Product Listing

ASUS Ares - God of War Cometh

By Kenny Yeo - 21 Aug 2010
Launch SRP: S$1999

Power of the Gods

Power of the Gods

In Greek mythology, Ares is the God of War and Bloodshed. He personifies violence and all that is terrible and horrible about war. Hence, it is fitting that ASUS’s latest and possibly greatest graphics card be christened “Ares”.

What makes the Ares card deserving of sharing a name with a Greek god you might wonder? For starters, it has a massive triple-slot custom cooler that features extensive use of aluminum and copper. And then its equally hefty weight of 2.1kg - a single Radeon HD 5870 (not a small card by any means) in comparison weighs merely 0.95kg.

But most of all, it's the hardware underneath that makes the Ares a beast of a graphics card. While the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970 might be ATI’s top dog at the moment, it actually uses two down clocked Cypress XT chips. Not only are the GPUs on the Radeon HD 5970 down clocked - from 850MHz to 725MHz - so is the memory - from 4800MHz DDR to 4000MHz DDR. ASUS’ Ares, on the other hand, offers the full package, packing twin Cypress XT chips clocked at 850MHz with memory running at a heady 4800MHz DDR. What’s more, it comes with a whopping 4GB of super quick GDDR5 framebuffer. In short, the Ares is nothing less than a beast of a graphics card.

As befits a special card, the ASUS Ares comes in a special briefcase. Cool or trying too hard? You decide.

Inside, you'll find the card along with basic accessories such as a HDMI to DVI adapter, PCIe connectors, and a ASUS ROG gaming mouse.

The Radeon HD 5870 is not a small card, but look how the Ares dwarfs it.

To power this behemoth of a graphics card, you'll need two 8-pin and a single 6-pin PCIe power connector.

The Ares makes do with a single DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort for video output.

Thick copper heat pipes ensure the GPUs are kept cool.


 

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8.0
  • Performance 9
  • Features 9
  • Value 5
The Good
Blazing Fast
Impressive overclocking potential
Effective cooler
The Bad
Incredibly pricey
Extremely Noisy at full load
Not much faster than 2 x 5870 cards
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