Wow the on the fly fan control is sweeeeeeeeeeeeet!

But only practical if you have a test bench. But nice nontheless

Also imo, the best feature of this card is the backplate. Looks better, I like that the name of the card is on it and that it has holes for better air flow.

Too bad it is 3 slot... to be honest, if you are going to buy this card, you are probably running (or going to be running) a tri-monitor setup anyways, and in order to connect 3 monitors you are going to need SLI (nvidia restrict 2 monitors per card, and 2 monitors for gaming is just stupid), and pop in another MATRIX, your motherboard's slots will be pretty much filled. (this depends on the layout of the motherboard, but) which means, as an enthusiast, I might not have room for extra:

Dedicated Soundcard / Capture Card
RAID Card (LSI, Highpoint etc..)
Wifi PCIe Adapter
PCIe SSD cards such as OCZ Revo x2
USB/SATA expansion cards

I will never buy a 3 slot graphic card, despite how great it performs, IMO graphic cards should be 2 slots MAX, ASUS engineers need to go back to the drawing board because MSI can keep their Twin Frozr cards cool and silent while still keeping it at 2 slots. I own a MSI GTX580 Lightning btw, and it is blazing at 900/1800/4400 Mhz @ stock voltage, while temps are just sitting at 30C idle and 65~68C load

Only 2 x8 pins

I would only get a 3slot card if it was a dual core card, like a 6990 or a 590.
But i would like one, even if i just bought a lightning

yeah show me a AMD 6000 matrix in a dual slot its not even a mars or aries i hope those havent moved to 4 slot :shadedshu

I like the plate tho the card wont droop. but im on a 90 degree anyway

*cough* 590 mars *cough*

had no idea how big it would be..

I think it's about time they start making Motherboards out of Titanium >_>.

Only 1.5GB memory? Weaksauce.

*drools* i wish i had 4 of these in quad sli!

I was hoping to see a card like this have 3gb, and higher clocks too. given the amount of everything else they have thrown at it. Hopefully its all being saved for le coup de grâce, a 6gb ROG MARS Dual GTX580.

Funtoss*drools* i wish i had 4 of these in quad sli!

I wish I had a board that could fit only three of these :rolleyes:

I did count 3 slots LOL
I'm surprised it don't have an extra 6 pin somewhere too.

low clocks considering the cooler they slapped on there. Odd they wouldn't go 3GB. would make sense for sli, then again they wouldn't have made it a 3 slot if they were thinking about sli.

arterius2Too bad it is 3 slot... to be honest, if you are going to buy this card, you are probably running (or going to be running) a tri-monitor setup anyways, and in order to connect 3 monitors you are going to need SLI (nvidia restrict 2 monitors per card, and 2 monitors for gaming is just stupid), and pop in another MATRIX, your motherboard's slots will be pretty much filled. (this depends on the layout of the motherboard, but) which means, as an enthusiast, I might not have room for extra:

Dedicated Soundcard / Capture Card
RAID Card (LSI, Highpoint etc..)
Wifi PCIe Adapter
PCIe SSD cards such as OCZ Revo x2
USB/SATA expansion cards

I will never buy a 3 slot graphic card, despite how great it performs, IMO graphic cards should be 2 slots MAX, ASUS engineers need to go back to the drawing board because MSI can keep their Twin Frozr cards cool and silent while still keeping it at 2 slots. I own a MSI GTX580 Lightning btw, and it is blazing at 900/1800/4400 Mhz @ stock voltage, while temps are just sitting at 30C idle and 65~68C load

No, they probably won't. Why does everyone always assume the obscure is the norm? Personally I like their going all out approach with these triple slot designs. Like "this so so fucking expensive no one will bother with sli" so they just put everything into making the best single card. And having run a quad slot card with extra room for sli and a soundcard I really doubt that'd be an issue anyways. I don't even get your point about those expansion cards, you wouldn't have room for all that even with one card. Not to mention what kind of enthusiast would run such a messy system with all that unnecessary garbage. Those are things you'd find in separate dedicated rigs like your home theater/server machine, not some triple card gaming rig.

the back plate looks like an after thought tbh , not a patch on the 5870 matrix

3 slot? it maybe thicker than my original amd hsf
but i like the design its kinda solid and promising

This is THE card for single GPU users. I wouldn't mind paying this premium and or the extra PCIE slot.

LAN_deRf_HANo, they probably won't. Why does everyone always assume the obscure is the norm? Personally I like their going all out approach with these triple slot designs. Like "this so so fucking expensive no one will bother with sli" so they just put everything into making the best single card. And having run a quad slot card with extra room for sli and a soundcard I really doubt that'd be an issue anyways. I don't even get your point about those expansion cards, you wouldn't have room for all that even with one card. Not to mention what kind of enthusiast would run such a messy system with all that unnecessary garbage. Those are things you'd find in separate dedicated rigs like your home theater/server machine, not some triple card gaming rig.

you misunderstood me, i dont mean having ALL those cards in there, I just list the types of cards that could be in there. just because you don't have them doesn't make you the norm. Also, those are not "garbage", I know plenty of people who run Revo X2 or Vertex 3 Raid 0 setup in their gaming rig with LSI Raid Cards @1000MB/s+ sequential r/w, just because you don't- or couldn't afford it, doesn't mean its garbage, I run an Intel Ultimate-N 6300 Wireless card+adapter in my rig that takes up a PCIe slot, and no, its not garbage, I use it because circumstances require me to use it.

Triple slot is plainly stupid, its like brute forcing your way in, "HOW TO MAKE COOLING BETTER?!! O WAIT LETS JUST ADD MORE COPPER!!!" why is that other companies such as MSI or Gigabyte can achieve the same result or better with dual-slots? perhaps Asus should spend more R&D into developing better coolers, not saying DirectCUII isnt efficient, it is just not elegant, I'm a professional designer myself, so you can see how this would bother me.

In the end tho, it doesn't really matter, because when I was choosing my GTX580 for my rig, between the DirectCUII and TwinFrozrIII,(lost my business there) i went with MSI (and they are going to lose my business again) For me? well I don't really care because Twin Frozr coolers are dual slot, dead silent and efficient at the same time, not to mention the huge overclock headroom.

Given this is likely to come with a price tag with about a 100 dollar premium over standard GTX 580's it's disappointing they didn't just tack on another $30-$50, and give me 3 gb of memory.

Also Nvidia really needs to allow 3 monitors on it's consumer cards, it's not like the cards don't have the muscle to make it happen!

I mean when they first introduced the feature at the time you could score GTX 275's and 280's and 285's for 90-120 dollars each, and I'm sure you still can but in far smaller quantity's. But now I see no reason at all why my 300 dollar video card will not support 3 monitors!