Review: Asus Ares

Video cards that are named after gods is nothing new for the portfolio of Asus. You might rememer Mars, a dual Geforce GTX 285 with a total of 4 memory GiByte. Not surprisingly Ares strikes in the same line, Ares is the son of Zeus and the god of war of the Greeks. The Ares is delivered in a nearly 7-pound package in a steel case. Besides the card itself the package contains a ROG-mouse, two power adapters, an HDMI to DVI adapter and a metal case badge.

 

Asus Ares (2) [Source: view picture gallery]

Asus Ares: Specs
As previously announced, Ares combines two Cypress chips on a board - like the Radeon HD 5970. Unlike AMD's flagship the Ares relies on 850/2.400 MHz frequency and is thus theoretically a dual Radeon HD 5870 - with 2 GiByte GDDR5 per GPU. In theory, the Ares is 17-20 percent faster than a Radeon HD 5970.

 

Asus Ares (6) [Source: view picture gallery]

Asus Ares: Kühlung, Platine sowie Leistungsaufnahme und Lautheit
The Ares weighs in 2,16 kg at dimensions of 29.3 x 12.0 x 5.1 cm. The board carries a heavy metal plate on both sides. The heat of the chips are transported by four massive 8mm heatpipes, a 92-mm axial fan is in the middle. The two 8-pin and the single 6-pin connector theoretically allow a power of 450 watts.

At idle, the Asus Ares is sparingly: only 40 watts correspond to a Radeon HD 5970 and is below a Geforce GTX 480. During games, the card reaches 271 watts. This is about 100 watts above a Radeon HD 5970 and about 30 watts over a Geforce GTX 480. Under full load (Ozone3D Furmark), the Ares sets a new negative record and even surpasses the Mars (474 watts): 489 watts requires a very strong power supply. The noise in 2D is acceptable with 1.3 to 2.3 sone. Race Driver: Grid gets very loud on the Ares with 9.5 Sone and Furmark is reaching 12.4 Sone. After all, Asus learned from the mistakes of the Mars , which clocked down a few minutes due to overheating.

We show you benchmarks of six games running the Ares. It is important to note that even in 2560 x 1600, CPUs can hinder the graphics performance. On the other hand, the two GiByte VRAM per GPU are very important (especially for Metro 2033 and Warhead). Bad Company 2, however, shows a typical multi GPU problem: The Ares is slightly slower than a Radeon HD 5870 - we have no idea, why. Our overclocking tests don't show any spectacular results (960/2.700 MHz at 1.30 volts - 1.175 volts is standard).

Summary: The Ares is a collector's item with exceptional cooling. The cooling is very loud, but the card achieves pleasant temperatures. The pricing prevents that standard gamers should take the Ares into consideration.

Choose the game via mouse click

  Anno 1404     Bad Company 2     CMR Dirt 2     CoD MW2     Crysis Warhead     Metro 2033  

You will find more information on the Asus Ares in the review at PCGH.de.