by Carl Rogel Inocentes
The god of war has descended. Brandishing two GTX 760 GPUs, the ROG Mars proves to be one of the heaviest-built video cards in the market. But is it powerful? To answer that, the ASUS graphics card went through the doors of the TechLab to undergo a number of labors fit for a VGA god.
Republic of Gamers is ASUS’ brand of high-end components and peripherals, and the Mars is just that. Out of the box, the video card shows prowess in design, radiating the shades of red and black. It features ASUS-exclusive Direct CU II cooling system, making it cooler and quieter under load, and also good-looking at the same time. It still sports the LED Mars logo on the side and helps as a constant reminder of having one powerful card in one’s rig.
In terms of performance, the Mars 760 stands as one of the most powerful cards in the market. Playing hardware-intensive games such as Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4 is cakewalk for this card. It manages to maintain a stable FPS while offering a lot of eye candy. ASUS claims that it has outperformed the GTX Titan by a small margin and that statement may not be far, given the tests that we’ve done.
Aside from its already formidable performance, the Mars 760 takes up only two card slots. This part is useful for those with cramped CPU chassis or wanting to save up on space. Again, the Mars 760 is a dual GPU graphics card and the two chipsets rest in only one plane, thus saving space. Also, the card is capable of SLI, so having multiple Mars 760s is an option. In terms of power, the 760 SLI consumes less as compared to other single GPUs.
The ROG Mars 760 definitely remains true to its name. The dual GPU made by ASUS never fails to impress. A downside however, is their choice to use dual 760s. If two 780 Ti chipsets were used, the performance would have been phenomenal. Still, the Mars 760 is one of the best cards in the market. With space being a premium in motherboards and power consumption a constant concern, the card readily addresses the two.