ASUS ROG Mars II 3GB - A Mini Review

[siopao1984]

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ASUS ROG Mars II 3GB - A Mini Review by VR-Zone.com

Back in 2009, ASUS launched their 1000-piece limited edition mammoth "Mars" (2 x GTX285 on a single card) and took the performance crown over then GPU leaders NVIDIA GTX295 and AMD HD5970, albeit at a significant price premium. Two years later today, we do a mini review on the world's fastest single graphics card equipped with two GTX580 Fermi cores - the ASUS Republic of Gamers Mars II 3GB.

Introduction



A very big box





Like its predecessor, the ASUS ROG Mars II has limited production run of 999 pieces (ours was the "529th").



From the specifications table above, we see that the Mars II is clocked marginally higher (1.3%) than the reference GTX 580 core clock, and 28% over the similar dual chip GTX 590. To sustain the higher frequencies, the ROG team at ASUS designed a custom PCB and power circruitry on the Mars II, allowing the 2 GF110 Fermi cores to perform at their full potential on a single card.



On the triple slot I/O shield, we have two DVI-D ports, a HDMI and a Display Port interface on the card allowing for up to 4 display outputs.



At the side of the card, there are 3 x 8 pin PCIE power connectors delivering up to 450W of additional power. There is also a red-backlit button to override and trigger 100% fan speeds on the two huge 120mm fans in the cooling system.



Accesories



ASUS has thoughtfully bundled a "PCI-E sustainer" to protect the motherboard and to aid mounting in obtuse cases.

[siopao1984]

Aesthetics and Design

Size

The card takes up three slots and measures 13 inch x 6.2 inch x 2.5 inch, which means it will only fit in large Extended ATX cases or open-air setups. This complicates multi-card SLi and restricts air flow on some motherboards (ASUS provides a 12cm SLI bridge).



Aesthetics

Inheriting the design and red-black colour scheme of the current range of Republic Of Gamers products, the Mars II looks great in any enthusiast's setup and would compliment their ASUS ROG range of motherboards.





The grooves and ridges on the Mars II shroud were designed to look like the heat pipe coolers on ROG motherboards.

Power Circuitry - "21 Phase Super Alloy Power"



Comprising of 21 phases of power, "Super Alloy" MOSes, Chokes and Capacitors, the use of these components purportedly reduce overall power loss, enhance durability and achieve cooler temperatures over Nvidia reference designs.



One NEC Proadlizer is used for each GPU.



Thermal Design



To help cool this beast, each heatsink has four copper heatpipes.





The dual 120mm fans that we see on the Mars II is the largest air cooling design we have ever encountered in a retail graphics card. They push a lot of air at high RPMs and were generally silent in normal operation.

[dhekoy33]

pagkanindot sa vcard.

[siopao1984]

Quick Benchmarks

Mini Setup



Motherboard : MSI P67A-GD55
Processor: Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4.5GHz
RAM : Gskill F3-12800CL6D-4GBPI 6-8-6-24 at 1.6V
Hard Drive : Hitachi Deskstar 250GB
Power Supply : Corsair HX620 PSU; ASUS Vento 650W PSU
Graphics Card : ASUS MARS II
CPU Cooler : Cooler Master V6
Case : LianLi T60 TestBench
Operating System : Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Graphics Drivers : Nvidia 280.26 Forceware Drivers

Contenders: GTX 580 Matrix Platinum in Dual Card SLI



Due to the limited time we had with our card, we did not bench the Mars II against more configurations that we normally do. We apologise to our readers for that and are planning to release a full fledged review with more numbers some time in the future.

3DMark Vantage (DX10)


3DMark 11 (DX11)




Unigine Heavens 2.5 (OpenGL)


Lost Planet II (DX11)


Resident Evil 5 (DX9)


Alien vs Predator (DX11)


Street Fighter IV (DX9)


As we can see in most cases, the Mars II performed close to and even edged the faster clocked dual SLi GTX 580 in some benchmark runs. This can be attributed to higher SLi latencies on the motherboard, and probably the optimized PCB traces on the Mars II.

[siopao1984]

Temperatures and Overclocking

Temperatures

We ran FurMark 1.9 and measured temperatures with a thermocouple thermometer placed on top base plate of the left heatsink. Fans were set to 100%.

Room Temperature: 25 Degrees Centigrade
Idle Temperature: 38.3 Degrees Centigrade
5 Minutes into Furmark : 52.2 Degrees Centigrade

Furmark showed figures according to the on-die temperature sensors on MARS II.



Unfortunately during the Furmark Burn in Test, the dual 120mm fans at 100% speed and huge heatpipe coolers did not prevent the cores from reaching the maximum thermal threshold of 97 degrees centigrade and therefore inducing clockspeed throttling.



Overclocking the Mars II

Using the provided ASUS GPUTweak Tool, we managed to push the core clock to 815MHz at stock voltage. In yet another disappointment, we encountered negative scaling in 3DMark Vantage, possibly due to thermal throttling.



We will clarify this behaviour with ASUS ROG engineers and possibly remount the heatsink/reapply thermal paste before our more comprehensive review.

[eXpLoDe]

ayay. nka question mark man ang power consumption mo lapas na cguros 400watts ay. hehehe

[siopao1984]

TL;DR



The Asus ROG Mars II, following in the footsteps of its predecessor, is the fastest single card GPU in the world today, even edging the higher clocked SLi GTX 580 Matrix Platinum in some benchmarks. Much like the brilliant but fatally flawed GTX590, air cooling is simply not enough to tame and unlock the full potential of two GF110 Fermi cores on a single PCB.

Most unfortunately, the bragging rights of owning this limited 999 piece production run card comes at a mind boggling SGD$ 2,499 / US$ 1,499 / PHP 87,465. For the rational buyer, we simply cannot recommend this over a dual GTX590/HD6990 setup which would deliver almost double the performance, at around the same price range.

In our upcoming full review, we at VR-Zone hope to

1. Pit the card against competition from AMD/ATi (namely the HD6970 and HD6990)

2. Run two ASUS ROG Mars II in "Quad SLi"

3. Explore Water Cooling/LN2 effects on extreme overclocking

4. Upcoming Bulldozer / Sandy Bridge-E platforms

5. Run more benchmarks like Crysis 2 DX11, CUDA/Physx tests and even Battlefield 3!



This mini review was written by Yzuke Zhng, edited by Lennard Seah, and photo credits to Mervyn Chng.

[BackBeat]

Grabe na pud nang 3 ka 8pin oi.. haha di pd kaha mabawg ang board ani madugay kupot niya.. hehe bug-at man ug hulagway

[freelancetech]

This is what makes ASUS great among all. Persistent Perfection, inspiring innovation! ASUS ROCKZ!