Back in April, we first gave you a glimpse of the extreme Asus ARES dual-Radeon HD 5870 GPU powered graphics card, complete with some preliminary benchmarks. At the time, the specifications weren't quite finalized and there was little word about availability in the U.S., but the card's impressive configuration immediately piqued our interest. The ARES was, after all, a "true dual-Radeon HD 5870" CrossFire setup on a single PCB. The Radeon HD 5970 was / is the fastest single graphics card on the market, and the Asus ARES would clearly offer more performance due to its increased number of stream processor cores and potentially higher clocks.

Over the long holiday weekend, we received word that Asus had decided to introduce the ARES in the U.S. market. And much to our satisfaction one of the cards was en route to the HotHardware labs. We have only had a short time with the card, but it is exactly the type of product we know the hardest of the hardcore among you are dying to check out. So, we immediately ripped the box open and plugged it into one of our test rigs to see just what it could do. Here's a hint--this baby is freakin' Fast, with a capital F...