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ASUS ROG MARS 760 Review

Published by Christian Ney on 19.11.13

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For this edition of ASUS MARS Graphics card, ASUS has thought about something different than their usual recipe. This time, there aren't two high-end chips but two GTX 760 mid-range GPUs. You can find these chips on one single PCB combined with a powerful and beautiful cooler. Other than that the GPUs received a really decent factory overclocking and we're curious to see what this card is capable of.

Presentation

ASUS has definitely outdone itself and has brought quite a surprise with the launch of the ASUS ROG MARS 760. The new ASUS ROG MARS 760 is actually the first dual-GPU card based on two GK104-225-A2 GPUs, or simply, two GTX 760 GPUs placed on the same PCB. If you actually stop to think about it, then you might stumble upon the fact that one GTX 760 card comes at quite a decent price point which puts the ASUS ROG 760 at quite good price/performance ratio on the market. So putting two GTX 760 GPUs on a single PCB and then making them work together with a decent PLX chip sounds like quite a plan, a plan that might scare off even the GTX 780 or the mighty GTX Titan.

With such a custom card, it's quite obvious that there is nothing according to reference specifications. There is a brand new cooler, a completely custom PCB and even a factory overclock on both GPUs. ASUS is not making any exceptions with this MARS card, as their ROG department has really decided to push the limit to a whole new level.

We will start off with frequencies. The base clock of this beast is set at 1'006 MHz while the Boost clock is at 1'072 MHz. After putting some load on these two chips we see that a maximum Boost clock goes all the way up to 1'123 MHz while the average Boost clock is at 1'123 MHz. On this card, the NVIDIA Boost technology is both temperature and power based, the latter being predominant, leading to more consistent results. The only time when the maximum Boost clocks drop is when we are putting heavy load on these GPUs using Furmark. Luckily load like this is not going to be applied in games so the ASUS ROG MARS 760 should stay at its maximum Boost almost the entire time. Another interesting feature is the fact that there is an SLI connector, which basically means that Quad-SLI setup is possible when two ASUS ROG MARS 760 graphics cards are paired. The PLX chip, which is there to make the two GK104's work in tandem, is the PEX8747.

Specifications

	ASUS MARS	Gigabyte OC V1	GeForce GTX 760
Chip	2x GK104-225-A2	GK104-225-A2	GK104-225-A2
Process	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm
Transistors	3.54 billion	3.54 billion	3.54 billion
GPU clock	1'006 MHz	1'084 MHz	980 MHz
Boost clock	1'072 MHz	1'150 MHz	1'033 MHz
Memory GDDR5	2x 2'048 MB	4'096 MB	2'048 MB
Memory clock	1'502 (6'008) MHz	1'502 (6'008) MHz	1'502 (6'008) MHz
Memory interface	2x 256 Bit	256 Bit	256 Bit
Memory bandwidth	2x 192'300 MB/s	192'300 MB/s	192'300 MB/s
Shader Cores	2x 96	96	96
TMUs	2x 1'152 (6 SMX)	1'152 (6 SMX)	1'152 (6 SMX)
ROPs	2x 32	32	32
TDP	xxx Watt	xxx Watt	170 Watt
PCB Type	Custom Design	Custom Design	Reference Design
Lenght (PCB - Total)	28.2 - 28.2 cm	25.5 - 28.0 cm	17.5 - 24.1 cm
Height (PCB - Total)	11.0 - 12.2 cm	11.0 - 12.5 cm	11.0 - 11.0 cm
Slots	2	2	2
Cooler	DirectCU II	WindForce 3X	NVIDIA Reference
Launch Price	$XXX	$XXX	$249