14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA may have finally introduced its GeForce GTX 400 Series of DirectX 11-capable graphics adapters but it can only sigh as AMD grins, because the latter, even though it lost the single-CPU performance crown, still has the dual-GPU HD 5970 to keep its rank as overall performance king. Now, to make matters even more heated for NVIDIA, at least on the enthusiast front, AMD's partners are devising veritably superpowered HD 5970 versions, with 4GB of VRAM and clocks unrestricted by power consumption. One of the first such monsters to be announced, and likely the one that will first come out, is the ASUS “Ares.”
The company has mostly kept silent about this graphics adapter for the past few weeks, unsurprising since the specs have been known for a while, but there is no doubt that power gamers and consumers alike are eager to see by how much this device surpasses all other existing video solutions. In order to somewhat appease this thirst for benchmark scores, ASUS let the folks over at HotHardware experiment with its dormant creature, which they then compared to the reference model.
Unsurprisingly, Ares stomped all over the world's currently fastest card, scoring 27,016 points, which is significantly more than the 20,841 of AMD's device. Depending on how stable the card turns out, and on how much power it uses, it might give NVIDIA a run for its money when the latter eventually makes its own dual-GPU Fermi board.
Of course, this significant boost in performance does not come without consequences. The animal bearing the name of a god has a maximum power draw of 294W and, including the massive cooler, takes up 2.5-inch slots. This means that, both on its own and in CrossFireX modes, it will need a spacious case, a large motherboard with the PCI Express x 16 slots farther apart than usual (or just more of them) and, most importantly, a very strong and efficient PSU.
The report says that Ares may not reach the US, at least at launch, but that yields “were fairly good.” All that remains is for a performance competition to start between this model and the ones developed by its rivals, such as XFX and Sapphire.
