CES 2013: ASUS Goes Big with ARES II Dual Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition Graphics Card

ASUS is no stranger to graphics cards, as it crafts some of the most attractive models on the market. But there’s one series that stands out like a Ferrari in a parking lot: ARES. Appropriately falling into the company’s Republic of Gamers brand, ARES adheres to the “go big or go home” mentality, designed for those with a passion for high-performance hardware and a technically impressive piece of kit. Following in the footsteps of the original comes ARES II.

At the forefront, ARES II sports dual AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition GPUs, featuring 6GB of GDDR5, ASUS’ exclusive DIGI+ VRM and Super Alloy power technologies, a cool aesthetic and somewhat surprisingly, a dual-slot design. Alright, there’s a reason for that. ARES II is liquid-cooled, but to achieve this, ASUS bundles a large, double-width radiator equipped with two fans. Ideally, this would be installed at the back of your chassis. Due to its size, this won’t be an ideal solution for every chassis, or every motherboard.

Compared to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690, also a dual-GPU card, ASUS claims its ARES II can run 31°C cooler thanks to its advanced design. It’s not only the large radiator that plays a part, but the heatsink design in general, along with an 80mm dust-proof fan that helps keep the card area as cool as possible.

To help improve power efficiency, ASUS employs its DIGI+ VRM technology to intelligently regulate the voltage and improve overclocking-ability, while its Super Alloy design furthers that by employing 20 power phases, heavy-duty solid-state capacitors, high-quality chokes and MOSFETs that can operate under higher temperatures and the sort of stress that a card like this would undoubtedly push on its components.

Neither pricing nor a release date has been announced at this time, but it’s very likely we’ll find out both in the weeks ahead.