ASUS ARES CrossFire

[W1zzard]

In this review we test two ASUS ARES cards in a 4-GPU CrossFire combination. With a total price of $2000 for those cards this is certainly not for everybody. For additional reference we also combined the ARES with a HD 5970 and a HD 5870.

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[DanTheMan]

Thanks for the review W1zzard
One ARES is more than enough - two is just showing off - but I was suprised on what little you gain in Crossfire. Like I've said before a OC 5850 or a single 5870 is plenty for 99.9% of the users today.

 

[Kreij]

Great review W1zz

We now know that it takes $2000 of graphics hardware, drawing up to 900W on its own, to almost get 50fps in Crysis at 2560x1600.

 

[melkhior]

That's fucking insane

 

[Easo]

Whom should i kidnap to get pair of those?

 

[Whilhelm]

Any power consumption charts on these beasts? It would also be nice to see SLI 480s shown for comparison.

Nice review

 

[cbupdd]

Wow! Great review!
If possible, we would like to see power consumution on this two. And if you are bored, some test at 1ghz each would be great
That would be some nice stress to the psu

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

I'd love to see this vs quad sli 480s. So we know what setup rains supreme. I'd imagine quad sli but you won't know if scaling issues change things up until someone really compares the two.

 

[AhokZYashA]

2 of them is just showoff.
im better using 2 5870s in crossfire.

but i would like to see the power consumption on two of those at full load.

 

[ACEkombatkiwi]

Awesome review as always W1zz.

Any plans to do a couple of benchies with a modest Eyfinity setup like 5760x1080 or 3240x1920.

If Asus really wanted to show what these cards are capable of they would arrange for a suitable test system as well like a 980x and an Eyefinity setup which is what these beats are aiming for, its really quite disappointing on their part. :shadedshu

 

[kora04]

scaling is not very good. so Im guessing these cards should only be used on an eyefinity setup of 1680*1050 monitors or higher.

 

[cdawall]

scaling is terrible...would love to see 3x/4x GTX480 as well complete with power consumption graphs

 

[zOaib]

scaling is terrible...would love to see 3x/4x GTX480 as well complete with power consumption graphs

+1 for that i would like to see that too =)

 

[SteelSix]

You got two of em? Flippin Sweet!

Lucky..

You gotta post some rig pics if you have em W1zzard..

 

[eidairaman1]

some people here make me tired because they sound like a broken record, always trying to beat a dead horse- which is not fun at all and is lame... Nice review but the cards cooling is just too big to fit in most cases that want to utilize other external boards.

TBH I'd Take 2 Asus Matrix 5870 2GB or 2 Power Color PCS+ 5870 2GB boards, and run them in True Crossfire, Overclocked using ATI Tray Tools, or Bios Modified

 

[damric]

Looks like I get exactly 529% more performance per dollar with my current card than the Asus Aries x2. Great review though!

 

[Mussels]

i think with this much video power, you may well be CPU limited - even on a 3.8Ghz i7

 

[mdsx1950]

Wow 2 of these squash the 2 HD 5970s in metro 2033.

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

This is for an eyefinity setup imo. Lots of headroom left for the CPU oc though

 

[btarunr]

You got two of em? Flippin Sweet!
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/steelsix/napoleon-dynamite.jpg
Lucky..

You gotta post some rig pics if you have em W1zzard..

They're on page one. W1zzard's personal rig runs a PowerColor PCS+ HD 5870.

 

[zithe]

Holy CRAP that's awesome looking.

You never know if the minimum is going up or down which is more important than average when you're getting into the 100s. Maybe the extra GPUs are increasing minimum frames? Nobody shows that kind of stuff.

 

[mdsx1950]

I can just imagine running two of these ARES cards heavily overclocked with a GTX 480 for Physx on heavily overclocked dual heaxacore Xeons on an SR2 with 48GB of Ram. lol. That should be the world most powerful system i can think of lol.

 

[zithe]

I can just imagine running two of these ARES cards heavily overclocked with a GTX 480 for Physx on heavily overclocked dual heaxacore Xeons on an SR2 with 48GB of Ram. lol. That should be the world most powerful system i can think of lol.

Don't forget like 8 SSDs in raid 0.

 

[mdsx1950]

Don't forget like 8 SSDs in raid 0.

Wonder how the power consumption will be when running a heavy program like Furmark.

 

[AhokZYashA]

Wonder how the power consumption will be when running a heavy program like Furmark.

up up in the sky!!
lol