New record power draw for a gfx card

[Tzupy]

The Asus Mars II 3GB was tested at Techpowerup, and maximum power draw (in Furmark) is 729W!
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/Mars_II/25.html
Obviously a no-no for SPCR folk, but I found this mind-boggling enough to mention it.

[Jim G]

Somehow that makes the 64W idle figure more impressive... that's huge, though. Far more than both my computers put together :p

[diver]

Sick.

[dhanson865]

Only $1500 at newegg yet can only display out to 2 monitors. I mean the only real use for overpriced video cards is widescreen gaming with 3 or more monitors.

Oh and it's 3 slot covers and will want the 4th slot unpopulated for airflow.

At least the temps and fan noise are reasonable. It's not like some of the products of old that barely worked at stock speeds because they were shoehorned into a 2 slot solution.

[Cryoburner]

So, it gets roughly 14% better performance in their tests than an HD 6990 or GTX 590 on average, yet it costs over twice as much, and they give it an "editor's choice" award? : / Editor's choice for who? Even those cards are arguably overkill for almost anyone. I suppose it might help with stereoscopic gaming, but you're still looking at marginal performance gains for double the cost. Crossfire two 6950s and you get 6990 performance for under $500. Crossfire/SLI some higher end cards, and you can get comparable or better performance than this thing, still for significantly less. The fact that it's a single card isn't much of an advantage here either, since it requires the same space and power requirements of using multiple cards.

I suppose they consider it a highly niche product, seeing as they're only selling 1000 of them, but it still seems silly that anyone would buy one of these rather than going a multi-card route. It's probably intended mainly for system builders selling "ultimate" systems, where they can claim the "world's fastest card" to uninformed people buying $5000+ gaming systems.

At least the temps and fan noise are reasonable.

Well, it did manage the highest noise level under load on the entire list, if that's considered "reasonable". : P