VR-Zone

Following information on the quite insane HD 5970 Ares, Sapphire has joined the party with an extreme version of the HD 5970. Whilst the standard HD 5970 carries two Cypress GPUs clocked at 725 MHz for the core, and 1000 MHz for 2GB of GDDR5 memory, the Asus and Sapphire versions take it up all the way to HD 5870 clock speeds, or 850 MHz / 1.2 GHz.

Fudzilla have managed to capture both products - which were showed at Cebit 2010.

While both cards are insane, triple slot (!!) monsters, Sapphire manages to be the more modest of the two, albeit feature three fans to cover its enormous cooler. Importantly, the Sapphire features only (!) 2 x 8-pin PCI-e connectors, while the Asus ships with 2 x 8 pin + 1 x 6-pin (!!) power connectors. A little bit of calculation reveals the Asus Ares HD 5970 can consume up to 450W (!!) for the GPU alone, more than 50% higher than the standard HD 5970's TDP. The Sapphire, however, will have to do with only (!) 375W. The Asus Ares might edge out the Sapphire for extreme overclocking (perhaps with exotic cooling), in this respect.

We can expect both these cards to cost an arm, a leg, and perhaps an eye to boot, or in or near the four figures range. We can't think of a good reason to buy either of these cards, except for the pride and joy of owning the fastest GPU in the world. Or, perhaps, for extreme overclocking hobbyists. For the rest of us, this can be called the Bugatti Veyron of the GPU world.

Reference: Fudzilla, Fudzilla