ASUS has just announced their dual-Radeon HD 7970 graphics card. It’s based on two Tahiti XT2 GPUs, meaning that it’s clocked higher than one GHz. The card is so power-hungry that the company decided to use a hybrid cooling solution.
The ARES II (ARES2-6GD5) is not yet listed on the ASUS website. You can only find a previous version of ARES I, which was based on two Radeon HD 5870’s. The new one is much more powerful, since it features two Tahiti XT2 GPUs, which were taken straight from the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. What’s more is it has 6 GB of GDDR5 memory (which is clocked at 6.6 GHz). Moreover it has two states of GPU clock: 1050 MHz as a base and 1100 MHz as a boost. The minimum recommended power supply here is 850 Watts, which is consumed through three 8-pin power connectors. ASUS is really concerned about global warming so they equipped this beast with an external liquid cooler, actually it’s a hybrid, like Arctic Cooling’s solution (ARCTIC Accelero Hybrid VGA Cooler), or the quite popular user mounted Corsair H60/H80/H100 on GeForce cards, also called “The Mod”.
The card is kept in black and red colors with a nice looking cover over the heat sink. There are three fans total, two 120mm fans are mounted on the radiator, which is cooling the whole loop. The 3rd fan is cooling the VRAM and all other PCB components, such as the VRM power circuitry.
According to the source, there will be only 1000 units sold, all as a collectors editions. Rumored price starts at $1000 and ends at $1500.
ASUS ARES 2 Specification
