Monday, May 30th 2011

ASUS MARS II Graphics Card Pictured

The Republic of Gamers MARS II, detailed earlier, is a new custom dual-GF110 based graphics card in the works at ASUS. Here are some of its first pictures, revealing a monstrosity that's about as long as a Radeon HD 5970, a couple of inches higher, and three slots thick. Its cooler sticks to the black+red color scheme in use with ASUS ROG products for a while now, and uses an intricate cutout design.

The shroud suspends two 120 mm high-sweep fans that blow air on to two heatsinks with highly dense aluminum fin arrays to which heat is fed by copper heat pipes. The card draws power from three 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors. The card uses two NVIDIA GF110 GPUs with the same core configuration and clock profile as GeForce GTX 580, effectively making MARS II a dual-GTX 580, which also provides the overclocking headroom of a GTX 580, something impossible on a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590.
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70 Comments on ASUS MARS II Graphics Card Pictured

#26
blibba
theJesusW1z, any plans on doing a review of this? It would be great to see how it compares to a 590.
There are plenty of reviews of 580 SLI vs 590. Performance-wise, this is identical to 580 SLI.

It's only really power consumption and temperatures/noise that we don't know about yet.
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#27
D4S4
i wanna see the pcb.
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#28
Kreij
Senior Monkey Moderator
Can this even be mounted in a regular case (vertical mobo)?
It looks like it weights about 10 lbs.
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#29
avatar_raq
A card this big and they fail to use two 120mm or at least 90mm fans!! :S
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#30
theJesus
W1zzardas soon as asus sends me one. they wouldnt let me get away with the card from the show.. i tried .. maybe next time i should bring some of our trolls, fanboys and ninjas to assist me
Haha, I'm TheMailMan would have had a fun time :laugh:
blibbaThere are plenty of reviews of 580 SLI vs 590. Performance-wise, this is identical to 580 SLI.

It's only really power consumption and temperatures/noise that we don't know about yet.
That may be true, but there is also the possibly higher overclocking potential.
KreijCan this even be mounted in a regular case (vertical mobo)?
It looks like it weights about 10 lbs.
Put a stick under it :laugh:
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#31
kinc
ASUS Representative
avatar_raqA card this big and they fail to use two 120mm or at least 90mm fans!! :S
The fans are 120mm :)
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#32
popswala
Now all we need is longer mobo's to support sli/tri and still be able to run other cards i.e. turner, ssd, audio or expansion cards. O, and we'll need taller cases to have more then 7-8 pci slots.

Those r freakin power hungry :eek: sweet lookin. Prob lookin round the price of two 580 i'm guessin'.
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#33
HossHuge
W1zzardas soon as asus sends me one. they wouldnt let me get away with the card from the show.. i tried .. maybe next time i should bring some of our trolls, fanboys and ninjas to assist me
Can I play the role of the ninja? I'll be there in the morning...:toast:

45 min scooter ride!!! :rockout:
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#34
theJesus
popswalaNow all we need is longer mobo's to support sli/tri and still be able to run other cards i.e. turner, ssd, audio or expansion cards. O, and we'll need taller cases to have more then 7-8 pci slots.
Look up HPTX, it's already here.
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#35
mlee49
cadaveca3x 8-pin...:twitch:...damn.
My thoughts exactly...

I do wonder about the power phase design, must be magnificent.
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#36
blibba
popswalaNow all we need is longer mobo's to support sli/tri and still be able to run other cards i.e. turner, ssd, audio or expansion cards. O, and we'll need taller cases to have more then 7-8 pci slots.
You can already get (much) taller than standard cases, so you can just have two of these filling the bottom four slots of a standard ATX board (with suitably positioned PCI-E x16 slots) and you'll have the top three slots free for whatever you want :)
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#37
laszlo
this won't blend don't fit in blender....
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#38
blibba
laszlothis won't blend don't fit in blender....
That didn't stop him with the rake handle! I'm sure there's a way.
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#39
avatar_raq
kincThe fans are 120mm
This is what I thought when I saw the pics, then I read this:
btarunrThe shroud suspends two 80 mm
Then btarunr corrected it silently after my post :shadedshu
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#40
jaredpace
D4S4i wanna see the pcb.


might have changed some since they slapped gf110's on
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#41
LAN_deRf_HA
Hmmm. My perpetually unbuilt but up to date fantasy build just got $1200 more expensive (expecting a $600 premium per card over the 6990).
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#42
kzinti1
A complete waste of space. Both in the real world and this Forum. I could easily buy one of these things. I could also buy a metric ton of manure and still have no use for either. They both stink.
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#43
HUSKIE
is this on the market now yet?
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#44
Wile E
Power User
W1zzardas soon as asus sends me one. they wouldnt let me get away with the card from the show.. i tried .. maybe next time i should bring some of our trolls, fanboys and ninjas to assist me
Me and TheMailMan have that portion covered. Should be easy for us to cause a distraction.
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#45
ebolamonkey3
AlienIsGOD:eek:

That thing is HUGE.
That's what she said :D
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#46
twistedneck
Andrei23a useless behemoth, 6-12 months down the line a single/dual slot card will outdo this card without the need for 24 power connectors
six months down the road after that the 'single/dual' card you speak of will be out done by another card that eats less power and is faster.. so there!!!
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#47
rainwilds
Undead46So it's a GTX 590 but they call it a dual-580?

._.
Yeah odd. Maybe because it overclocks like a 580 not a 590.
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#48
rainwilds
Andrei23a useless behemoth, 6-12 months down the line a single/dual slot card will outdo this card without the need for 24 power connectors
Exactly what i reckon. Save the cash (if you have it) and crossfire two upcoming 7000 series radeons!
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#49
LAN_deRf_HA
The only reason to be pissy about this is if you already bought a 590/6990 and are annoyed that you now have to spend twice as much to have the epeen you get from owning the fastest card.

Fuck diamonds, you can just buy cut glass.
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#50
Zubasa
hanziWorld Record. Just like the first Mars. I only knew gtx 295 Mars, which looks like a VHS tape. Dunno if there's an earlier version
World Records are so far hold by Quad-SLI GTX 580s ;)
Single GPU cards are simply alot easier to cool for extreme OCing.
Not to mention they usually have stronger VRMs than their dual GPU counter part.
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