ASUS MARS 760 Unboxing & Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,156 words · ~5 min read
0:14
welcome to my unboxing and review of the ASUS GeForce GTX 760 Mars now it might
0:20
seem like a regular GTX 760 except that that one comes in a package that looks a
0:24
little something like this so no this is something special with the Mars branding
0:28
on there we know we're getting something Rog and something a little bit different
0:32
so Inside the Box packed in nice soft
0:36
closed cell foam we get the GTX 760 Mars
0:39
which has a gorgeous direct cu2 style
0:43
cooler on it with Rog color scheming and
0:46
branding all over it and under that we get not one but two GeForce GTX 760
0:54
cores each of them equipped with 2 gigs of memory clocked at 6 GHz each of them
0:59
clocked at a base of 1,6 MHz and a boost
1:03
of 1072 although guys we do of course overclock the card for our performance
1:07
evaluation later and having a total allog together of
1:12
2,34 Cuda cor it also has a much better
1:16
power implementation with a 12 phase super alloy power Digi plus vrm system
1:21
as well as just an overall Better Built
1:25
high quality non-reference board so for example they're using their Black
1:28
Metallic caps which are rated at 10,000 hours of Lifetime at
1:33
105° C it also has a full back plate
1:37
unlike the reference GTX 690 which does a couple of things so you might be able
1:41
to argue that it helps with heat dissipation a little bit but um but what
1:45
it also does is it actually protects the components on the back and gives more
1:48
rigidity to the card so that it's less likely to flex speaking of rigidity to
1:52
the card it has almost none because on the back of the card it has a back plate
1:55
and on the front of the card it has almost a full unic sync that actually
1:59
does contri contribute to cooling because it is being actively cooled by
2:03
the two fans that are blowing air towards it on the top of the card we
2:06
find a single SLI finger this means that the card is compatible with quad SLI if
2:12
you're running an additional ASUS GTX 760 Mars and we find the illuminated
2:18
logo so there's a beautiful Mars logo that lights up when the card is
2:22
installed in your case and powered speaking of power we've got two PCI
2:25
Express 8 Pin connectors if your power supply doesn't have two eight pins don't
2:29
worry they do include a dual six pin to 8 Pin adapter although if your card
2:33
doesn't have dual 8 pins you might not necessarily want to be running a card
2:36
like this because power consumption is high it actually consumes more power
2:41
than a GTX 780 Ti and as you guys will
2:44
see in our performance testing the performance is pretty similar these two
2:48
fans here are their dust proof design fans so this offers extended longevity
2:53
and so they'll basically just last longer without sounding terrible and the
2:56
full top shroud is finished in a gorgeous soft touch field with aluminum
3:01
anodized red accents that just I mean
3:04
guys let's face it this card won't
3:07
perform that differently from two GTX 760 direct cu2s but what it does do is
3:14
it adds The Bling Bling so let's get into performance numbers what do we
3:18
compare something like this against well ausa's own numbers reference Titan a lot
3:22
but I don't think that makes a lot of sense because Titan is significantly more expensive and has been usurped by
3:28
the GTX 780 Ti which is cheaper and
3:31
better performing than Titan when it comes to gaming applications so we ran
3:34
our own tests and we included the r9290 as sort of our value high performance
3:39
option as well as NVIDIA's own GTX 780
3:43
and 780 Ti to give us a pretty clear picture of how it Stacks up now because
3:48
it's priced pretty similar to a 780 Ti it shouldn't surprise you guys that in
3:52
our test Suite which hopefully we're going to have up on the screen right now
3:55
it performs very similarly to a GeForce GTX 780 Ti with that said there are some
4:01
caveats so number one is the fact that power consumption is going to be higher
4:05
than an individual card number two is the fact that you're going to have some
4:10
behaviors that are not as desirable as you might get from an individual
4:14
higher-end card SLI doesn't scale perfectly so there will be situations
4:18
where this card will perform extremely well and there will be other ones where
4:22
it just doesn't perform that well or where to get stability you will even
4:26
have to disable a GPU and you are effectively reducing the performance
4:29
that you can get out of it I do generally recommend that you run a
4:33
single more powerful card rather than running SLI until you're at the point
4:37
where you're already buying the most powerful single GPU available at which
4:41
point if you really need more performance you can add another one the other issue with SLI is that even though
4:46
this card has four gigs of memory on it only two gigs can be used effectively
4:51
because you have to duplicate the data that stored in the frame buffer that is
4:55
allocated to each GPU whereas GeForce GTX 780ti has 3 gigs of memory all of
5:01
which is usable and all of that even ignores the fact that like we said
5:05
before you could buy two GTX 70s which
5:09
would be less expensive to get about the same performance and present a much more
5:13
compelling value option than something like a 760 Mars so who is the Mars made
5:20
for and the answer is the same person
5:23
that every other Mars and every other Aries series Rog card from ASUS is made
5:28
for someone who values the form of the
5:32
card someone who values The Prestige of owning one of their top tier Ro class
5:38
cards I mean the engineering that goes into building these cards is very very
5:42
admirable and they look the part so I
5:45
think that pretty much wraps things up thank you for checking out our unboxing
5:48
and review of the GeForce GTX 760 Mars from ASUS don't forget to like this
5:53
video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment if you want
5:56
to let us know what you thought I mean what would you buy out these three
6:00
options 780 Ti Mar 760 or just two sort
6:04
of less expensive 70s and compromise
6:07
those additional two PCI Express slots CU this at least fits when in the form
6:11
factor of one card and as always don't
6:15
forget to
6:25
subscribe