Imagine a graphics card weighing 5.25 pounds with three (yes, three) 8-pin PCI Express power connectors. Now imagine this card taking up three PCI Express slots and almost sucking the life out of an 850W power supply.
That may be one reason Asus named this card after the Roman god of war. It’s probably the most powerful single graphics card we’ve tested, but that power comes at a substantial cost. You’ll need the right type of motherboard and case, too—one where you can install a three-slot-wide card that’s 12.25 inches long and 5 inches tall.
Did we mention that it also costs $1,400?
The gigantic Mars II packs two 12cm fans and set a new record in our Lab for power consumption.
Now that you’ve recovered from the heart palpitations induced by the price, let’s talk about the real meat of this card. What Asus engineers have done is build a full GTX 580 SLI combo on a single card. We’re not talking about a namby-pamby GTX 590, which sacrifices clock speed to get a reasonable-size card. The Mars II is a pull-out-the-stops, full-steam-ahead GTX 580 SLI on a stick. And the cores aren’t just any 580 cores, either; they’re top-binned GPU dies that run at 782MHz—faster than run-of-the-mill GTX 580 chips. The 3GB of GDDR5 ticks along at 1,002MHz.
Asus built the card using its DirectCU thermal system with a pair of 12cm fans. Despite the monster nature of the card, it was surprisingly quiet under load—somewhat noisier than the GTX 590, but notably less so than the Radeon HD 6990. The card uses 21-phase power. As with the Matrix GTX 580 we reviewed last month, the card ships with Asus’s GPU Tweak utility, one of the easiest tools we’ve used for GPU overclocking.
Double‑wide GPU? That’s for wimps. The Mars II will swallow three slots on your motherboard.
So if this monster can actually run, then it should run at full SLI speeds. (Asus claims that the binned GPU parts can run even higher—above 800MHz—but given that we nearly melted the PSU in our test system, we avoided pushing the card.) As is, it’s no slouch in performance, but we were anxious to put it against a GeForce GTX 590 and AMD Radeon HD 6990.
The mythical Radeon HD 6990 won in just two areas: power consumption and Just Cause 2. The GTX 590 eked out a single benchmark win in Battle Forge, which is likely CPU-bound, since the differences overall are small. The Mars II swept the field in everything else. So you really can get SLI on a single card, if you’re willing to pay a premium.
You'll need a PSU that can supply three 8-pin power plugs to run the Mars II. The little red button manually forces all fans to full throttle.
That premium, by the way, includes the right power supply and case. Our Corsair TX850W survived the experience, but the 785W that the Mars II consumed under load set a Lab record for a single graphics card.
Clearly this card isn’t for everyone. The massive size, power draw, and price will discourage all but the most fanatical gamers. But the Mars II will appeal to those with the moolah, the system to handle it, and the desire to have the shiniest toy. But get in line—Asus will only make about 2,000 of these behemoths.
$1,400, www.asus.com
It’s damn fast, surprisingly quiet, and appealing in a monster truck kind of way.
The price is stratospheric; huge power draw; massive size.
| Asus Mars II | Asus GTX 590 | XFX Radeon HD 6990 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3DMark 2011 Perf | 10,328 | 8,421 | 8,863 |
| 3D Mark Vantage Perf | 31,536 | 28,261 | 28,075 |
| Unigine Heaven 2.1 (fps) | 85 | 54 | 50 |
| BattleForge DX11 (fps) | 143 | 147 | 99 |
| Far Cry 2 / Long (fps) | 154 | 149 | 149 |
| HAWX 2 DX11 (fps) | 201 | 186 | 145 |
| STALKER: CoP DX11 (fps) | 110 | 86 | 89 |
| Just Cause 2 (fps) | 62 | 60 | 72 |
| Aliens vs. Predator (fps) | 83 | 67 | 78 |
| F1 2010 (fps) | 100 | 82 | 87 |
| Metro 2033 (fps) | 48 | 39 | 39 |
| Power @ idle (W) | 189 | 174 | 156 |
| Power @ full throttle (W) | 785 | 515 | 501 |
Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a 3.33GHz Core i7-975 Extreme Edition in an Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard with 6GB of DDR3/1333 and an 850TX Corsair PSU. The OS is 64-bit Windows Ultimate. All games are run at 1920x1200 with 4x AA.
Watson Harlan
February 02, 2012 at 6:12am
Hey, I could use one of these by using the miniature nuclear reactor that powers my batcave!
1968Panther
November 29, 2011 at 7:12pm
Here's a better, smarter, faster, more powerful, and less expensive alternative. For the cost of a single Mars II, one can purchase two GTX 590 cards, creating a dual-card, Quad-SLI configuration. Not only do you end up with a better graphics system that costs less, but, being that each card only takes up two PCI-e slots, instead of a 6-slot width, you only use up a 4-slot width. Yes, the two cards, when combined, will eat up more peak power from the PSU, but a real gamer wouldn't be using a lowly little 850W PSU, such as the one used by MPC (ALWAYS use a 1000W/1200W+ PSU for a REAL gaming system…hint, hint) in their “test”.
rbb1534
November 14, 2011 at 4:43pm
Actually, I'd like to see how it performs against a system with 2 GTX-580s in SLI, since the two cards would only set you back about $1000, vs. the $1400 for this beast.
stinkypeepers
November 14, 2011 at 2:51pm
What a waste of money. "It's damn fast." Ok? So are the other two cards used in the benchmark tests, but they cost $600-700 less so....why waste your money on this garbage?
noobstix
November 14, 2011 at 12:52pm
In the words of "Ton" Jones from Auction Hunters...."Holy crap!"
kiaghi7
November 14, 2011 at 12:51pm
Because you KNOW someone has to say it...
The 3DMark 2011 score... IT'S OVER 9000!!!
Anyway though, darn impressive card, however tremendously impractical for any but the most extremely high end consumer... At which point they are going to yank that monstrous heat-sink and fan combo off and have a water-block (prefab or custom) attached to not only eliminate the noise but more efficiently move the heat.
Now of course the question becomes how well can it SLI with another Mars II card?
Oh, and obviously, MaxPC needs to get some of these for the next dream machine!
whathuhitwasntme
November 14, 2011 at 11:41am
so assuming I won the lottery Wednesday night
could I take two of these and run them in quad sli? just asking as I have a corsair 1200 watt ax gold power supply and its got a ton of connectors on it just hanging around waiting for a user!
other than buying stock in the electric company, would it run?
my case and motherboard are big enough I think, cooler master haf 932 and a asus p6t board it got 3 slots so I figure if I used the top and bottom one they should fit lol now to go buy that lotto ticket
MastaGuy
November 14, 2011 at 1:17pm
good luck getting a mobo with 6 pci express cards and a case that will fit it and keep it cool.
streetking
November 14, 2011 at 2:22pm
in response to whathuh, i was wondering this as well. i thought the 580's were only capable of tri-sli, but if you look on neweggs photo gallery, there is an sli bridge connector...
as for mastaguy, i think you mean pci-e slots, not cards, as mobos generally do not come with any peripherals. even still, a single mars II only requires one pci-e slot. in regards to the case, that depends on your motherboard configuration. you could get away with a case with 6 card slots. that being said, there are several motherboards on the market today that actually do have 6 or more pci-e slots, rendering your facetious fortune-wishes rather completely foolish and unwarranted.
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