ASUS designed a truly unique product with their new ROG MARS GTX 760 graphics card. The card is powered by two GK104 GPUs sitting on the same PCB in SLI. The card is also overclocked out of the box to 1006 MHZ base on the GPU, with Boost running it at 1137 MHz most of the time. That said, the card is unfortunately facing strong competition because of the recently released GeForce GTX 780 Ti, Radeon R9 290X, and R9 290. I suspect ASUS meant to release the MARS GTX 760 in early fall, at which time it would have revolutionized the GPU market, bringing leading performance at good pricing. Had the card launched around August time, this conclusion would read completely differently; today, the card is difficult to recommend. The GTX 780 Ti is around 5% faster and more expensive, but it only has a single GPU, so it won't need SLI support in games. While NVIDIA generally has very good SLI profiles, there are sometimes issues, like with Splinter Cell: Blacklist's broken SLI profile in NVIDIA's 331.82 WHQL driver, though fixed in a recent Beta driver. While AMD's Radeon R9 290 and 290X can't impress with their heat and noise levels, they do provide very good single-GPU performance at much more affordable pricing than the MARS GTX 760.
Don't get me wrong, the MARS GTX 760 isn't a bad card at all, but its poorly timed launch date stands out. ASUS has done a good job with their cooler, ensuring that both GPUs never go beyond 80°C under load, which results in maximum NVIDIA Boost clocks. The cooler does end up a bit noisy in games, though. There are clearly better solutions if noise is important to you. Even two quiet GTX 760 cards in SLI should be quieter, but two cards are also easier to cool because they take up more room.
While the card sports a total of 4 GB RAM, the video memory is split between both GPUs, which means that each GPU only has 2 GB of actual video RAM. This could become an issue in the latest titles, like Battlefield 4 recommending at least 3 GB VRAM at Ultra settings. The new consoles also come with loads of video RAM, which suggests that newer titles could get hit with a performance penalty when run on the ASUS MARS GTX 760.
Overclocking the ASUS MARS GTX 760 works extremely well. Achieving an overclock of 18% on the GPU isn't easy on most single-GPU cards, so it is even more impressive on a dual-GPU card like the MARS GTX 760. Memory achieved phenomenal overclocking with a 33% increase, up to 2000 MHz from 1500 MHz! Our card gained an overall 19% real-life performance increase through manual overclocking, which puts it on a completely different performance level, and could also help justify the price.
Retail pricing for the ASUS MARS GTX 760 is around $630, which is way too high. Buying two GTX 760 cards will cost you $470. Why should you have to spend another $150 for the convenience of having two GPUs in a single card? Spend $70 more and you can buy a GTX 780 Ti, which is faster, quieter, more efficient, and a single GPU—a real no-brainer if you have the money. If you want to reduce cost and can live with the noise, AMD's R9 290X ($550) and R9 290 ($400) offer much better performance per dollar. If ASUS can bring the price of the MARS GTX 760 down to around $400, which doesn't seem impossible to me, it could become a real alternative since engineering on the card is almost flawless; it's just the price that kills it.