ASUS GTX 760 MARS Review (1600p, Ultra HD 4k)

Allan 'Zardon' Campbell November 19, 2013 Featured Announcement, Graphics

The Asus GTX 760 MARS ships in an instantly recognisable red Republic Of Gamers box. No images of the hardware on the front, just the product name, and an Nvidia product graphic.

The bundle includes a software disc, literature, DVI to HDMI video adapter and Republic Of Gamers limited edition metal badge. There is also a 6 pin to 8 pin power adapter in the box, although we do recommend that you use a power supply with two native 8 pin power connectors, or consider a power supply upgrade if it doesn't.

The ASUS GTX 760 MARS is a dual slot solution measuring 11 inches x 4.38 inches x 1.6 inches. There is a backplate on the rear of the card to help cool the PCB and to protect against accidental damage. The cooler is metal and comprises two dust proof fans.

It is a heavy, well built graphics card.

On the top of the cooler is a ‘MARS' logo, which lights up when the card is powered up and active (head to our testing methodology page to see it in action).

The ASUS GTX 760 MARS ships with two 8 pin PCI power connectors. Clearly there is potential for a low of power draw and we will analyse this later in the review.

There is a single SLi slot on the card and ASUS say they worked closely with Nvidia on the production of this card to ensure that Quad SLi is supported. We sadly can't test this today.

The display I/O plate has 2 DVI-I connectors, a single DVI-D connector, and 1 mini DisplayPort connector. It can also support HDMI via an adapter. It is HDCP compliant.

As we can see, the PCB is basically split into two sections. Each GTX760 core gets its own heatsink, with 8 thick direct touch copper heatpipes running directly into individual racks of aluminum fins. The large fans above directly cool the heatsinks underneath.

There is a controller on the board, and each GTX 760 has its own memory, VRM's and associated circuitry. The ASUS GTX 760 MARS is using Japanese made black metallic capacitors (Nichicon GT branded) which they claim have a 5x longer life span (10,000 hours instead of 2,000 hours) over traditional capacitors. These uprated capacitors have the added benefit of being able to deal with temperatures up to 125c under load (many are rated to only 105c).

The card also incorporates POSCAP's, which have lower power noise and enhanced stability over a traditional design.

An overview of the hardware in GPUz. Each GTX 760 on the card is running at 1,006mhz with 32 ROPs, 96 Texture units and 1,152 CUDA cores. Each GPU has 2GB of GDDR5 connected via a 256 bit memory interface. Memory speed is rated at 1,500mhz, or 6Gbps effective.

We had no problems getting The Asus GTX760 MARS to operate in SLi with the official 331.65 and 331.70 driver. Asus did supply a Forceware 331.79 beta driver just before publication, but we couldn't get it to work properly with the MARS card.