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

Nvidia's GTX 760 has been a very popular card since it launched, and rightly so. It has proven capable of powering many of the latest Direct X 11 games at 1080p, and is competitively priced to suit a wide audience of enthusiast user. The prices of the GTX 760 have also dropped in recent months, hovering around the £200 mark today. It may be facing stiff challenges from AMD hardware in recent months, but it is still a very tempting proposition.

When we share system builds on our Facebook page, we have seen many instances that our readers are using GTX 760's in Sli. Buying a GPU now, and adding another later when funds permit suits many gamers and as we know, SLi'd GTX 760's is a lethal pairing.

As we have seen today, the Asus GTX 760 MARS is more than capable of ousting the last generation GTX780, and is often able to outperform the legendary GTX Titan. It can even keep up with the GTX 780 Ti, although the latest Nvidia flagship puts up a mighty battle, losing some tests, and winning others.

We do admire Asus standards of engineering, and the GTX 760 MARS is not only built to perform at the highest levels, but to last. Asus are using a hefty 12 phase super alloy power configuration, with highest grade Japanese Nichicon GT Series black metallic capacitors adopted throughout. While quite often these may sound like buzzwords to many readers – we managed to overclock both GTX 760 cores to a staggering 1,167 mhz. This is a very stable video card even when pushed to the limits.

At these manually enhanced clock speeds, the Asus GTX 760 MARS scored much higher than the Nvidia GTX 780 Ti, even when it was also overclocked to 1,122mhz. Asus have also worked closely with Nvidia during the development of the GTX 760 MARS to achieve Quad Sli support and certification, although unfortunately we were unable to test this today.

The Direct CU II cooler does an admirable job of keeping both GTX760's in check, holding at under 80c when gaming. It isn't the quietest cooler by a long shot, but the fans don't emit a harsh, high pitched sound while pushing a massive amount of air across both heatsinks underneath.

Any downsides?

Well, we do need to point out that if a particular game is released before Nvidia manage to code an SLI profile, then the frame rates will be literally halved. To be fair, Nvidia are very active in releasing driver updates so this is unlikely to happen on a regular basis. Still, if you are contemplating a purchase of the ASUS GTX760 MARS card then we highly recommend you update beta ForceWare drivers at every release.

ASUS informed us before going to press that the GTX 760 MARS will be priced at £519.99 inc vat, which places it around £30-£50 less than competing GTX 780 Ti solutions. Of course you could buy two GTX 760's for less than this ASUS MARS solution, but that is somewhat missing the point, and you would lose another PCI e slot. Performance fanatics will also already be budgeting for two of these cards for a Quad SLi setup.

Discuss on our Facebook page, here.

Pros:

• Built to the highest standards with high grade Japanese components.
• its a looker.
• not triple slot!
• outperforms the GTX Titan, often matching the GTX 780 Ti.
• massive overclocking headroom with ASUS GPU Tweak.

Cons:

• A little noisy under load.
• regular driver updates will be needed to get the latest SLI profiles.

Kitguru says: Another superb showcase of ASUS engineering standards. A killer gaming card.

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