ASUS Ares II Preview
Asus Ares 2 - 7990 - 7970 X2 Preview
Published: 17th January 2013 | Source: ASUS | Price: £1250 |
Introduction
Regular readers will remember the original Ares, a monster of a card with two fully functioning Radeons at the heart of it. Having moved to the Mars II a while ago (the Mars being the dual-GPU nVidia cards and the Ares being the AMD variant) it's about time that a new Ares graced our pages. That's exactly what we have with a sneak preview of the Ares II.
By far the most obvious change is the move from a large hunk of copper and a big fan to a self-contained water-cooled system. Anyone who remembers the PNY GTX580 will know that this has the potential to allow for some serious overclocking at very cool temperatures. This is especially important when there is so much raw horsepower beneath the hood.
We all know how much manufacturers love to tell us how great their new product is, but if the Ares II is capable of out-performing the GTX690 by 13% then it's already got our attention, and if it even gets close to those numbers we're pretty sure we'll all start saving.
The liquid cooling certainly needs to be flexible, especially with the amount of things demanding the single exhaust port in our cases. Hopefully the LED colour isn't reliant upon the cards status and can be customised.
There aren't many things you can do with a card once you've removed the ability to create a fancy cooler, but we think the Ares II has got a nice organic look to it. It's like a surrealist Dairy Milk.
We're starting to reach the limits of how much can be crammed onto a single PCB, and with two full-on Tahiti cores and enough GDDR5 to keep even the most hungry game running smoothly. Similarly to how the LED and cooler have the potential to be either awesome or very disappointing, it's strange to see that ASUS have chosen to remove the HDMI port entirely, and leave us with just two DVIs and four DisplayPort connections.
So we'll spend the next couple of weeks wringing the neck of this behemoth, and check back on the 28th for the full review. In the meantime, let us know what you think in the OC3D Forums.
Most Recent Comments
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Originally Posted by madness777
Would anyone even consider buying this?
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http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...roductId=53680
I dunno though
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Originally Posted by powerfuse0
Where would you put that cooler? I thought you could like, loop it outside the case?
I dunno though |
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Originally Posted by wassupdoc
Just on a bog standard exhaust/intake fan location mate
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.Plus even if there was room, would it not interfere with the air flow?
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Originally Posted by powerfuse0
What about the CPU cooler though, idk about you but mine CPU cooler wouldn't allow for room for it
.Plus even if there was room, would it not interfere with the air flow? |
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Originally Posted by wassupdoc
Nope, plus if someone's going to be spending that kind of money on a gpu they are going to have more exhaust ports than the rear top :/
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i dont see that 120 rad doing all that much good for a card thats so powerfull i bet to get the kind of temps asus say thay can get from it you must have to have the fans at 12v
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Originally Posted by pcnoob
this looks really nice but can i ask would this end up having the same problem that other water coolers have and that's the fan messing up after a few months of use?
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Originally Posted by badtaylorx
whaaaa???? not an issue really...fans are no different than anything else |
| i had a coolit cooler never lasted more than 6 months before the pump started playing up |
so back to my main point.
| this looks really nice but can i ask would this end up having the same problem that other water coolers have and that's the fan messing up after a few months of use? |
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Originally Posted by DwarfAdigginAhole
Buy two 7970s is what I continue to see here...have any of you even thought of what this card is actually meant for? These type of cards go in LAN rigs that are ether Mini-itx or Micro ATX rigs in which buying two graphics cards is not an option. (Yes I do include Micro Atx rigs as well because I would not take up all four pci slots with graphics cards and just neglect mah audio ;] ) So before you say you should buy this or that think about what this card is applicable towards.
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I would say the main reasons they make cards like this and in limited quantities is to make claim as the fastest/best performance, because they will sell them in limited quantity and honestly just because they can. It's basically a shout out to the world "look what we can do!"
This card is not designed for, and I dare say was never planned for, mini or micro atx builds - even if that was the original idea behind dual GPU cards
Not a happy boy, full review will be later in the week now
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Originally Posted by tinytomlogan
Asus did change the NDA to the 14th of Feb so Ive only made the Videos, only to phone me at 4pm and say they have changed their mind and I can go live now....
Not a happy boy, full review will be later in the week now |
Obv "someone" has got the heads-up on this. Realy poor judgement call from Asus!They should at least give "all contenders" the benefit of a 24h -warning IMO!
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