ASUS Shocks with 8 GB Dual GTX 680 Mars III Graphics Card

We used to think that NVIDIA had nailed the dual-GPU market with the GeForce GTX 690, but ASUS is using Computex as an occasion to teach everyone what a real dual-GPU board is.

ASUS has revealed a product that stands next to the dual-GPU Zeus motherboard in terms of weirdness and performance level. Whereas the Zeus is a motherboard with two integrated, high-end GPUs (probably AMD Tahiti), the Mars III is a dual Kepler video card. It isn't a GeForce GTX 690 though. Not exactly, anyhow. Instead, it is ASUS's idea of what a dual-GTX 680 board would look and act like. The first word that comes to mind is “overpowered,” but then we have to realize that all high-end video cards are overpowered, after a point. Even the stock GTX 680 is stronger than necessary, since there are no games that could push it to its limits.

ASUS doubtlessly knew this when it made the Mars III, so it decided to just take things to the logical extreme and not care one bit about prices and power requirements. The result was a beast of a video board with two GK104 GPUs and 8 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, twice as much as on the GTX 690. The clock speeds were not specified, but we aren't too surprised. The project manager at Computex reportedly said that the card shown there was still an early engineering sample. When shipments do start, later this year, the PCB and cooler will have gone through some tweaks.

Speaking of which, the Mars III comes in the Rampage/Maximus motherboard black and red theme, has three fans and just as many 8-pin PCI Express power connectors. You read it right, there are three 8-pin inputs, even though just two such plugs are considered overkill in most situations. Furthermore, there is one SLI connector on the top side of the unit (4-way SLI GPU setups) and ASUS even tossed in a red button that activates the maximum fan speed, just in case owners overclock the card for some reason. All in all, ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) Mars III is a very mighty beast with a TDP (thermal design power) of up to 525W.

Posted in: Hardware, Preview