Synthetic Benchmarks

3DMark 11

As mentioned, we're using an older driver on Asus' Ares II in order to draw fair comparisons to the other ultra high-end cards we tested previously. The Radeon HD 7000-series boards received a massive performance boost back when AMD released its Catalyst 12.11 package, allowing Tahiti-based products to compete with and often beat Kepler-based cards that were previously faster.

Asus' Ares II demonstrates that it doesn’t just outperform the competition on paper, but instead kicks off our testing by drawing ahead in two different 3DMark detail levels.

Unigine Heaven 2.5

We’re benchmarking these graphics cards using the highest resolutions and settings. Slower single-GPU boards cannot compete when it comes to these demanding combinations of resolution and graphics quality. They just aren't powerful enough.

Unigine Sanctuary

The finishing order stays the same. The Ares II pulls ahead a bit more due not only to its higher clock rate, but also its higher memory frequency.