# ASUS ARES CrossFire



## W1zzard (Jul 3, 2010)

In this review we test two ASUS ARES cards in a 4-GPU CrossFire combination. With a total price of $2000 for those cards this is certainly not for everybody. For additional reference we also combined the ARES with a HD 5970 and a HD 5870.

*Show full review*


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## DanTheMan (Jul 7, 2010)

Thanks for the review W1zzard 
One ARES is more than enough - two is just showing off - but I was suprised on what little you gain in Crossfire. Like I've said before a OC 5850 or a single 5870 is plenty for 99.9% of the users today.


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## Kreij (Jul 7, 2010)

Great review W1zz 

We now know that it takes $2000 of graphics hardware, drawing up to 900W on its own, to almost get 50fps in Crysis at 2560x1600.


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## melkhior (Jul 7, 2010)

That's fucking insane


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## Easo (Jul 7, 2010)

Whom should i kidnap to get pair of those?


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## Whilhelm (Jul 7, 2010)

Any power consumption charts on these beasts? It would also be nice to see SLI 480s shown for comparison. 

Nice review


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## cbupdd (Jul 7, 2010)

Wow! Great review!
If possible, we would like to see power consumution on this two. And if you are bored, some test at 1ghz each would be great 
That would be some nice stress to the psu


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Jul 7, 2010)

I'd love to see this vs quad sli 480s. So we know what setup rains supreme. I'd imagine quad sli but you won't know if scaling issues change things up until someone really compares the two.


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## AhokZYashA (Jul 7, 2010)

2 of them is just showoff.
im better using 2 5870s in crossfire.

but i would like to see the power consumption on two of those at full load.


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## ACEkombatkiwi (Jul 7, 2010)

Awesome review as always W1zz. 

Any plans to do a couple of benchies with a modest Eyfinity setup like 5760x1080 or 3240x1920. 

If Asus really wanted to show what these cards are capable of they would arrange for a suitable test system as well like a 980x and an Eyefinity setup which is what these beats are aiming for, its really quite disappointing on their part. :shadedshu


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## kora04 (Jul 8, 2010)

scaling is not very good. so Im guessing these cards should only be used on an eyefinity setup of 1680*1050 monitors or higher.


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## cdawall (Jul 8, 2010)

scaling is terrible...would love to see 3x/4x GTX480 as well complete with power consumption graphs


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## zOaib (Jul 8, 2010)

cdawall said:


> scaling is terrible...would love to see 3x/4x GTX480 as well complete with power consumption graphs



+1 for that i would like to see that too =)


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## SteelSix (Jul 8, 2010)

*You got two of em? Flippin Sweet!





Lucky..

You gotta post some rig pics if you have em W1zzard..*


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 8, 2010)

some people here make me tired because they sound like a broken record, always trying to beat a dead horse- which is not fun at all and is lame... Nice review but the cards cooling is just too big to fit in most cases that want to utilize other external boards.

TBH I'd Take 2 Asus Matrix 5870 2GB or 2 Power Color PCS+ 5870 2GB boards, and run them in True Crossfire, Overclocked using ATI Tray Tools, or Bios Modified


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## damric (Jul 8, 2010)

Looks like I get exactly 529% more performance per dollar with my current card than the Asus Aries x2. Great review though!


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## Mussels (Jul 8, 2010)

i think with this much video power, you may well be CPU limited - even on a 3.8Ghz i7


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## mdsx1950 (Jul 8, 2010)

Wow 2 of these squash the 2 HD 5970s in metro 2033.


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Jul 8, 2010)

This is for an eyefinity setup imo. Lots of headroom left for the CPU oc though


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## btarunr (Jul 8, 2010)

SteelSix said:


> *You got two of em? Flippin Sweet!
> http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/steelsix/napoleon-dynamite.jpg
> Lucky..
> 
> You gotta post some rig pics if you have em W1zzard..*



They're on page one. W1zzard's personal rig runs a PowerColor PCS+ HD 5870.


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## zithe (Jul 8, 2010)

Holy CRAP that's awesome looking.

You never know if the minimum is going up or down which is more important than average when you're getting into the 100s. Maybe the extra GPUs are increasing minimum frames? Nobody shows that kind of stuff.


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## mdsx1950 (Jul 8, 2010)

I can just imagine running two of these ARES cards heavily overclocked with a GTX 480 for Physx on heavily overclocked dual heaxacore Xeons on an SR2 with 48GB of Ram. lol. That should be the world most powerful system i can think of lol.


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## zithe (Jul 8, 2010)

mdsx1950 said:


> I can just imagine running two of these ARES cards heavily overclocked with a GTX 480 for Physx on heavily overclocked dual heaxacore Xeons on an SR2 with 48GB of Ram. lol. That should be the world most powerful system i can think of lol.



Don't forget like 8 SSDs in raid 0.


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## mdsx1950 (Jul 8, 2010)

zithe said:


> Don't forget like 8 SSDs in raid 0.



Wonder how the power consumption will be when running a heavy program like Furmark.


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## AhokZYashA (Jul 8, 2010)

mdsx1950 said:


> Wonder how the power consumption will be when running a heavy program like Furmark.



up up in the sky!!
lol


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## W1zzard (Jul 8, 2010)

single card furmark is 450w, so two cards is like 800w because they don't scale 100%


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## kkaddu (Jul 8, 2010)

ACEkombatkiwi said:


> Awesome review as always W1zz.
> 
> Any plans to do a couple of benchies with a modest Eyfinity setup like 5760x1080 or 3240x1920.
> 
> If Asus really wanted to show what these cards are capable of they would arrange for a suitable test system as well like a 980x and an Eyefinity setup which is what these beats are aiming for, its really quite disappointing on their part. :shadedshu



HAVE TO AGREE.
atleast the equivalent 6 core AMD would make better sense. the CPU here just cannot feed these monsters enough.
I would still put my money on TRI SLI 480s (personal opinion)


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## caleb (Jul 8, 2010)

Seriously no BadCompany 2...


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## mdsx1950 (Jul 8, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> single card furmark is 450w, so two cards is like 800w because they don't scale 100%



Thats good news. Thanks.


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## tkpenalty (Jul 8, 2010)

w1zz i'd redo these reviews with an i7 at 4Ghz+ ....

most of the results are bottlenecking  

shows how much we need competition when the GPU is getting held back by the CPU.


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## W1zzard (Jul 8, 2010)

tkpenalty said:


> w1zz i'd redo these reviews with an i7 at 4Ghz+ ....
> 
> most of the results are bottlenecking
> 
> shows how much we need competition when the GPU is getting held back by the CPU.



clock your cpu down by 10% and tell me how much fps you lost (equal to a 10% overclock)


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## SteelSix (Jul 8, 2010)

btarunr said:


> They're on page one. W1zzard's personal rig runs a PowerColor PCS+ HD 5870.



Yep I saw the cards slotted on the mobo. Does he use an open bench setup? That would have been cool to see. He's the only one I've seen with 2 of these.


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## Mussels (Jul 8, 2010)

kkaddu said:


> HAVE TO AGREE.
> atleast the equivalent 6 core AMD would make better sense. the CPU here just cannot feed these monsters enough.
> I would still put my money on TRI SLI 480s (personal opinion)



more cores wont help 95% of games out there, you need faster cores, not more of them.

If w1zz wanted to show the true power of these monster cards he'd need one hell of an OC'd system - and it'd be useless for the rest of his reviews, so its a waste of time and money.


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## Fourstaff (Jul 8, 2010)

Mussels said:


> If w1zz wanted to show the true power of these monster cards he'd need one hell of an OC'd system - and it'd be useless for the rest of his reviews, so its a waste of time and money.



Well, this review is "different", so I say W1z might want to do a special run, if he has the time and also if he wants to prove that the rig is not cpu bottlenecked. How often do you see 4 top end chips running in a rig?


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## Mussels (Jul 8, 2010)

Fourstaff said:


> Well, this review is "different", so I say W1z might want to do a special run, if he has the time and also if he wants to prove that the rig is not cpu bottlenecked. How often do you see 4 top end chips running in a rig?



is it worth his time/potential degradation of the components in his benchmark system? what if something goes wrong and fails?

yes, its a point of interest for us all... but at the same time, the benefits we get (only useful in quad GPU reviews at present) arent really going to occur often enough for it to be worthwhile.


I suppose if he had the time he could simply drop 500Mhz off the system (lower the multiplier or something) and see how its affected, and assume it would react the opposite when OC'd higher.


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## W1zzard (Jul 8, 2010)

Mussels said:


> I suppose if he had the time he could simply drop 500Mhz off the system (lower the multiplier or something) and see how its affected, and assume it would react the opposite when OC'd higher.



correct assumption, but i have no time (do i ever?) .. working on the new nvidia card reviews for monday


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## lism (Jul 8, 2010)

Great review man.


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## dir_d (Jul 8, 2010)

Mussels said:


> i think with this much video power, you may well be CPU limited - even on a 3.8Ghz i7



I think you would need a 4 to 5Ghz 980X to really see the difference between the cards


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## crazyeyesreaper (Jul 8, 2010)

and i dont get what the hubub is about serious 2 $1000 gpus i can see ppl grabbing 2 5970s maybe since there like $700 but $1k per gpu the review was nice W1zz but i cant see why ppl are complaining its nice to know what these gpus CAN do but the fact it 99% of the ppl here will never have 2 ARES cards. and to get an idea on there performance look at 5970 crossfire reviews where they overclocked the gpus etc and look at the new 4gig 5970 reviews someone will do said review the ARES cards are not THAT special there cherry picked and ran at 5870 clocks last i checked sapphire did the same thing on there 4 gig model.

i agree eyefinity tests are intresting but there not worth the hassel to test since very few ppl will game that way aka lots of extra effort to appease 1% of the world


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## Meizuman (Jul 9, 2010)

Would've been fun to see how a 890FX + 1090T had perform with those. Just because there were benches some time ago where PH II X4 would beat i7 in some games.


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## xtremesv (Jul 9, 2010)

Kreij said:


> Great review W1zz
> 
> We now know that it takes $2000 of graphics hardware, drawing up to 900W on its own, to almost get 50fps in Crysis at 2560x1600.



Maximum strength... maximum speed 

 how pathetic 5850 looks on those benchies (of course analysing irrelevant >80 fps)

Nice review.


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## WarEagleAU (Jul 9, 2010)

All I can say is WOW!


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## SamHughe (Jul 12, 2010)

First of all, awesome review. One of the best reviews I read about this particular card.
The results for ARES+5870 is the most interesting. I bet the performance is even better with ARES+5870 (2GB) card. I'd love to see someone comparing that config to 3x5870 2GBs.


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## W1zzard (Jul 12, 2010)

SamHughe said:


> First of all, awesome review. One of the best reviews I read about this particular card.
> The results for ARES+5870 is the most interesting. I bet the performance is even better with ARES+5870 (2GB) card. I'd love to see someone comparing that config to 3x5870 2GBs.



sure, send me 2x 5870 and 1x 5870 2 GB and i can do that


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## wteSmithy (Jul 16, 2010)

Mussels said:


> more cores wont help 95% of games out there, you need faster cores, not more of them.
> 
> If w1zz wanted to show the true power of these monster cards he'd need one hell of an OC'd system - and it'd be useless for the rest of his reviews, so its a waste of time and money.



I suppose we have to let our imagination run with that one and say the fps in the review (digested every word!) is the minimum you'd expect to get for your hard-earned cash. Whereas typical hardcore gaming CPUs such as the 965/975/980s are oc'd 4 - 4.5Ghz and would probably gain another 20% fps quite easily. So we can forget that until someone posts their bling bench setup here.

I was just happy you included my old-ish 4870 512MB ( I have two so I'm not that poor  ) as comparison at the end, since 'other' websites are ignorant to lesser cards such as mine


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## W1zzard (Jul 16, 2010)

no way you can see 20% more fps from 10-15% more cpu clock. show me your data before you make wild claims .. reduce your cpu clock by 20% whats the loss in fps?


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## wteSmithy (Jul 16, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> no way you can see 20% more fps from 10-15% more cpu clock. show me your data before you make wild claims .. reduce your cpu clock by 20% whats the loss in fps?



There is a common fact that there is no way to say universally that all PCs perform the same and I didn't intend for it to come across as that. I was saying in comparison from a friends PC which is a watercooled 980x @4.4Ghz, running a Ati 5970 and Corsair Dominator GT RAM.

I spoke to just now and he said: on 3dMark06 from 3.3Ghz to 4.4ghz, his performance was 20% better. Quite obvious since it's CPU limited. On Stalker: CoP, he found that minimum fps increased quite a bit and average fps was just a small increase. Maximum fps actually didn't increase on Crysis but framerate was more stable than at lower clocks.


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## blibba (Sep 28, 2010)

wteSmithy said:


> There is a common fact that there is no way to say universally that all PCs perform the same and I didn't intend for it to come across as that. I was saying in comparison from a friends PC which is a watercooled 980x @4.4Ghz, running a Ati 5970 and Corsair Dominator GT RAM.
> 
> I spoke to just now and he said: on 3dMark06 from 3.3Ghz to 4.4ghz, his performance was 20% better. Quite obvious since it's CPU limited. On Stalker: CoP, he found that minimum fps increased quite a bit and average fps was just a small increase. Maximum fps actually didn't increase on Crysis but framerate was more stable than at lower clocks.




That's a 33% increase in CPU clock speed for 20% more benchmark (not real world) performance.

I also am looking forward to some GTX480 quad SLIs thrown in, and maybe a higher clocked i7 

To the guy who suggested a 6 core phenom earlier - most games won't make good use of 6 cores, the phenoms would struggle to keep up even more than the 3.8ghz i7. (Wow, yes I did just say that the 3.8ghz i7 was struggling to keep up.)

Seeing as you have so much spare time Wizz, can we see some Nvidia vs ATI comparisons with 3 displays


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