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Fastest Graphics Ever, Asus ARES Rips Benchmarks

MojoKid writes "Over-the-top, killer graphics cards are always fun to play with, though they may not be all that practical. With a pair of ATI Radeon HD 5870 GPUs on a single PCB and 4GB of GDDR5 graphics memory on board, the recently released Asus ARES is one such card that can currently claim the title of being the fastest single gaming graphics card on the planet. This dual-GPU-infused beast rips through benchmarks, besting even the likes of a Radeon HD 5970 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480. You can even run a pair of them in CrossFire mode, if you're hell-bent on the fastest frame rates money can buy currently."

39 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. OpenCL? by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah but what about OpenCL performance?

    Some of Anandtech's Fermi benchmarks put it 4x+ behind in GPGPU tests.

    1. Re:OpenCL? by BikeHelmet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Folding seems to indicate the same. nVidia's recent changes to their architecture boosted power consumption, but made double-precision floating point ops about 4x faster. Good for GPGPU, but not so good for games. (which don't really use double-precision floating point)

    2. Re:OpenCL? by makomk · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I seem to recall that the double-precision performance of NVidia's latest graphics cards would've been truly impressive... if they hadn't intentionally crippled it on all of the gaming cards in order to force people to buy compute cards costing several times the price. Works out that double precision runs at 1/8th of the speed of single precision - the same ratio as the previous generation - as opposed to 1/5th on ATI Radeon hardware and 1/2 on NVidia's really expensive professional cards.

    3. Re:OpenCL? by Mashiki · · Score: 2, Insightful

      My first question is what is openCL(blahblahblah googlit), my second question is why is it important on a card where I'm going to be using it for gaming in a super-dominated DX market as it is? Because as it stands, I don't see it.

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    4. Re:OpenCL? by masshuu · · Score: 2, Informative

      You know the fancy physics, like a plywood board exploding into 400 pieces and sending each pieces of shrapnel in every direction, or maybe a house that breaks into a million peaces when it collapses? Good luck running those calculations on your CPU, WHILE keeping your frame rate up
      openCL lets you offload work to the GPU.
      Given physics is all i can think of, its like nVidia's CUDA. CUDA is limited to nvidia cards, but openCL is designed to let you write one piece of code, and run it on the CPU, or any supported GPUs

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  2. 5890 Ultra by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    So it's actually a ATI Radeon 5890 Ultra. You will be cheaper off buying two discrete 5870 cards and running them in Crossfire. Thermals will be better and thus you will be able to overclock them further.

    1. Re:5890 Ultra by Vigile · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This article also compares the ARES to a pair of HD 5870s and you are mostly correct:

      http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=953

      Keep in mind that with 2GB cards you are actually only saving about $200 by NOT using the ARES.

  3. Am I a cheap bastard? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Asus ARES commands a hefty $1200 MSRP.

    What the fuck

    1. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by roman_mir · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Don't worry, nobody is forcing you to buy one, besides only a thousand will be sold in the US anyway, I am sure this Ferrari of a video card will find it's buyer.

    2. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by dnaumov · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I only spend ~$100 on average on my videocards.

      I got a GTS 250 for $100 close to a half-year ago. A friend of mine just got a Radeon 4870 for $100!

      Great. Now what does this have to do with anything?

    3. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by V!NCENT · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That there are always people that are too stupid to buy such a thing when you can get a great GPU for 100 dollars? In other words parent explains why this card is totally useless...

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    4. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What price range were you expecting for 'fastest video card'?

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    5. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by V!NCENT · · Score: 2, Informative

      Crysis Warhead at 1680*1050 at max setting 'enthusiast' or something gives 30+ fps on Windows XP SP2 with my AMD Phenom 9950 X4, 8GB RAM, HD5770...

      So you were saying?

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    6. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by mangu · · Score: 2, Informative

      30fps is a joke and not anywhere near a playable framerate

      It is perfectly playable, for anyone with human eyes

    7. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by mangu · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I can't believe anyone still tries to bring up the old "human eye doesn't see beyond 30fps so anything higher is useless" mantra. It has been debunked a hundred times.

      I can't believe anyone has seen a spoked wheel in a movie and never wondered why it rotates backwards.

      This "debunking" shown in your first link is not showing the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps. Considering the fourfold symmetry of the rotating square, what it's actually demonstrating is that 7.5 fps looks choppier than 15 fps.

      There will always exist some particular geometries that will appear choppy at any frame rate. The right way to make it smooth is not by increasing the frame rate, but by motion blur.

      As for your second link, it proves exactly the opposite of what it meant to: there's no practical difference between 24 fps and 60 fps. They are using the same arguments audiophiles use to justify paying $500 for a network cable: I have eyes/ears that are so much more accurate than yours that I wouldn't be satisfied with that cheap gear you use.

    8. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by asdf7890 · · Score: 4, Informative

      1) 30fps is a joke and not anywhere near a playable framerate

      FPS is one of those subjective issues where there seems to be a lot more "I don't like X so you are daft for suggesting someone might" then hard facts.

      For lot of people 30fps is perfectly fine if it is a minimum rate rather than an average. A lot of people talk at cross purposes on this one, the "30 is fine" crowd assuming that the people looking for 100fps+ when there monitor probably refreshes at 60Hz are daft and want 100+fps everywhere and the "30 is no were near enough" crowd thinking that the 30fpss would be happy with 30 on average. For games that require decent graphics hardware the demand on that hardware can vary a lot, so a card that gets 30pfs in some areas will drop below 15fps in others, likewise that card that pushes 100Hz in the lighter scenes may drop below 50 on the really heavy ones.

      So any quote of an fps requirement or recommendation is completely useless unless you qualify the figure in more detail.

      Another factor that needs to be considered is screen size. An object moving from one side of the screen to the other at the same framerate is going to look smoother on an smaller monitor than it'll look on a full-wall projector (unless of course you are far away from said wall, to the point where it is effectively the same size as the small monitor in terms of how it appear on the back of your eye). How far objects on the display travel between frames is what needs to be measured, not just how many frames there are in a given time. This brings up another point as to why this sort of thing is subjective and difficult to sound reasonable discussing (without so much supporting detail that you bore people to death) - it very much depends on what games you play and how you play them.

    9. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by V!NCENT · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Movies do just fine with motion blur and so does Crysis.

      But if you are a pro online FPS gamer who gets loads of cash then the extra frame that half renders without vsync can make that tiny important difference between who shoots first in a crytical encounter.

      But when you are not a pro FPS gamer playing for money on a LAN then higher than 30min - 60max FPS is totally bullshit.

      Besides, all hardcore gamers play in a little less high res and everything but lightning, reflection and model detail is as much downscaled as possible. And then there are hardcore gamers who believe gameplay is so much more important than HD graphics.

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    10. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by V!NCENT · · Score: 2, Insightful

      For video editing that is crucial so that you can get overlapping frames inside of that 24fps timeframe.

      Games however do not work like this. They crank out as much frames per seconds and your HW can handle and then without vsync it is all hit and miss. Ask your movie expert and he'll tell you why that is.

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    11. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Informative

      I hate to burst your bubble buddy, but as a PC builder and repairman I've met a few gamers which will probably buy this thing. All they care about is having the biggest ePeen at ALL costs, one even gave me the cash up front to score him a Skulltrail when THAT was the biggest ePeen board, and had me wire his whole system up to a massive watercooler. Crazy bastard was even paying for the fastest cable PLUS the fastest DSL, and had me set him up dual KillerNICs so he could switch between the two so he would always have the fastest ping. Some folks blow money on cars, he blew it on his ePeen.

      That said as much as I hate consoles (or as I call them DRM...in a box) I have to give them credit for lowering the cost of PC gaming in a major way. It used to be back in the days of Quake 1-3 I'd be buying a new card yearly and a new PC every other just to keep decent framerate, but thanks to console R&D becoming crazy expensive and MSFT and Sony stretching out the time the current model stays on market it really has made things cheaper for those of us that don't care about ePeens and just want to play. Now I'm playing on an AMD quad (925, 8Gb of DDR2 800, dual 500Gb for less than $650) with an HD4650 that cost me a whole $36 after MIR and it plays the games I want like Bioshock 2 just fine on this 1600x900 monitor. Thanks to the consoles slowing down the need to constantly upgrade I just built a new gaming rig for my guitarist, and the whole dual core rig set him back just $400 after MIR at Tigerdirect.

      So if guys want to go nuts with ePeens that is fine and dandy with me, for those of us with GFs or kids or other expenses that just want to enjoy blowing some shit up after a day of work the current situation makes me VERY happy. And the extras you can do with these newer GPUs, like hardware transcoding even on my 4xxx, is really a nice bonus. and unlike my old Nvidia rig it doesn't sound like a jet engine or heat up my place in the summer. Win/win as far as this old greybeard is concerned.

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    12. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by vbraga · · Score: 3, Funny

      Lord, thank you for the $500 network cable Google search. My life changed after reading Amazon comments:

      http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/product-reviews/B000I1X6PM

      I knew my day was going to improve when the truck pulled up at my home with this cable deep within. No ordinary truck, this one was Holy White, and the gold Delivery logo sparkled like a thousand suns reflected through shards of the purest ice formed with unadulterated water collected at the beginning of the universe. The driver, clad in a robe colored the softest of white, floated towards me on the cool fog of a hundred fire extinguishers. He smiled benevolently, like a father looking down upon his only child, and handed me a package wrapped in gold beaten thin to the point where you could see through it. I didn't have to sign, because the driver could see within my heart, and knew that I was pure. Upon opening the package, an angelic choir started to sing, and reached a crescendo as I laid this cable on my stereo system. Instantly, my antiquated equipment transformed into components made from the clearest diamond-semiconductor. The cable knew where to go, and hooked itself into the correct ports without help from me - all the while, the choir sang praises to the almighty digital god. With trepidation, I pushed "play," and was instantly enveloped in a sound that echoed the creation of all matter, a sound that vibrated every cell in my body to perfection. I was instantly taken to the next plane, where I saw the all-father. I knew with my entire soul, that all was good in the world.

      But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.

      Almost all comments - joking or not - are very funny.

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    13. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by KingMotley · · Score: 3, Informative

      First 30 FPS is probably too low for a FPS because you are likely stating what the FPS is when you are motionless and in one particular spot. Now, replay a few matches and tell us what your minimum frame rate was, and I best it's in the very low teens or worse. That isn't acceptable, and you are more likely to lag when the action gets thick and you need your FPS the most.

      Secondly, Crysis/Crysis Warhead is a 3 year old engine that's a generation behind. Of course playing games from 3 years ago play fine on $100 video cards, but those cards would have been the $600+ cards 3 years ago too. Try picking at least a current gen game.

      And lastly, 1680x1050? My LCD's native resolution has been 1920x1200 since I got it 5 years ago. Try getting a decent monitor.

      Playing old games on low resolution monitors and cherry picking frame rates only proves how wrong you are.

    14. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by siride · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah, I just thought of that while I was in the shower (where all good thoughts come from).

    15. Re:Am I a cheap bastard? by Travoltus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Don't worry, nobody is forcing you to buy one,

      You'll eat those words upon the next release of the Crytek engine...

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  4. limited edition by visualight · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Have other cards been offered as 'limited editions'? I was reading the review and thinking "cool, I'll have that in a year..." but then noticed they're only shipping 1000. Then I thought, no way, it might be _that_ card that's just 1000 units, but I'm pretty sure one almost like it will follow.

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    1. Re:limited edition by asdf7890 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Have other cards been offered as 'limited editions'?

      From what I've seen there is often at least one for each generation of each major manufacturer's chip. Sometimes there is more than one, as two or more board builders compete with each other to see who can earn most nerd points by pushing a given generation of chip the furthest (by over-clocking everything, over-speccing other parts, including the require cooling system to keep the out-of-spec setup inside an acceptable thermal profile, and turning marketing up to 11).

      I tend to ignore such limited editions though. More often than not the price/performance ratio of them is many times more ridiculous than the officially (by the chip maker) sanctioned top-of-the-range cards which them selves offer poor p/p compared to the next layer or two down.

      This sort of card has two purposes. It is aimed at selling to the sort of people that want the best of the best no matter what the cost and even if they know something better will be along next month, and it raises the profile of the company a bit via coverage on hardware review sites and news agregators like ./.

  5. Re:Linux? by gazbo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dude, Nethack fucking SCREAMS. As long as you install the proprietary binary drivers.

  6. Why this doesn't matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    This was over the top, totally bonkers, hilariously exaggerated just 10 years ago. With not two but 5 of the hottest graphics processors of the time on one board, it would smoke the competition in any benchmark (particularly Bungholiomark). Now tell me, what good would five times the performance of a ten year old card do in one of today's games? The ASUS ARES is just as ridiculous, but it's real and they expect you to pay real money for it. If you do that, the joke is on you.

  7. Flying fuck. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How relevant is that for a gaming card?

    Remember, this is a product that comes with a GAMING MOUSE thrown in. It's like asking how much of a load the latest supercar can haul. It's irrelevant, as long as there's no games using OpenCL. Trust me, when OpenCL is a big thing in gaming, these cards will be long forgotten.

  8. Re:Linux? by V!NCENT · · Score: 2, Informative
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  9. Re:Go Back in time with it by mangu · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if this card is faster than all the Voodoo2s sold put together?

    Who knows, but that's not of the essence. Unfortunately, computer games have gone the way of Hollywood movies, all glitter and no substance.

    My favorite game genres are adventure games and car simulations. Ten years ago i used to play the Need for Spped - Porshce game and I still have to see a similar game that's as fun for the casual gamer.

    Racing games today have much better graphics, the cars look almost like photographs, but they aren't fun to drive. Either they have no physics engine at all, they are arcade games meant to be played with a gamepad, like the Need for Speed games since "Underground", or they are like Richard Burns Rally, so hard to play it starts looking like work.

    As for adventure games, the golden age of 1990s is gone. There were EGA or VGA games like Space Quest and Monkey Island that were so fun to play and have no modern successors.

    It's a pity that the availability of so much visual power seems to have derailed the creativity from making fun games to enhanced visual effects.

  10. what's the point of the briefcase? by MoFoQ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    sure...it's cool..but at the same time...gimmicky..
    once I install the card...it stays in the there and not in the briefcase.

    And the "gaming mouse"....I'm sorry, I like my G5 (rev 2).

    Plus the price makes it un-attractive.

    1. Re:what's the point of the briefcase? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 2, Funny

      Just so if you go on vacation, and decide to take your gaming graphics card, instead of your girlfriend . . . it should be great for getting flagged, when going through airport security.

      TSA agent: "Sir, what exactly is this . . . ?"

      Gamer: "It's the fastest graphics card in the world, as we know it! And it costs $1200 . . . and came with this great briefcase!"

      TSA to colleague: "I don't see any Apple logo on it. Cuff him, and put him on the next flight to Guantanamo. Send the briefcase to the lab in Langley, and see if they can figure out how this weapon of mass destruction works . . ."

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    2. Re:what's the point of the briefcase? by ZosX · · Score: 2

      I was going to make a snarky remark about how it would be unlikely that you would have a gf if you bought this card, but come to think of it, if you have $1200 to blow on a video card, there is a very good chance that you have a girlfriend.

  11. Re:Linux? by V!NCENT · · Score: 3, Informative

    Oh yeah sorry... I forgot to mention that that engine is actually used to make this commercial game that is comming to Linux: http://www.primalcarnage.com/website/

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  12. One page by cffrost · · Score: 2, Informative
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  13. Re:Go Back in time with it by jones_supa · · Score: 2, Informative

    As for adventure games, the golden age of 1990s is gone. There were EGA or VGA games like Space Quest and Monkey Island that were so fun to play and have no modern successors.

    It's not that sad. There's still gems here and there.

  14. And don't forget by NotSoHeavyD3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In 3 years when that game comes out, there will be a card available to run that game and it'll cost about $100-$150.

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  15. Re:IO limited? by kc8apf · · Score: 2, Informative

    Typically for graphics cards, the only data sent over PCIe is texture data, vertex lists, and commands. The bulk of the operations done by the card are running the commands over the vertex lists while bringing in texture data. The commands are almost always a multi-pass or pipeline so each vertex will be used in computations more than once. The result is the pushed to the monitor, not the PCIe. So, yes, in general, a graphics card will have more FLOPs than I/O bandwidth.

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  16. Re:Go Back in time with it by epine · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I find it tedious this need to equate happeningness with innovation.

    Cell phones would look pretty pathetic if not embedded in an ecosystem which made it possible to efficiently produce the software and content and phone designs you implicitly rave about. Just about every great innovation that makes the modern cell phone possible was developed primarily on giant PC workstations.

    Just like it's easier to have a lot of spare cash in early adulthood (and the coolness associated with that) if you still live in your parent's basement and leach off the free utilities.

    It was the same thing with the success of scripting languages on the back of the nasty compiled languages such as C/C++. When Python runs fast, which language to you think is doing the real heavy lifting?

    Standing on the shoulders of giants and poaching the low hanging fruit is a time honoured tradition, but why is the hulking giant always portrayed as a dim gallumph? It's like saying peaches are cool, but peach tree step ladders aren't.

    Coolness ends up being how much newness one can take credit for, while disregarding long years of hard work by the better established that made the niche possible in the first place. OpenCL based media encoders running on massive GPUs is only going to make your cell phone decoder even more cool and bit efficient.

    So I get your message. There's nothing happening on the PC platform because the cell platform has figured out how to take all the credit on the unassailable logic that the most important component in any technology ecosystem is the pocket-sized gratification device.