Power Consumption, Temperatures and Noise Levels

Testing of power consumption is pretty important when looking at higher end graphics cards like these – let’s see how our real-world power consumption turned out.

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Idle power on the ASUS MARS II is definitely higher than any of the other cards in our review though the difference of 25 watts won’t mean a whole lot to your noise or temperatures levels for an enthusiast chassis.  Now, the load power consumption might though!  The MARS II uses quite a bit more power than even the GTX 590 (134 watts!!) and is getting pretty close to that 600 watt card rating.  Check below for a bit more on the power consumption results.

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As far as temperatures go though, the ASUS MARS II isn’t bad at all and actually runs cooler than the single GPU GTX 580 card thanks to the engineering behind the ASUS DirectCU II design.  With the pair of fans spinning up only to about 50-60% of their maximum speed during our gaming sessions, the card stayed pretty quiet too, compared to the other options on the table.

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While the MARS II was louder than our GTX 590 reference card it stayed behind the basic settings on the HD 6990 and well behind the noise levels produced by the "overclocked" HD 6990 with the turbine up and spinning.  Compared to the basic reference GTX 580 though the MARS II was right in line with it.  Not too bad for a product using as much as 600 watts of power!

Power Usage Over Time – Visualized

After looking at the peak power consumption numbers above you might think the differences between the MARS II and the other cards in the running were kind of minimal.  As it turns out, looking at the results in a different way paints another picture.  Below you will see a few tests run with power consumption over time.  

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In this landscape, the ASUS MARS II uses more additional power than you might have though over the GTX 590 and HD 6990 cards.  Since the peak power numbers didn’t tell the whole story these results show us that while impressive from a noise, heat and performance perspective, the ASUS MARS II is a power hungry gaming solution!

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