So back in January of this year NVIDIA launched the latest high spec'ed graphics cards, being the single GPU based GeForce GTX 285 and the dual GPU based GeForce GTX 295. These GeForce GTX 285 gave us a die shrink on the GT200 core with increased speeds over the GeForce GTX 280 it replaced, the GeForce GTX 295 used the same 55nm core but with less memory and fewer operating units. And essentially the GeForce GTX 295 in single GPU mode sat somewhere between the GeForce GTX 275 and GeForce GTX 285 in performance. Since then we have seen the release of those 2GB strong GeForce GTX 285's but otherwise their calendar is just quiet as we wait for the DirectX 11 products. - DriverHeaven

ASUS GeForce GTX 285 Mars Quad SLI Game Review

Due to this null in activity for some time now there have been rumours that we might see the release of a dual GPU card using two full GeForce GTX 285 cores however NVIDIA were often reported to say that this was not possible with any sort of reasonable cooling solution. With NVIDIA not going ahead as such with an enhanced GeForce GTX 295, it was ASUS who decided to do so themselves and the result of this venture is their Mars edition card. In addition to cores which have higher specifications than these standard GeForce GTX 295 they have also pushed the cards as far as they can go in terms of memory support.

The package is a large box which features a stylish picture of the cards heatsink with cinema style lightning. Information on the product inside is far from plentiful but that is acceptable given that these cards are limited edition and are not likely to be on any sort of retail shelf. The first thing that struck us about the Mars is that it's huge. On the front of the card we have a large heatsink cover which has a vent in the centre and at the right is a hole which allows air in to the fan. Above this hole is a small piece of branding which lists the name of the card and its limited edition number, whereas the back of the board has no cover.

Given the temperatures and noise levels produced by the graphics card in stock configuration we performed light overclocking on this Mars edition. This involved increasing the core to 700MHz and memory to 2400MHz, running the shaders at 1500MHz. At these speeds their board ran without issue when set to 100% fan speed at all times. There is absolutely no doubt that our short time with the Mars edition has been a lot of fun. Any board which contains 4GB of memory and two of these GeForce GTX 285's is going to be fast and this did not disappoint. It was so impressive in terms of performance to find any game bringing it down.

In every single game but Crysis Warhead we were able to play using the highest widescreen available on these lovely 30inch LCD displays and just often with full maxed out anti-aliasing enabled. So it was also great to see that using a second Mars card often resulted in significant performance increases and that with a high performance CPU and decent overclock enthusiasts should not worry about CPU bottlenecking too much. The build quality and design of these graphics cards are both impressive, the skills taken to design this product with such high standards and get it running without setting fire to something are quite an achievement.

There is of course one downside and that is the noise generated by their cooler. These are very loud cards, if not the loudest on the market. That leaves us with the price. At $1500 the Mars Limited edition is very expensive and well out of the reach of most consumers. In terms of the actual specification it seems that this is a little overpriced, since one single GeForce GTX 285 2GB costs as little as $425. It does not get faster than this, ASUS have created a monster card which outperforms anything else on the market right now. And many collectors and rich enthusiasts will be queuing to part with their hard earned cash.