 with 4x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering.

Nothing could touch the Asus MARS II in the 3DMark11 benchmark. While running in AUSUM mode, the Radeon HD 6990 came within a few hundred points, but ultimately the MARS II was still more than 10% faster than the OC'd Radeon and about 18 - 22% faster than the stock 6990 and GTX 590.

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