The Card

So you heard that the ASUS ARES is heavy - you have no idea how heavy it is. With the cooler being made from full copper the card clocks in at 2.3 kilos. To illustrate how much that is I put the ARES on the left and the equivalent weight of graphics cards on the right.


The ARES comes with an exclusive cooling solution designed by ASUS. I have to admit that is one of the sexiest cards I have seen in a long time. The build quality also feels very solid and you don't have to be afraid of breaking anything by accident.


Two high-clocked GPUs, voltage tweaking support, built for overclockers means that a three slot cooling solution is not surprise.


It seems that due to the packing method of the suitcase, there is some sticky foam near the back of the card. I also received a second card for CrossFire testing and it does not have this problem.


The card has one DVI port, one HDMI port and one DisplayPort. This is a small deviation from the HD 5970 configuration which had 2x DVI + 1x DP. ASUS has included an HDMI to DVI adapter, so no problem if you need to connect two DVI monitors.
The HDMI interface includes a 7.1 channel audio signal that is generated by an HD audio device integrated in the GPU. Unlike NVIDIA cards which limit you to two active outputs at the same time, you may use all three outputs at the same time on ATI's latest cards.


For voltmodders, ASUS has included easy to access voltage measurement spots. The selection of voltages is fairly limited though, you can only measure the voltage of each of the GPUs - no VDDCI or memory measurements.


If you need more performance and have the cash you can get a second ASUS ARES to run the cards in CrossFire.


Here are the front and the back of the card, high-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods etc, please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.