ASUS GeForce GTX 760 MARS Review

Conclusion

The combination of two GTX 760 GPUs (with a slight overclock) is obviously a very powerful one. For single screen gaming, even up to 2,560 x 1,600, the GTX 760 MARS is a seriously strong performer, consistently offering framerates ahead of the GTX 780 Ti for less money (same with GTX Titan). It also has a convincing lead on AMD's top single GPU card, the R9 290X.

However, when you begin to move beyond a single monitor or up to UltraHD resolutions, the card begins to struggle. In some cases, such as we saw in BioShock Infinite, this is evidently a limit of the current drivers. However, even if it's to a lesser degree elsewhere, it's still a constant pattern that its performance trails off, especially in terms of minimum framerates, which are crucial to how smooth a game feels. Therefore, at these ultra high resolutions, which aren't unrealistic for people shopping in this price range, it's conceivable that the hardware of the GTX 760 GPU is a limiting factor, even when using two of them. This is evidence by the reduced scaling over a single GTX 760 as you up the resolution in Crysis 3, for example.


AMD's Radeon HD 7990 also throws a spanner into the works for the new MARS card. Stock for this card is fast running out, but right now it's a far better deal. Prices have increased a little from even last week when it was £400, but even at £445 it's the better deal. It offers more performance in nearly every situation and holds its own much better at the higher resolutions too, yet costs a good £70 or so less than the MARS will.

In the end then, it's an interesting product and certainly very well crafted from top to bottom, but it's not quite convincing enough for us to recommend for high end shoppers. The closest single GPU card, the GTX 780 Ti, does cost a bit more and isn't always as fast, but its performance is much more reliable and it has heaps of overclocking potential. Or, if you're happy to go with a dual GPU solution, two standard GTX 760 cards will also cost less, as would a pair of R9 280X cards, which should offer comparable performance to the HD 7990. Even if you're limited to a single card (e.g. in a mini-ITX build), the HD 7990 is your best bet right now, but the MARS could be an attractive proposition for such users once HD 7990 stock is cleared.