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ASUS ARES - The $1200 video card

B

brain_stew

Member
WEGGLES said:
The card itself requires 750 watts? Wow. What would the benefit of this over Crossfiring 2 5870s be?
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No, not even close. That's just the recommended power supply, though a good 650w should power it no bother imo.

Dresden said:
I hope it can play Starcraft at 30 fps.
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Ironically enough, even with two of these monsters in your system SC2 will probably still have dips below 30fps because of Blizzard's shitty antiquated CPU optimisation. Considering SC2 doesn't even support MSAA, there really isn't going to be any use for the second (or third/fourth) 5870 that is packed in there.
 
B

brain_stew

Member
DennisK4 said:
So Crossfiring two of these badboys will finally let me play Crysis at 2560x1600 with 4xAA at awesome framerates.

Hmmmm.....tempting!




And Metro 2033 at the same resolution with tesselation + 4xAA + Very High settings, too

Click to expand...

That's some very impressive scaling. The 2GB framebuffer looks to be the real killer feature here imo. It looks like the 1GB framebuffer in the 5970 and 5870 really was killing scaling in crossfire mode, can't say I'm surprised.
 
Animal

Animal

Banned
brain_stew said:
No, not even close. That's just the recommended power supply, though a good 650w should power it no bother imo.



Ironically enough, even with this monster in your system SC2 will probably still have dips below 30fps because of Blizzard's shitty antiquated CPU optimisation. Considering SC2 doesn't even support MSAA, there really isn't going to be any use for the second 5870 that is packed in there.
Click to expand...

Sorry for going off on a tangent here but could you elaborate on "Blizzard's shitty antiquated CPU optimization"? I'm not trying to defend them its just a topic that interests me very much and I am curious as to why. Any links?

I thought I remember watching a video on how SC2 was as optimized as it gets in terms of CPU resource management. I'm looking for it on Youtube but no luck.
 
B

brain_stew

Member
Animal said:
Sorry for going off on a tangent here but could you elaborate on "Blizzard's shitty antiquated CPU optimization"? I'm not trying to defend them its just a topic that interests me very much and I am curious as to why. Any links?

I thought I remember watching a video on how SC2 was as optimized as it gets in terms of CPU resource management. I'm looking for it on Youtube but no luck.
Click to expand...

:lol :lol

Its completely restricted by your single threaded performance on any decent gaming machine (at least the beta was). It uses a second thread but only barely, basically Blizzard are struggling to match the standards of multi core optimisation set half a decade ago. Any decent big budget (or even medium/small budget these days) game will use at least 3/4 cores well these days.

Check out any of the benchmarks if you want to see what's happening, pcgameshardware.com have a really good set somewhere on their site. Why this completely sucks is because of the fact that single threaded CPU performance has been incredibly stagnant for the last 5/6 years. Unless Blizzard seriously rework their engine there will never be a machine that is capable of pushing a constant 60fps in SC2 with max/high settings. That's a traversty and considering the ridiculous budget and time the game has had, its really unacceptable in my book.
 
D

Dennis

Banned
brain_stew said:
That's some very impressive scaling. The 2GB framebuffer looks to be the real killer feature here imo. It looks like the 1GB framebuffer in the 5970 and 5870 really was killing scaling in crossfire mode, can't say I'm surprised.
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Yes, certainly. And moar graphics memory has been a wish of mine for a long time.

I know that people are always asking what the point of more than 1GB is, and true, not a lot of games and scenarios call for that yet.

But it so happens that some of the modded games I want to run at 2560x1660 with obscene amounts of AA, require more than 1GB.
 
Animal

Animal

Banned
brain_stew said:
:lol :lol

Its completely restricted by your single threaded performance on any decent gaming machine (at least the beta was). It uses a second thread but only barely, basically Blizzard are struggling to match the standards of multi core optimisation set half a decade ago. Any decent big budget (or even medium/small budget these days) game will use at least 3/4 cores well these days.

Check out any of the benchmarks if you want to see what's happening, pcgameshardware.com have a really good set somewhere on their site. Why this completely sucks is because of the fact that single threaded CPU performance has been incredibly stagnant for the last 5/6 years. Unless Blizzard seriously rework their engine there will never be a machine that is capable of pushing a constant 60fps in SC2 with max/high settings. That's a traversty and considering the ridiculous budget and time the game has had, its really unacceptable in my book.
Click to expand...

If that's true then yes its ridiculous and unacceptable for such a game with that kind of budget and resources.

I'm gonna go look at some benchmarks now.
 
D

Dennis

Banned
54-46! said:
I want to see two of them running in Crossfire.
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Read the thread more carefully and your wish will come true.


Hazaro said:
TechPowerUp has a Crossfire review (2 of these things)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/ARES_CrossFire/7.html

cards1.jpg
Click to expand...
 
P

PopcornMegaphone

Banned
Apoc29 said:
I bet you nerds remove it from your PCs before you go to a LAN party or whatever just so you can haul it around in your briefcase and unveil it to the throng of peons who will hail you as their king.
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:lol
 
B

brain_stew

Member
DennisK4 said:
Yes, certainly. And moar graphics memory has been a wish of mine for a long time.

I know that people are always asking what the point of more than 1GB is, and true, not a lot of games and scenarios call for that yet.

But it so happens that some of the modded games I want to run at 2560x1660 with obscene amounts of AA, require more than 1GB.
Click to expand...

It doesn't even have to be about modded games, though. What's the point of buying anything above and beyond even a 5850 if you're not going to use it obscene settings? At obscene settings in vanilla games already on the market, a 1GB framebuffer is already a major bottleneck (there's no question about it now) and once you start factoring in mods and future games there's just no doubt that its going to prove a major stumbling block. Its one of the reasons I've always said the 5970 is damn near a broken product, its just so terribly unbalanced; in games that don't really use/require crossfire, a 5870 will serve you better but in those games that do then you start hitting that 1GB brickwall really sharpish.

There's no way I'm upgrading my OCed GTX 260 until 2GB cards are plentiful and reasonably priced, anything else would be a sidegrade.
 
B

brain_stew

Member
Its also worth noting that due to the extra power connectors, excellent cooling and cherry picked nature of the chips, you're pretty much guaranteed a 1ghz overclock with these things. Insane really, but if you've got the money to blow its definitely an excellent product and does indeed justify the massive premium you'll pay imo.
 
D

Dennis

Banned
brain_stew said:
It doesn't even have to be about modded games, though. What's the point of buying anything above and beyond even a 5850 if you're not going to use it obscene settings? At obscene settings in vanilla games already on the market, a 1GB framebuffer is already a major bottleneck (there's no question about it now) and once you start factoring in mods and future games there's just no doubt that its going to prove a major stumbling block. Its one of the reasons I've always said the 5970 is damn near a broken product, its just so terribly unbalanced; in games that don't really use/require crossfire, a 5870 will serve you better but in those games that do then you start hitting that 1GB brickwall really sharpish.

There's no way I'm upgrading my OCed GTX 260 until 2GB cards are plentiful and reasonably priced, anything else would be a sidegrade.
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I agree about the 5970. It was that which kept me from upgrading to the 2x1GB 5970.

However, the mainstream view seems to be that 2GB per GPU is overkill - a view echoed by several hardware sites. Unfortunately this may have influenced AMD (and Nvidia?). AMD was slow to get out a 2GB 5870 and have left 2x2GB cards to vendors like ASUS.

At this point, I will probaly wait for the next round before upgrading, though I am somewhat considering either a 2 x 480 SLI setup or a single ARES.


K.Jack said:
And the 'LOL $3,000 PC' console camp gains a new foothold.
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My next PC may very well exceed that, so I guess people like me are partly to blame for the 'LOL $5000 PC' meme.
 
O

otake

Doesn't know that "You" is used in both the singular and plural
I'd probably pay just to see them running. I wonder who this is for... Tech enthusiast know how quick technology depreciates, this card is worth $1200K now, in six months it will go down to $600.
 
D

Dennis

Banned
otake said:
I'd probably pay just to see them running. I wonder who this is for... Tech enthusiast know how quick technology depreciates, this card is worth $1200K now, in six months it will go down to $600.
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Those people. And yeah, everybody knows that a year later the new cards will be just as good for half the price. BUT FOR ONE GLORIOUS YEAR, YOU WILL BE KING!
 
O

otake

Doesn't know that "You" is used in both the singular and plural
DennisK4 said:
Those people. And yeah, everybody knows that a year later the new cards will be just as good for half the price. BUT FOR ONE GLORIOUS YEAR, YOU WILL BE KING!
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I used to be this way. I'm still running my overclocked 512mb 4870 and I'm running crysis at 30fps 1680x1050. Ever since this card, there just hasn't been a reason to upgrade. I miss getting gpu boners...
 
K

K.Jack

Knowledge is power, guard it well
DennisK4 said:
My next PC may very well exceed that, so I guess people like me are partly to blame for the 'LOL $5000 PC' meme.
Click to expand...
Shit, I spend $2k on a gaming notebook.

I'm doing more damage to the movement than you.
 
F

fallengorn

Bitches love smiley faces
Apoc29 said:
I bet you nerds remove it from your PCs before you go to a LAN party or whatever just so you can haul it around in your briefcase and unveil it to the throng of peons who will hail you as their king.
Click to expand...
Well, technically it'll be handcuffed to my bodyguard.
 
B

brain_stew

Member
K.Jack said:
And the 'LOL $3,000 PC' console camp gains a new foothold.
Click to expand...

That you actually can build a PC that is worth $3000 is one of the best parts about PC gaming. You get to game on your own terms and if you want no compromises at all, then you don't have to have any, its your choice.


otake said:
I'd probably pay just to see them running. I wonder who this is for... Tech enthusiast know how quick technology depreciates, this card is worth $1200K now, in six months it will go down to $600.
Click to expand...

I don't see anything on the horizon that's going to outperform this for quite a while. PCIe certification means that "official" GPUs are currently capped at 300w, so its going to require a huge increase in power efficiency for a sub 300w GPU to better this monster @ 1ghz. Another custom GPU, just like this, will be required and that'll cost $1000+ like this anyway, so.............

$1200 is a pretty fair price for what you're getting imo.

As an aside, my GPU is worth more now than it was when I bought it over 12 months ago. The price:performance you get from GPUs has actually fallen (substantially) in the last year or so.
 
S

slamskank

Member
Is it just me or, are those benchmarks somewhat underwhelming for such a beast card? Same deal with the 5970. ATI is seriously behind in their dual gpu/crossfire drivers. They have the tech but their drivers are shitty.
 
L

Lagspike_exe

Member
slamskank said:
Is it just me or, are those benchmarks somewhat underwhelming for such a beast card? Same deal with the 5970. ATI is seriously behind in their dual gpu/crossfire drivers. They have the tech but their drivers are shitty.
Click to expand...

Their drivers were shitty since the beginning of time. They are better today than they were 5-6 years ago, though. Back then, you get 5 FPS increase in one game with new drivers, but another game crashes on load...
 
B

brain_stew

Member
slamskank said:
Is it just me or, are those benchmarks somewhat underwhelming for such a beast card? Same deal with the 5970. ATI is seriously behind in their dual gpu/crossfire drivers. They have the tech but their drivers are shitty.
Click to expand...

Its just you. The 5970 benchmarks are underwhelming as they've always been but this thing @1ghz (which they all will comfortably reach) is far from underwhelming. If anything its quite shocking just how much of a difference the extra memory makes.
 
S

Sho_Nuff82

Member
Apoc29 said:
I bet you nerds remove it from your PCs before you go to a LAN party or whatever just so you can haul it around in your briefcase and unveil it to the throng of peons who will hail you as their king.
Click to expand...

ns_110609_717.jpg
 
J

J-Rzez

Member
I have to admit, that thing looks sexy, love the case too. I think I have a nuclear power plant near enough to me to run a direct line off the reactor to stack two of them up.
 
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