chief
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ASUS ARES is the new king of the GPUs. It’s an upgraded ATI Radeon HD5970 with 4GB GDDR5 video memory and overclocked core and memory speeds.
Just in case you forgot, Radeon HD5970 is made of two HD5870. The two Cypress cores in HD5970 have been downclocked from 850MHz to 725MHz and the memory clock has been reduced from 1200MHz to 1000MHz too.
Well, it seems ASUS felt they can do more with such a card, so they’ve added two more gigs of video memory and clocked the cores and memory up to their native speed.
The result is ASUS ARES – the true combination of two HD5870 with a total of 4GB.
The monstrous ARES costs 1200 US dollars, but that’s not the worst part of it. This fella requires three power connectors from a minimum 750W power supply. ARES consumes 350W-450W when loaded, so I guess you’ll need a lot better PSU than 750W. Hell, my old 750W power supply barely handled an i7 CPU and a single HD5970, so I was forced to replace it with an 850W unit.
I did some research and the results are not satisfying – the difference between HD5970 and ARES is 5 frames more in games running at 40-70 fps and up to 10 frames more in games with 70+ frame rate.
ASUS ARES costs 450 US dollars more than a regular Radeon HD5970 ($750) and its performance jump is not that high. In addition to that ASUS ARES would take three slots from your motherboard because of its huge cooler.
So 5-10 frames improvement will cost you the following (over the standard HD5970):
* 450 US dollars
* a new power supply (which means more $)
* one spare more motherboard slot
* higher electricity bills (more $)
So is it worth it? I think not.
ASUS ARES is limited edition and comes in stylish aluminum suitcase with ASUS ROG laser mouse. The card, case and mouse look awesome, I give them the credit, but $1200 is to much.
Just in case you forgot, Radeon HD5970 is made of two HD5870. The two Cypress cores in HD5970 have been downclocked from 850MHz to 725MHz and the memory clock has been reduced from 1200MHz to 1000MHz too.
Well, it seems ASUS felt they can do more with such a card, so they’ve added two more gigs of video memory and clocked the cores and memory up to their native speed.
The result is ASUS ARES – the true combination of two HD5870 with a total of 4GB.
The monstrous ARES costs 1200 US dollars, but that’s not the worst part of it. This fella requires three power connectors from a minimum 750W power supply. ARES consumes 350W-450W when loaded, so I guess you’ll need a lot better PSU than 750W. Hell, my old 750W power supply barely handled an i7 CPU and a single HD5970, so I was forced to replace it with an 850W unit.
I did some research and the results are not satisfying – the difference between HD5970 and ARES is 5 frames more in games running at 40-70 fps and up to 10 frames more in games with 70+ frame rate.
ASUS ARES costs 450 US dollars more than a regular Radeon HD5970 ($750) and its performance jump is not that high. In addition to that ASUS ARES would take three slots from your motherboard because of its huge cooler.
So 5-10 frames improvement will cost you the following (over the standard HD5970):
* 450 US dollars
* a new power supply (which means more $)
* one spare more motherboard slot
* higher electricity bills (more $)
So is it worth it? I think not.
ASUS ARES is limited edition and comes in stylish aluminum suitcase with ASUS ROG laser mouse. The card, case and mouse look awesome, I give them the credit, but $1200 is to much.
