Asus ROG Mars II is the fastest video card ever

A while ago, Nvidia launched the GeForce GTX 590, with two GF110 dies on a single card.  The problem for Nvidia was that a GeForce GTX 580 was already pretty close to the 300 W cap of the PCI Express specfiication.  Two of them on a single card was way too much to cool in a PCI Express-compliant form factor.  So Nvidia severely underclocked them, and the card was still unsafe.

Asus, on the other hand, said hey, we'll design our own dual GPU card with two GF110 dies.  And then we'll give them a factory overclock for good measure.  The result is the fastest video card ever made.  And the heatsinks and fans are still able to keep the card properly cooled without being unduly noisy.  There has to be some sort of catch, right?

The Asus ROG Mars II is a monument to excess.  The card is more than a foot long.  It takes three slots, not two.  It is much taller than normal video cards.  It's internal exhaust, which means that you'd better have a ton of case airflow if you want to keep things from frying.

And then there is the power consumption.  In Tech Power Up's testing, with two monitors attached, the card by itself uses 126 W at idle.  Let me repeat that:  126 W at idle.  Many video cards don't use that much under an artifical stress test.  For comparison, the Radeon HD 6990 uses 72 W.

So what happens if you fire up an actual game?  Tech Power Up found that Crysis 2 could make the card use 502 W.  To repeat, that's just the video card by itself using 502 W.  That's not 502 W total system power draw from the power supply, let alone the wall.  The power circuitry can handle 502 W just fine, as it has three 8-pin PCI-E connectors, and enough power phases to put them all to good use.  For comparison, in the same test, the Radeon HD 6990 used 288 W.

FurMark got the card to pull 729 W.  Just to repeat, that 729 W from a single video card.  That's just the card, not total system power consumption.  Yes, FurMark is an artificial stress test.  It's not indicative of power draw in real programs.  But the Radeon HD 6990 only used 404 W.

There's also the issue of how to mount it without it breaking something.  The card isn't merely heavier than a Radeon HD 6990.  It's more than twice as heavy.  That's going to be quite a bit of strain on a PCI Express slot.

And then there is the price tag:  $1500.  For that much money, you could get two Radeon HD 6990s or two GeForce GTX 590s.  Or, for that matter, three GeForce GTX 580s or four Radeon HD 6970s.  And you'd have money left over after buying any of the alternatives, too.

Finally, there is the problem that this whole monument to excess lacks a practical use.  It can only handle two monitors at a time, and only up to a resolution of 2560x1600.  So it cannot run the three or five monitor arrays that are the only real point of getting that sort of graphical hardware.  But that's all right; at 1.5 GB of video memory per GPU, it might not have enough video memory for insanely high resolutions, anyway.

And then there is the little issue that it might not stay the fastest video card on the market for long.  Southern Islands could launch as soon as next month.  If the top Southern Islands card beats a GeForce GTX 580, then two of them on a single card should beat the Asus ROG Mars II.  A full node die shrink should mean vastly improved performance per watt for Southern Islands cards, too.  A dual GPU card that handily beats the Asus ROG Mars II while PowerTune caps power consumption at 375 W is a serious possibility.