Introduction
01
The first half of 2009 has been surprisingly quiet on the add-in
graphics-card front. NVIDIA and AMD, the two industry heavyweights, are
taking their time in releasing next-generation parts which we'll likely
see in September and October of this year.
Procrastination on their part has caused partners to design custom
cards based on present GPUs. Sapphire's been doing it for a while on
the AMD/ATI side, and ASUS has begun playing the 'design-it-yourself'
game
with the likes of the MATRIX and Voltage Tweak series.
Nothing gets an enthusiast's heart racing as much as a grounds-up
design
that's outlandish in the extreme - a SKU that no-one has. ASUS wants to
occupy this ground with the limited-edition ROG (Republic of Gamers)
MARS card.
Pulling together two GeForce GTX 285s and sandwiching them on the same
card, the MARS aims to be the fastest graphics-card on the planet. But
what happens when you couple two together? We find out.