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Well we’ve had a good look at the card and been able to see how well it performs against the competition. To say that I would recommend this card to anyone would really be a disservice. We are living in very difficult economic times and for most people every dollar counts. My honest opinion is that if you are looking for top of the line performance and want to get your money’s worth, then this isn’t the card for you. If that’s what you’re looking for I would recommend the EVGA GTX 580 SC Edition that I reviewed earlier. That card will give the performance for your dollar that you’re looking for.
This card is really something to behold. It’s one of the nicest cards I’ve ever seen. It was very quiet throughout our testing, and it also didn’t get very hot either. This card’s problem though is that it just doesn’t give the bang-for-the-buck performance that Asus is known for. I was really hoping to see nearly double the performance of a GTX 590. That just wasn’t the case. This card did outperform the GTX 590, but not enough to warrant its price. I do understand that this is partly due to the fact that this card has to rely on being run off of a single PCI Express lane. This will produce reduced performance due to bandwidth limitations. It’s quite possible that this card just maxes out the performance that a full x16 PCI Express lane is able to provide.
To be honest this card really is meant as more of a collector’s item than the type of card you would have for everyday use. As beautiful as this card is I wouldn’t even put it in my rig. I would have it in a glass case on my mantle. Or I would build a system specifically for this card and just have it for show. These are limited edition cards that appeal to a very small group of extreme enthusiasts. If that’s you then you will be very pleased with this card. I just hope you understand that you’re buying a product that is meant for exactly that purpose. There will always be those that will want the very best performing hardware that money can buy. For those people there is now the Asus Mars II to satisfy them. For the rest of us we will have to keep our feet on the ground and look for the best value for our money. Fourteen hundred dollars is quite a lot of money to spend on a single piece of hardware. To put things into perspective, for that price you could purchase a decent gaming rig.
