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ASUS Extreme AX1600 XT Silent 256MB Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Friday, 05 May 2006 |
Motherboards comes with a review on the ASUS Extreme AX1600 XT Silent 256MB graphics card. The high-end market is characterized by loud, dual slot cooling, very high performance, and expensive, fast memory. The Radeon X1900 XTX retails for example at $499. Not everyone can afford $500 on a video card. Another consideration is noise. The Radeon X1900 XTX and Radeon X1800 XT cards are loud. So loud, in fact, that in an open case the card can drown out the other computer components when in 3D mode. The mid-range market is where ATI and NVIDIA make most of their sales, monetarily and in unit volume. ATI launched the Radeon X1600 series late last year as their mid-range card.
 ASUS Extreme AX1600 XT Silent 256MB Review
The Extreme AX1600 XT is a small card and similar in appearance to ATI's reference Radeon X1600 XT card, besides the cooling. ASUS decided to cool the card with a block and two passive heat pipes leading to the fin-like heatsink on the rear of the card. The block is small, fitting over the Radeon X1600 XT video chip, and the heatsink covers around half the rear of the card. The front of the card has four Infineon 1.4ns memory modules rated for 700MHz. This provides 256MB of GDDR3 memory. Another thing to note on the Extreme AX1600 XT is the lack of external power connector compared to the high-end cards.
ASUS has put together an excellent package with the Extreme AX1600 XT Silent. You get totally silent operation, the features you expect from a video card today and the performance to play games like Oblivion and F.E.A.R. at medium resolutions and settings. The HTPC builder will love the card, as it'll fit in many small form factor PC's and has excellent video features. The card is available online for about $179. The Radeon X1600 XT has the best image quality in its price class bar none. This card is perfect for the medium gaming resolution and gave an experience the NVIDIA card cannot deliver.
If you want the solid ability to play games at decent resolutions, and without hiccups and stuttering, the ASUS Extreme AX1600 XT is a card worthy of your attention.
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