First seen at Computex this year, ASUS today released their long awaited ASUS MARS II. The MARS II is the first dual GeForce GTX 580 card, and is part of ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand of premium products targeting the gamer-overclocker market. Please note that ASUS did not choose the "GeForce GTX 590" name, even though the ASUS MARS II is a dual-GPU design. Rather they went with calling it Dual GeForce GTX 580, which makes sense since the MARS II comes at the full GeForce GTX 580 clock speeds. instead of the reduced clocked of the GTX 590.
ASUS has also added another significant change to the MARS II: Unlike the GTX 590, the card does not use any power limiting system. While this means higher performance, it also means increased power and thermal requirements for the ASUS MARS II. To take care of this, ASUS has designed a 21 phase power circuitry which is almost twice as powerful as the 11 phases of the GTX 590. To take care of the heat the ASUS MARS II uses a triple slot Direct CU cooler with two fans.
In terms of pricing the limited edition ASUS MARS II is the most expensive single graphics card released so far. Prices are expected to be around $1499 online!
Packaging
Contents
You will receive:
- Graphics card
- Driver CD + Documentation
- SLI Bridge
- DVI to Analog VGA Adapter
- 2x PCIe Power Cable
- Limited Edition Certificate
- ASUS ROG Case Badge
- 2x Foam Spacer
The Card
The MARS II is a huge and heavy card with over 2.5 kilograms. Its footprint extends well beyond what we have seen on more traditional cards - make sure you have a case that can fit this monster.
The card requires three slots in your system.
Display connectivity is two DVI ports, one full size HDMI port and one full size DisplayPort output. Due to NVIDIA's display output logic design you are limited to two active displays at any time. AMD GPUs have a more flexible configuration and allow up to six active outputs at the same time.
An HDMI sound device is included in the GPU, too. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible which includes 7.1 channel HD audio and support for Blu-ray 3D movies. The DisplayPort interface is DisplayPort 1.2 compliant which allows the use of a DisplayPort hub to connect multiple monitors, or daisy chain them together.
You may combine two ASUS MARS II cards in SLI for even more performance.
Pictured above are photos of the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back)
A Closer Look
The cooling assembly which holds the fans is massive and made from metal. Unlike most GPU coolers it is attached to the baseplate - not the card's PCB, which might make it a bit more difficult for enthusiasts to mod the card.
Two large heatsinks with four heatpipes each take care of keeping the GPU cores cool. Please note the little thermal pad on the right side of the second heatsink, it is used to cool the NVIDIA NF200 PCI-E bridge chip.
The baseplate is made from metal and adds additional cooling potential to the card. Unfortunately it is required to attach the cooler, so easy access to the back of the card for voltmodders is not possible.
On the back of the PCB you will find several solder pads called "Zone Mod" that are geared toward extreme overclockers. "Thermal" disables temperature throttling which is useful for liquid nitrogen use where too low temperatures can somehow cause the card to think it's overheating. Additional pads are available to disable overcurrent protection and to increase the voltages PEXVDD and FBVDDQ.
It seems the screws ASUS uses are much more brittle than other screws. When I reassembled the card and applied the same force I've used on hundreds of other cards one of the screws broke. Technically I overtightened it, but I assumed the screws would be able to take the same amount of force like screws on other cards. Suggestion: use only two fingers to turn the screwdriver, that should give enough mounting pressure without damaging the screws.
The card has three 8-pin PCIe power connectors. This configuration is good for up to 525 W of power draw.
The little red "100%" button you see on the right side instantly changes the fan speed to 100% when switched on. This works without any software, at any time and overrides any software settings. 
The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Samsung, and carry the model number K4G10325FE-HC04. They are specified to run at 1250MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective).
The PCI-Express bridge chip which connects the two GPUs and interfaces with the system via PCI-Express 2.0 is NVIDIA's NF200. It has been seen on numerous graphics cards and motherboards.
ASUS has rebranded the GPU voltage regulators to their own "SHE" (Super Hybrid Engine) identity. Based on the appearance of the chips I'd say they are made by uPi. I would have preferred a CHiL CHL8266 here.
NVIDIA's GF110 graphics processor is made on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. The silvery surface you see is the GPU heatspreader, the actual die sits under that.
Test System
| CPU: | (Bloomfield, 8192 KB Cache) |
|---|---|
| Motherboard: | Gigabyte X58 Extreme Intel X58 & ICH10R |
| Memory: | 3x 2048 MB Mushkin Redline XP3-12800 DDR3 @ 1520 MHz 8-7-7-16 |
| Harddisk: | WD Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500 GB |
| Power Supply: | Antec HCP-1200 1200W |
| Software: | Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 |
| Drivers: | MARS II & GTX 590: 280.26 NVIDIA: 270.61 ATI: Catalyst 11.4 HD 6670: 8.82.2 RC2 |
| Display: | LG Flatron W3000H 30" 2560x1600 |
- All video card results were obtained on this exact system with the exact same configuration.
- All games were set to their highest quality setting
- 1024 x 768, No Anti-aliasing. This is a standard resolution without demanding display settings.
- 1280 x 1024, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most smaller flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
- 1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
- 1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
- 2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
Aliens vs. Predator
Aliens vs. Predator is based on a merger of the Aliens and the Predators franchise: two legendary alien species that are in conflict with each other, fighting to the death with human marines caught in between. The first person shooter game was developed by Rebellion Studios, who also developed the first AVP PC title and released in February 2010. It is one of the first DirectX 11 games with support for new features like tesselation, which is why AMD heavily promoted it at the time of their DX 11 card launches. We use the AVP benchmark utility with tesselation and advanced DX11 shadows enabled.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Battlefield: Bad Company 2, released in March 2010 by Electronics Arts, is the most successful DirectX 11 title so far. Even though it contains a full single-player campaign during which the player has to work with a squad to secure a secret weapon, the game is most well known for its fast paced, exciting multiplayer squad action. Thanks to a CPU-based Havok physics engine and skillful use of scripting, the game has destroyable objects, vegetation and terrain without requiring NVIDIA PhysX.
Our testing uses the truck chase scene of the second single-player mission at maximum settings with DirectX 11 enabled. 
Call of Duty 4
Call of Duty 4 is a first-person shooter that is built on the award winning Call of Duty Series. It is the first version to play in modern times. In a near-future conflict between the United States, Europe and Russia you get to play as a United States Marine and a British SAS operative. The engine is Infinity Ward's own creation and has true dynamic lighting, depth of field, dynamic shadows and HDR. Even though the game plot is scripted you will find yourself in intense battles, often working together with computer controlled team mates. Later installments of the Call of Duty Series use the same game engine, so this test is also representative of Call of Duty: Black Ops performance.
Crysis 2
Crysis 2 takes the player into an alien-infested New York City. The game adds a tactical options mode that allows several approaches to attack a heavily infested enemy location. The new Nanosuit 2.0 that the player uses offers more freedom in ability use, for example multiple abilities can be used at the same time. To better accomodate a given play style weapons can be customized with silencers, laser sights or even a sniping scope.
For rendering Crytek's CryEngine 3 is used which comes with reduced system requirements compared to the first Crysis game. Since Crysis 2 is a multi-platform game, with major development focus on console, so the graphics are only DirectX 9, yet look beautiful using complex shadow and lighting effects. Unlike the original Crysis, which allowed the user to change various graphical settings Crysis 2 provides fewer and more limited options. 
Dragon Age II
Dragon Age II is the second game in BioWare's Dragon Age franchise and was released in March 2011. As player, named Hawke, you will be able to pick your hero from several classes and grow him over the course of the adventure. Gameplay takes you through a linear narrated story of Hawke's rise to become the legendary "Champion of Kirkwall".
BioWare's Lycium Engine has support for DirectX 11, using tesselation, advanced dynamic lighting and camera effects like depth of field. We benchmark the DX11 version with details set to highest.
BioWare's Lycium Engine has support for DirectX 11, using tesselation, advanced dynamic lighting and camera effects like depth of field. We benchmark the DX11 version with details set to highest.
Posted in: Review
