Asus Mars GTX 295 4gb limited edition

[Frost_775]

Mann i love this card, but i am not impressed that they made it a limited edition thing . It's all a money making thing i tell ya. They are capable of making a kick ass card, combining two of the latest GPU's, with a !@~# load of memory and now they are only making a 1000 of those....world wide.

So who gets some of them first...well by the time we saved up some money, they will be all gone.

Why keep your latest card on a standard GTX295 and not make something better....obviously they can...why not make a GTX295 x2 like the GX2 series...i mean the future is multi GPU, not SLI. It makes sense...the more components you can fit on one unit, the better the performance, like the Core i7's on board memory controller.

 

[ac3144]

I love it too but it is a bit over the top though, don't you think? I mean what could you possibly be doing at the moment that would even come close to using all that power?? You would probably need your own power station ro run everything too.
That said, I would still like one if anyone's feeling generous....
AC

 

[coozie7]

*cry* With my feeble rig it would be like putting a Porsche Turbo engine in a standard '79 Beetle

 

[Frost_775]

Yea your right, don't think anything could shake that card at the moment, but i don't like buying a high end card and then the month after that another one....call it a gamer's syndrome but its all about the fps.

The bad thing is that your Graphics card memory capacity gets mapped to your system RAM. That means that the amount (4gb in this case) of memory on your card will be mirrored in your system ram (4GB). Windows and any other programs will not read or write to that space because it is reserved.

So you will have to have at least double the RAM for high performance. I had that issue running 2x 9800 GX2's with 2GB combined graphics ram and 4GB system ram. So i had 1GB for Vista to run at best and 3GB for the rest of the stuff.

 

[daedalus685]

Yea your right, don't think anything could shake that card at the moment, but i don't like buying a high end card and then the month after that another one....call it a gamer's syndrome but its all about the fps.

The bad thing is that your Graphics card memory capacity gets mapped to your system RAM. That means that the amount (4gb in this case) of memory on your card will be mirrored in your system ram (4GB). Windows and any other programs will not read or write to that space because it is reserved.

So you will have to have at least double the RAM for high performance. I had that issue running 2x 9800 GX2's with 2GB combined graphics ram and 4GB system ram. So i had 1GB for Vista to run at best and 3GB for the rest of the stuff.

Anyone who even consideres using on of these (or any high end GPU) on a 32bit system is a moron.

 

[Frost_775]

yip or they cannot read because XP 32bit don't see or even list 4gb. But imagine running two 4gb Mars cards...that's like 8gb...so 12gb will then be the option. And even then you don't want to fill up all your dimm banks for the interleaving issue.

At least Kingston is comming out with a 12gb triple channel kit. (3x 4gb modules), and yes...only running at 1600...damn....just have to wait for Corsair to up their capacity on their modules and try to run them at 2000mhz.

 

[daedalus685]

yip or they cannot read because XP 32bit don't see or even list 4gb. But imagine running two 4gb Mars cards...that's like 8gb...so 12gb will then be the option. And even then you don't want to fill up all your dimm banks for the interleaving issue.

At least Kingston is comming out with a 12gb triple channel kit. (3x 4gb modules), and yes...only running at 1600...damn....just have to wait for Corsair to up their capacity on their modules and try to run them at 2000mhz.

There is plenty of address space in 64bit for all that ram so no worries on that. There will be no issues with not having enough address space for all of the physical RAM for a few years.

Also, you would have to have a really archaic MB to run into interleaving problems with 4dimm now a days. The only thing you really run into is ahving to clock the RAM a bit slower to run 4 isntead of 2, which I deal with as I need the extra RAM more than I need the 200mhz on it.

 

[daedalus685]

That beign said, thsi monster has as much video RAM as 32bit vista has address space.. I'm not even sure how that would work... I suppose a large chuck of it would sit there rather useless as I don't think windows would be silly enough to let any spill over into the application space. Least I hope not.. I'm not about to ever try at any rate.

 

[Frost_775]

yea, 64bit is the way to go. Still disappointed about the limited edition stuff...grrrrr. But yea, its probably gonna cost a arm and a leg too. Still gonna wait for corsair to up their capacity though. I will rather run 3x 4gb dimms instead of 6x 2gb's. 400mhz difference between DDRIII 1600 and 2000 are worth it for me.

Never the less, i won't run a SLI config. any time soon. Too much bucks and i would like to have double the performance....two cards..double...but at least they tried.

I say, skip the multi graphic card config's and make more single powerfull cards like the mars. maybe the Mars will out perform a quad config? will have to see when the tests come out.

 

[daedalus685]

yea, 64bit is the way to go. Still disappointed about the limited edition stuff...grrrrr. But yea, its probably gonna cost a arm and a leg too. Still gonna wait for corsair to up their capacity though. I will rather run 3x 4gb dimms instead of 6x 2gb's. 400mhz difference between DDRIII 1600 and 2000 are worth it for me.

Never the less, i won't run a SLI config. any time soon. Too much bucks and i would like to have double the performance....two cards..double...but at least they tried.

I say, skip the multi graphic card config's and make more single powerfull cards like the mars. maybe the Mars will out perform a quad config? will have to see when the tests come out.

Obviously 3DIMM/2DIMM configs that give you the same total RAM are going to be better than 6/4.. That was not disputed.. But haev fun finding 4gb moduales at a reasonable price. The performace increase I get from slightly downclocking the RAM but getting twice as much in the programs that use the RAM vastly overpowers the slight loss I get in programs that do not. But this is off topic and has nothing to do with GPU's.. Obviosuly faster RAM is faster, though I think you might be givnig more credit to the RAM speed than it deserves. I question what you would need that much RAM for .

The mars card is just as much SLI as two cards, it just takes up one slot instead. All of the negatives that come with SLI are still present on the dual GPU cards except for the single slot thing. Makng more cards like the mars is by definition focussing on multiple GPU configurations, so I'm not sure what you mean.. That being said a GPU is onyl as fast as a GPU. We will bef orever ading them together to make up for the speed many of us want, that is not going to change for a long time as adding another GPU is the only way to make teh fastest faster, which people will always try to do.

As for pricing, Fudzilla reported the price to be around $1670 each... which is substantially more than a dual 285 setup which this is but just on a single card.

 

[daedalus685]

As for the 295x2 you mention in the opening.. the can barely do sLI on one card, they woudl never be able to fit 4 GPU's on one card. There is only so much space on these cards, unless ASUS found a way to fold space under the fan...

I must also point out that this is nothing like the i7 having more components on board. This is analogous to the skulltrail platform. Putting more components on the chip is a different beast all together and something ATI and nvidia are doing a lot of anyway.

 

[Frost_775]

Who knows, maybe GPU's in the future could shrink like the CPU die's and have multi cores...just so long there is competition between ATI and Nvidia we will continue to see new breakthroughs. Tnx for the reply

 

[ac3144]

*cry* With my feeble rig it would be like putting a Porsche Turbo engine in a standard '79 Beetle

This is what your rig would look like with a MARS in it...
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.modifiedcars.com/pix/cars_large/17879_10711.jpg&imgrefurl=http://automodief.blogspot.com/2009/01/modified-cars-vw-beetle-1974.html&usg=__aWw2ROVu1jHYfhDN9mjxyYX4rho=&h=449&w=600&sz=75&hl=en&start=6&um=1&tbnid=XBuHsdi9rdOvxM:&tbnh=101&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dporsche%2Bengine%2Bin%2BVW%2Bbeetle%2Bcar%26ndsp%3D21%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GBfficial%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1
P.S Is that you with the tache third from left Coozie??
AC

 

[daedalus685]

Who knows, maybe GPU's in the future could shrink like the CPU die's and have multi cores...just so long there is competition between ATI and Nvidia we will continue to see new breakthroughs. Tnx for the reply

GPU architecture is totally different that the CPU. They have many many small cores instead of a couple powerful ones. For instance my 4890's have 800 "cores."

I'm not sure what kind of breakthroughs you are thinking of but i assure you they are always packing more and more cores into a smaller and smaller space as far as GPU's go. They are just for different tasks so they are highly parallel smaller cores instead of a massive single (or quad) core. At an rate they wont release a "dual GPU" in a single die like they market for CPUs. They would just add more shader cores and call it a new GPU, which happens every new generation.

 

[daedalus685]

This is what your rig would look like with a MARS in it...
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.modifiedcars.com/pix/cars_large/17879_10711.jpg&imgrefurl=http://automodief.blogspot.com/2009/01/modified-cars-vw-beetle-1974.html&usg=__aWw2ROVu1jHYfhDN9mjxyYX4rho=&h=449&w=600&sz=75&hl=en&start=6&um=1&tbnid=XBuHsdi9rdOvxM:&tbnh=101&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dporsche%2Bengine%2Bin%2BVW%2Bbeetle%2Bcar%26ndsp%3D21%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GBfficial%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1
P.S Is that you with the tache third from left Coozie??
AC

Wow...

 

[coozie7]

@ ac3144: I have long wondered what my brother got up to during the weekends :lol:

 

[hundredislandsboy]

To be positive, by the time you save enough enough, a new card will be out that will be faster than the GTX 295.

 

[MO BEEJ]

1 word samsung new ddr3s in a 32g cappacity ?!!?!?!? and there is a company which made a ddr3 on 1.3volts if u know what that means u will be WOWed

 

[B-Unit]

...why not make a GTX295 x2 like the GX2 series...i mean the future is multi GPU, not SLI. It makes sense...the more components you can fit on one unit, the better the performance, like the Core i7's on board memory controller.

As soon as I read this I knew the OP is a clueless noob. The 295 IS an X2 card you moron.

And who cares if its 'limited edition' at least there saying that upfront rather than keeping it secret. Get over yourself.