Posted 06/01/09 at 09:51:10 AM by Paul Lilly

You'll have to look to Mars to spy the fastest desktop consumer graphics card in the galaxy, which is the name of the new GPU Asus is showing off at Computex. Instead of two semi-custom GPUs that sit "between" a GTX 260 and 280, the Asus Mars 295 Limited Edition stuffs two higher end GTX 285 chips -- the fastest single GPU in Nvidia's lineup -- into a single package.

All told, the new card boasts all 240 shader processors on each GPU, a full 512-bit GDDR3 memory interface, 32 memory chips for 4GB total (2GB accessible per GPU), and the same core/shader/memory clockspeeds as the GTX 285 (648/1476/2400 MHz). By comparison, a traditional GTX 295 sports 896MB of GDDR3 per GPU on a 448-bit memory bus with core/shader/memory clockspeeds checking in at 576/1242/2000 MHz.

According to TechPowerUp, the funky looking cooler uses the same basic internal construction as the reference design for GTX 295 cards, albeit extending "slightly higher."

No word on price or availability, but Asus did say it would limit the run to 1,000 individually numbered cards.

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Posted 02/03/09 at 03:59:18 PM by Andy Salisbury

Just this week Google and NASA announced the release of Google Earth’s new “Mars mode,” a feature that will allow users of the planet-browsing program to check out high-resolution shots of the red planet’s exterior.

Google Earth’s new feature “enables users to fly virtually through enormous canyons and scale huge mountains on Mars that are much larger than any found on Earth. Users also can explore the Red Planet through the eyes of the Mars rovers and other Mars missions, providing a unique perspective of the entire planet,” according to the press release distributed by NASA.

This will also give the scientific community an easy way to share information about Mars, and give every user the opportunity to understand its basic science.

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