true 5870x2 coming from ASUS

[josiahsuarez]

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http://www.overclockers.at/news/asus_arbeitet_an_uebertakteter_hd_5970_namens_ares&sl=de&tl=en

ASUS is working on overclocked HD 5970, called "Ares"

First hand, we have learned that ASUS wants to bring a true HD 5870 X2 on the market. Under the provisional codenamed Ares two RV870 GPUs are full with 850 MHz core clock and shader are combined on a PCB. In short, a highly overclocked HD 5970

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fplaza.fi%2Fmuropaketti%2Fasus-suunnittelee-yli-1000-euron-rog-ares-naytonohjainta&sl=auto&tl=en
Asus is planning to more than 1,000 euros ROG ARES-graphics card

Asus ROG ARES

* Two Cypress graphics division (3200 Stream Processors)
* Objective Performance> ATI Radeon HD 5870 CrossFireX
* Four gigabytes of GDDR5 memory
* Three PCI Express supplementary power connector (8 + 8 + 6-pin)
* Massive 100% copper heatsink cooling
* Graphics card space requires 2.5 slots
* PCB is higher than usual, almost square
* Limited availability, not the numbering of cards
* Estimated price recommendation to the MARS-like graphics

unfortuneately 1,000 euros is like $1,400 USD

[Redeemed]

Yeah...

There's a reason AMD didn't make one of these...

[shadow001]

My cards run a those speeds all day long,but the stock cooling becomes quite noisy since both cards are close together,having only a few millimeters of space for the top card to take in fresh air.


So if i really wanted to get them running at those speeds,i'd remove the stock coolers and add water blocks,costing about 130$ and still be cheaper and quieter than those cards....About the only thing i'd be missing is that each GPU on those has 2 GB to play with,while the standard HD5970 has 1 GB per GPU.

[trivium nate]

damn crazy expensive!

[Viral]

I like the 4GB of memory and copper HS, but the price, 2.5 slots, huge square PCB (unless just like the MSI 5870 lightning) and 8 + 8 + 6 power connectors is a bit of a turn off. Why need an extra 6-pin? Seriously, I have the cables but why would I want to use 3?

Anyhow, the price, if true, dictates I'll never be buying one of these. If someone else brings out a well priced alternate (looking at you, MSI) I might buy one for tri fire if I find myself wanting more performance since tri-fire is a decent balance of price/performance.

[josiahsuarez]

I like the 4GB of memory and copper HS, but the price, 2.5 slots, huge square PCB (unless just like the MSI 5870 lightning) and 8 + 8 + 6 power connectors is a bit of a turn off. Why need an extra 6-pin? Seriously, I have the cables but why would I want to use 3?

I'm guessing to make sure it runs 100% stable in this configuration, under any circumstance. ASUS is very good at electrical engineering and I'm sure they wouldn't make it this way unless there was a good reason.

I agree this product is indeed a little silly, a vanilla 5970 is already plenty fast enough except in the most extreme circumstances. and if those apply just do 5970 crossfire like shadow. it will be an interesting novelty though :D

[shadow001]

I'm guessing to make sure it runs 100% stable in this configuration, under any circumstance. ASUS is very good at electrical engineering and I'm sure they wouldn't make it this way unless there was a good reason.

I agree this product is indeed a little silly, a vanilla 5970 is already plenty fast enough except in the most extreme circumstances. and if those apply just do 5970 crossfire like shadow. it will be an interesting novelty though :D


I could water cool mine and make them run at 850/1200 clocks all day long,without a hint of noise,and even recover the expansion slots that are normally covered by the stock air coolers in the process...Maybe add a TV tuner card or something.


So the main feature that sets this card apart is the extra ram and maybe the potential for the card to hit even higher overclocks than the stock HD5970 cards can do normally,but seeing that i'm already highly CPU limited in many cases with a 4Ghz i7 920 CPU,you can imagine the overall situation with even higher clocked versions.


These cards are built to break records using LN2 cooled CPU's running at 5+ Ghz,or even better still,the upcoming 6 core Gulftowns coming this march,which would be my next step in the upgrade process,not because games really need it,but to feed the 4 GPU's i'm running right now...:D

[shadow001]

Speak of the devil:



http://www.koolance.com/water-cooling/images/more/vid-ar597_p0.jpg



Nice looking one too.....139$ for each one.

[Muppet]

I thought that this was impossible because of the 300 watt PCI-e specs. Or is that a load of bull.

[shadow001]

I thought that this was impossible because of the 300 watt PCI-e specs. Or is that a load of bull.


It isn't,but they can't claim the card to be PCI-e certified since it is going over the 300 watt power limit,but on the other hand,the amount of cards that will be built will likely be pretty small,so PCI-e certification is a moot point,and most of the higher quality power supplies are overbuilt to be able to exceed that 300 watt limit as well(Think 1000 watt + power supplies here).

[Muppet]

It isn't,but they can't claim the card to be PCI-e certified since it is going over the 300 watt power limit,but on the other hand,the amount of cards that will be built will likely be pretty small,so PCI-e certification is a moot point,and most of the higher quality power supplies are overbuilt to be able to exceed that 300 watt limit as well(Think 1000 watt + power supplies here).

Ok so that's cool. Nvidia will more than likely do the same with a dual chip Fermi. Otherwise I can't see the point.

[Xion X2]

Speak of the devil:



http://www.koolance.com/water-cooling/images/more/vid-ar597_p0.jpg



Nice looking one too.....139$ for each one.

I like the DangerDen blocks better. Had mine nickel plated just last week.

http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/641/dsc08360001.jpg

[shadow001]

Ok so that's cool. Nvidia will more than likely do the same with a dual chip Fermi. Otherwise I can't see the point.


They might if the idea is to sell a fairly small amount of them,so PCI-e certification is less important then....It really comes down to the volume of cards basically.


I'm actually tempted to go towards water cooling,even while remaining at stock clocks for the cards since the cooling can be heard quite easily when running the unigine "Heaven" techdemo,probably due to the high workloads involved,and also in the beta of battlefield bad company 2.


And these HD5970 cards are rated for 294 watts max power consumption at stock clocks,so it's something to keep in mind if/when a Dual Fermi card is released and if it should use more power than ATI's....The stock cooling won't likely be quiet,at least with some of the more demanding applications.

[josiahsuarez]

Ok so that's cool. Nvidia will more than likely do the same with a dual chip Fermi. Otherwise I can't see the point.

this isn't ATI making these Ares cards, ASUS is just taking some liberties and making a card thats outside of ATI's spec. ASUS could do the same with Fermi, especially considering they already did this with GTX295 MARS cards (which had two 8-pin power connectors), but that's different than Nvidia making a reference card that's not PCI-E compliant. ASUS will do that for a small run of expensive boutique cards, but Nvidia probably won't spend their time making something for such a limited audience. at least I don't hink they would...

[Muppet]

this isn't ATI making these Ares cards, ASUS is just taking some liberties and making a card thats outside of ATI's spec. ASUS could do the same with Fermi, especially considering they already did this with GTX295 MARS cards (which had two 8-pin power connectors), but that's different than Nvidia making a reference card that's not PCI-E compliant. ASUS will do that for a small run of expensive boutique cards, but Nvidia probably won't spend their time making something for such a limited audience. at least I don't hink they would...

Only thing is that with a supposedly 25 watt difference between a single Fermi and Dual Chip Fermi, I wouldn't expect much performance difference. They will have to get extra performance somewhere. Also I very much doubt the dual chip Fermi at $500 + to be for the mainstream crowd. Only people like us who are Hardware crazy would pay that sort of money. I don't care if it is above the specs as long as it is fast. If it needs an external power source, then so be it.

[shadow001]

this isn't ATI making these Ares cards, ASUS is just taking some liberties and making a card thats outside of ATI's spec. ASUS could do the same with Fermi, especially considering they already did this with GTX295 MARS cards (which had two 8-pin power connectors), but that's different than Nvidia making a reference card that's not PCI-E compliant. ASUS will do that for a small run of expensive boutique cards, but Nvidia probably won't spend their time making something for such a limited audience. at least I don't hink they would...


There's always the PR value of it,having the fastest card on the market,even if most users would never consider it given the outrageous price they'd command....It really depends on what Nvidia decides to do in the end.


Asus built only 1000 of those "MARS" edition cards,and even at the 1500$+ they were selling them for,i doubt they made money with the cards,for the simple fact that even though the GPU's and ram it uses aren't that expensive,they needed to develop their own PCB and a custom power supply circuitry that could provide extra power,beyond what the GTX295 needs and it's own custom cooling as well.


So making 1.5 million $ for those 1000 cards isn't that much,considering it likely took several months of engineering and a decent sized team to make all the modifications required work and be compliant within electrical safety,radio frequency and electromagnetic radiation limits imposed to consumer electronics in general.

[shadow001]

Only thing is that with a supposedly 25 watt difference between a single Fermi and Dual Chip Fermi, I wouldn't expect much performance difference. They will have to get extra performance somewhere. Also I very much doubt the dual chip Fermi at $500 + to be for the mainstream crowd. Only people like us who are Hardware crazy would pay that sort of money. I don't care if it is above the specs as long as it is fast. If it needs an external power source, then so be it.


The main performance boost from multi GPU's has usually been in raw fillrate and memory bandwith situations anyhow,specifically games that use a lot of both see the best scaling,as long as the CPU doesn't become the bottleneck of course.


So with the technical specs of fermi as they are,which has 48 rops for fillrate on each GPU and a 384 Bit memory bus using GDDR5,and if none of the rops need to be disabled,a dual Fermi card could look like this for fillrate and memory bandwith:


96 Rops(HD5970 has 64 between both)
400 GB/sec of memory bandwith(200 GB/sec for each GPU).


If the Rops on both the fermi and Cypress chips are comparable in terms of overall capabilities,the Dual Fermi card could have 50% more fillrate that the HD 5970 if both were running at the same clock speeds,and we know pretty much any HD5970 card hits 850 Mhz on the GPU's there,so at what clock speed will the Fermi Gpu operate at is the question?....To still have an edge over the HD5970,even when it's overclocked,they'd need to hit at least 600 Mhz clock speeds with the highest end Fermi card.


On the memory side of things is where it's a lot more clear cut,as even when the HD5970's memory is clocked to 1200 Mhz,which the memory it uses is rated for,that still only totals about 300 GB/sec of memory bandwith....A dual Fermi card could have 400 GB/sec of memory bandwith to play with there,so it would be untouchable in memory bandwith constrained situations.

[josiahsuarez]

There's always the PR value of it,having the fastest card on the market,even if most users would never consider it given the outrageous price they'd command....It really depends on what Nvidia decides to do in the end.


Asus built only 1000 of those "MARS" edition cards,and even at the 1500$+ they were selling them for,i doubt they made money with the cards,for the simple fact that even though the GPU's and ram it uses aren't that expensive,they needed to develop their own PCB and a custom power supply circuitry that could provide extra power,beyond what the GTX295 needs and it's own custom cooling as well.

yes I wonder this also, what does ASUS get out of developing these monster cards like Ares and MARS. certainly not profit like you say, with such tiny volume of sales, so are Nvidia/ATI paying them to do this? or are they just trying to bolster their own image?

[Johnny C]

yes I wonder this also, what does ASUS get out of developing these monster cards like Ares and MARS. certainly not profit like you say, with such tiny volume of sales, so are Nvidia/ATI paying them to do this? or are they just trying to bolster their own image?

They get prestige.....

[josiahsuarez]

http://www.nordichardware.com/en/news/71-graphics/304-asus-ares-in-the-nude.html
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e16/josiahsuarez/asusaresnude.jpg

that is a beast!

[Ninja Prime]

LOL. Whats the point of paying $1400 for a card that is a dual 5870 when two 5870s would cost you $800?

[Muppet]

LOL. Whats the point of paying $1400 for a card that is a dual 5870 when two 5870s would cost you $800?

Is that $1400 US :afraid: