GeForce2: Duo Deluxe (4/12) ASUS V7700 Deluxe
For ASUS, producing Deluxe versions of their cards is a long-standing tradition. Back in the days of the original TNT, it was just called TV, but starting with the 3800, the cards with all the goodies were given the title "Deluxe". All cards sold with this title feature TV-In, TV-Out and 3D shutter glasses. Even the board design is different from the simple or "Pure" versions. The board itself is much more densely populated with components and the slot backboard sports quite a few connectors. ASUS is also planning on introducing a new board package shortly, dubbed the "Deluxe-TV", which will also come with an external TV tuner box. Let’s take a look at the features of the V7700 Deluxe:
On the backside of the board sits a Philips SAA7113H Video decoder chip responsible for the Video In, while the Video Out is handled by the Chrontel CH7007T-A chip. In the top right-hand corner you can see the components for the shutter glasses output. Drivers ASUS uses a unified driver model, meaning that one driver works for the entire family of cards. However, only the Deluxe card can utilize all of the features built into in the drivers. The current ASUS driver release v5.33a seems to have some problems with reaching the full performance during benchmarking. (I must say it: It is said that with this release, ASUS concentrated too much on some unpopular "features" and didn’t do enough performance tuning. The See Through issue comes to mind, also called the "ASUS Cheating Drivers". These got a lot of coverage because of the "Transparent Wall Feature". Fortunately, this "feature" isn’t enabled by default in these drivers... but: I STILL HATE IT!)
Unlike other manufacturers, ASUS didn’t just take NVIDIA’s reference driver and paste their own logo over NVIDIA’s, but instead has created its own menus. Still, a few more optimizations would have been appreciated. The refreshrate tool, for example, is rather cumbersome. The refreshrates need to be set for each color depth at each resolution – once for your desktop and once for Direct 3D. So after installing the drivers, you have to set the refreshrate 6 times: one time each for 256 colors, 16bit and 32bit for the desktop and again for Direct 3D. And if you install new drivers: do it again! ASUS has been criticized for this by RS since the V3800. The task menu is your center of operations, so to speak. From here you can start all important programs like ASUS Tweak or the hardware monitoring software ASUS SmartDoctor. Aside from a few minor gripes about the usability these drivers make a very good impression. All settings from V-Sync to antialiasing are offered and are easily accessible. |
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Copyright: 04.10.2000 -
RIVA
Station 2000 - Lars Weinand Translation by Benjamin Kraft URL of this Article: www.rivastation.com/gf2-deluxe_e.htm - If you want to link to it, please use this URL! :-) |
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