ASUS ROG MARS760-4GD5 Pro Reviews

The ASUS MARS 760 is an excellent card for some gamers, but we just wish the price tag was a bit lower and that it was already available!

In the past I was able to write conclusions about the ASUS MARS graphics cards that were simply in awe of the performance and engineering, leaving a purchase recommendation out of the equation. The MARS II card had a retail price starting at $1200 so there weren't many readers who were going to be influenced with that buying decision; you either knew you wanted that kind of card or you knew you didn't. With the ROG MARS 760 though we get a custom design option from ASUS that is more reasonably priced and also won't be as limited in production. In my view the ASUS ROG MARS 760 is a fantastic choice for gamers that are going to be gaming on a 2560x1600 or 2560x1440 panel and are looking for an enthusiast-class graphics card to get the job done. The MARS 760 is unique but also can claim to be the fastest graphics card available on the market with its pair of GTX 760 / GK104 GPUs under the hood.

ASUS designed a truly unique product with their new ROG MARS GTX 760 graphics card. The card is powered by two GK104 GPUs sitting on the same PCB in SLI. The card is also overclocked out of the box to 1006 MHZ base on the GPU, with Boost running it at 1137 MHz most of the time. That said, the card is unfortunately facing strong competition because of the recently released GeForce GTX 780 Ti, Radeon R9 290X, and R9 290. I suspect ASUS meant to release the MARS GTX 760 in early fall, at which time it would have revolutionized the GPU market, bringing leading performance at good pricing. Had the card launched around August time, this conclusion would read completely differently; today, the card is difficult to recommend. The GTX 780 Ti is around 5% faster and more expensive, but it only has a single GPU, so it won't need SLI support in games. While NVIDIA generally has very good SLI profiles, there are sometimes issues, like with Splinter Cell: Blacklist's broken SLI profile in NVIDIA's 331.82 WHQL driver, though fixed in a recent Beta driver. While AMD's Radeon R9 290 and 290X can't impress with their heat and noise levels, they do provide very good single-GPU performance at much more affordable pricing than the MARS GTX 760. Don't get me wrong, the MARS GTX 760 isn't a bad card at all, but its poorly timed launch date stands out. ASUS has done a good job with their cooler, ensuring that both GPUs never go beyond 80°C under load, which results in maximum NVIDIA Boost clocks. The cooler does end up a bit noisy in games, though. There are clearly better solutions if noise is important to you. Even two quiet GTX 760 cards in SLI should be quieter, but two cards are also easier to cool because they take up more room.