ASUS ROG MARS 2 3GB Video Card Review w/ NVIDIA Surround+ Price $749- $1499

A Video Card For Those That Want The Best

A couple of weeks ago we were allowed to post a 'preview' of the ASUS MARS 2 video card. Today, we follow up that preview with a look at the performance of this video card. The ASUS MARS 2 retails for $1499.99 plus $10.60 for shipping! Not everyone is going to spend this time of cash on a video card, so rather than putting it against a ton of other video cards we will just be comparing it to the AMD Radeon HD 6990 with the jumper on the card set to the overclocked position. We also didn't do any testing on a single monitor and used three Dell monitors each set at 1920x1080 resolution for a total display area of 5760 x 1080. If you are going to spend $1500 on a video card you are likely going to be using three display panels! This gave us a chance to look both AMD Eyefinity and NVIDIA multi-display Surround Technology with our triple display setup. We thought this would be of interest for those in a market to buy a high-end graphics card like either of these! 

The first two pages of this article cover what the card is, what comes with it and what it looks like. These pages are identical to our preview as that information obviously hasn't changed...

Companies like ASUS have a their own design engineers and every so often the management will unlock their collar and let them run free. When that happens you end up with a ridiculous product that pushes the boundaries for what can be done with current technology. ASUS took the Republic of Gamers (ROG) product engineers and challenged them to design the fastest NVIDIA graphics card possible. One that could easily beat the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 or as some would dare say, design the card properly. By this we mean one that looks good, has two NVIDIA GF110 GPUs, has good cooling, amazing VRM and some room left for overclocking fun.

The end result is inside this box.  It is the ASUS ROG MARS II, which is basically a pair of GeForce GTX 580 cores running in SLI on a single PCB.  You might say that this has already been done before as NVIDIA has the GeForce GTX 590, but ASUS didn't lower the core clock speeds on this card - they actually increased the speeds!

	NVIDIA GeForce GTX590	ASUS ROG MARS II
GPU Cores	2 x GF110 (GTX580)	2 x GF110 (GTX580)
GPU Clock	607 MHz	782 MHz
Shader Clock	1215 MHz	1564 MHz
Memory Clock	3414 MHz	4008 MHz
Memory	3072MB GDDR5	3072MB GDDR5
CUDA Cores	512 x 2	512 x 2
Power Phases	11 Phases	21 Phases
Price	$749	$1499

As you can see from the chart above the ASUS ROG MARS II has the same cores as the NVIDIA GeForce GTX590 graphics card, but they are clocked higher and with more power phases.  The price of the ASUS ROG MARS II is $1499, which is exactly double the cost of a regular ASUS GeForce GTX590! This card is for those that want the ultimate in single card performance and a conversation piece to brag about. When you buy the ASUS MARS II you enter an elite club as this card is a limited edition piece with just 999 being made worldwide. 

The back of the box isn't too exciting, but it does clearly list all the features of the ASUS ROG MARS II. 

The box also has a front lid that opens up that gives you a peak at the card and a more in-depth look at some of the features of the card.  You can all see the aluminum number plate that shows you the number of the MARS II that is inside the box.  

Sliding the card out of the box we see that it is packed in laser cut foam and shipped without a static bag. 

The ASUS ROG MARS II comes with a business card sized aluminum plate that has the production number of this limited edition video card laser engraved on it. Our card that we received to review is number 511 of 999 being made. 

The back of the card has the following saying on it: 

This document certifies that the limited edition MARS II is an unique work of art designed by the ASUS ROG team. This Aluminum plate is individually laser carved and sequentially numbered to certify limited edition status, making it a collector's item. 

With the first layer of foam removed from the box we get our first look at the full MARS II video card and a look at some of the bundle that comes with the card.

For a card that costs $1499 the bundle isn't really that impressive. You'll find a single SLI bridge, DVI-to-VGA adapter, ASUS ROG case badge, two 2x6-pin PCIe to 8-pin PCIe power adapters, two rubber spacers for the PCI slots on the case and the driver CD and quick start guide.  The thought of running two of these cards in Quad-SLI is scary, but I'm sure someone will do it as some people don't have a budget to worry about. It would have been nice to see some games or other items included with this card, but if you have $1500 to spend on a video card you likely don't need some old game title to sweeten the deal. 

Pulling the ASUS MARS II out of the box for the first time was magical. It's almost the same feeling you get when you are seeing a blind date for the first time and finding out that you think she's cute. You know the card is going to be a beast, but you didn't expect how much it was going to hit you. 

This is hard to do in pictures, but here is a shot of the ASUS MARS II sitting next to the MSI GeForce GTX 520. There is just a small different in size between the two video cards. 

If the picture next to the GeForce GT 520 doesn't do it for you, how about this one on a scale? The ASUS MARS II video card weighs in at 5 pounds 3.75 ounces or 2.37 kilograms for our friends in Europe.This is hands down the heaviest video card that we have ever held or seen!

Let's take a look at all of the sides on the card. 

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The ASUS MARS 2 is a wonderfully designed video card that offers impressive single card graphics performance. The fact that ASUS got two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GPUs running on the same PCB at the same clock speeds as a single GTX 580 cards is mighty impressive. NVIDIA wasn't even able to do that with the NVIDA GeForce GTX 590, so you can see how big of a feat this was. If you want to own the ultimate NVIDIA graphics card then the ASUS MARS 2 is it, period. The card is rather expensive though at $1499.99 plus $10.60 shipping with a 3-year warranty. At $1510.99 delivered this card is priced higher than what most peoples entire PC costs. This card is a limited edition product as just 999 are being made. Sure, you can get three NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards and run them in triple-SLI for even better performance than this by spending less money, but that isn't the point right? By buying an ASUS MARS 2 graphics card you are buying into an elite club that is guaranteed to have less than 1000 people in it. The ASUS MARS 2 is a wonderful card for the person that doesn't worry about a budget, wants a nice conversation piece and wants the best performance possible from a single card solution.

The ASUS MARS 2 features a solid design and build quality that is next to none. The only design feature that we had issues with was more visual than anything, and it was the black sticker used along the top edge of the fan shroud frame. It arrived in the box looking bubbly and deformed. When forking over $1500+ for a video card, it better be perfect and shouldn't have a flaw like this. It's like the engineers spent a month designing the fan shroud and then designed that black accent piece at 4:59pm on Friday before clocking out for the weekend at 5:00pm. We expect perfection from you ASUS and when you come out with exotic products like that with price tags that rival super cars then you better make sure everything is perfect!

When we tested and benchmarked the ASUS MARS 2 video card we used three 20-inch Dell LCD monitors that had a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and we found it incredibly easy to setup a triple monitor display. All of the games that we benchmarked and some that we just played all did so flawlessly with this setup and that was impressive. We ran into some game conflicts with the AMD Radeon HD 6990 though, so a big thumbs up to NVIDIA for having a solid gaming experience with three monitors off the one card. All wasn't roses for the ASUS MARS ran into an issue with the ASUS MARS 2 was when the system went to sleep. This PC was setup on an OCZ Agility 3 240GB SSD with a brand new Windows 7 installation with SP1 and all available updates, so it was disappointing to see a BSOD from the NVIDIA display drivers more often than not when then system was resuming from a sleep state. We haven't run NVIDIA Surround multi-display technology before, so we aren't 100% certain if it is that or a conflict with this specific card. We'll keep looking into it and update this article if we find anything out.

Power consumption on the ASUS MARS 2 was fairly decent at idle as it was just shy of 50W more than the AMD Radeon HD 6990, but at load the gap showed a bit wider. Under full load the ASUS MARS 2 took the test system up to 800W, which was 173W more than the AMD competition. The CPU wasn't under full load at this point either, so if you plan on buying this card for your PC gaming system you'll want to invest in a beefy name brand power supply. We'll be switching power supplies and overclocking this beast in a future article to see what this cards full potential is! 

Legit Bottom Line: The ASUS MARS 2 is a very nice video card for the elite few that are willing to invest in one. The pros of this card far out-weigh the negatives and we hope that ASUS continues to bring products like this to market to satisfy the needs of die hard enthusiasts around the world.