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ASUS V9999 Ultra Deluxe 256MB AGP Review |
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Written by Mavke
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Friday, 12 November 2004 |
PC Perspective has published a review on the ASUS V9999 Ultra Deluxe 256MB AGP graphics card. In the last few years, like other tier-1 manufacturers, ASUS has gone from soley motherboards to producing an entire line of products. They include networking equipment, notebooks, optical drives, servers, barebones units and of course, video cards. Most of the time, the Taiwan-based card manufacturers have provided stable, reference graphics cards that don't offer anything new to the market, but fill a demand for them across the globe. ASUS has been trying to get away from the stock video card designs, and the ASUS V9999 Ultra Deluxe is just one example of it.
 ASUS V9999 Ultra Deluxe 256MB AGP Review
When we step back and look at the benchmark results from the ASUS V9999 Ultra Deluxe and the reference ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition card that were the main combatants in today's article, you can see that both cards are very capable of running today's games to a great standard. While NVIDIA won the Doom 3 results, ATI arguably won the Far Cry benchmark and this trend is continued through out ours and other online media's reviews as well. The flagship cards from both vendors are powerful enough to play just about any game at the top levels of detail, with the exceptions of only a few software titles.
Where the two differ however is in availability. With NVIDIA's SLI technology right around the corner, they are telling me that their output of GeForce 6800 chips (GT and Ultra's) is the highest it has ever been and they are still increasing production in preperation for the SLI onslaught. There seems to be very little difficulty finding GeForce 6800 Ultra's in stock and GeForce 6800 GT's are easily found as well. On the ATI side, while the Radeon X800 PRO cards can be found from various vendors, the Radeon X800 XT Platinum Editions are limited to only one in our searches.
And, even more disappointing, we are hearing from our sources (and other media seem to be as well) that ATI is on the verge of cancelling their production of the Radeon X800 XT chip because of horrible yields. The redesign for their chip is already taped out and should be replacing the Radeon X800 XT's and XT PE's pretty soon. That means that NVIDIA will be unchallenged in the high end market while ATI reorganizes their product line. Yes, I have an XT PE card here and we will probably still use it in testing, but when it comes time for you to go buy a new card, you can't pay for what isn't available, right?
So in the respect, ASUS has a winner on their hands with the ASUS V9999 Ultra Deluxe graphics card. Using the GeForce 6800 Ultra chipset it has a performance advantage and availability advantage over the competition. Not only that, but even when comparing the ASUS V9999 Ultra Deluxe to other GeForce 6800 Ultra cards, ASUS stands very well. The clock speed on the Ultra Deluxe model is speced at a faster than standard 425MHz core clock, which was originally what NVIDIA marketed as the Ultra Extreme edition of the GeForce 6800. The BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra OC is the only other card I can think of off hand to offer these same speeds.
ASUS also does a great feat on their ASUS V9999 Ultra Deluxe by utilizing a single slot cooling solution instead of the standard two-slot model. This allows users to better manage their systems and maybe even include a GeForce 6800 Ultra in with their SFF machines. I say maybe because that depends a lot on the ability for you to properly cool and power the Ultra graphics chipset. I am really hoping ASUS is able to bring that same cooling solution, or at least another single slot one, to the SLI-ready graphics cards that they are producing.
Though to many the included extras in the ASUS V9999 Ultra Deluxe kit may seem a bit hoaky, the GameFace Live feature is a bit like adding Xbox Live! support to your PC gaming. While I agree that there is a good chance that you don't actually want to see any of the gamers ugly mugs that you play against online with the included webcam, the ability to talk to them can be quite handy. ASUS also touts the ability to watch TV while you game, and really, what could be better than that?
With the world of AGP not quite ready to fall by the way side, the ASUS v9999 Ultra Deluxe is going to be one of, if not the fastest AGP graphics card to be available ever. That is quite a feat to accomplish! Gamer's looking for the fastest graphics card to upgrade to in their current systems will find the ASUS card to be amoung their top choices. ASUS' V9999 Ultra Deluxe graphics card does all the right things and as far as hardware is concerned, is about all I can ask for.
Pricing may be an issue, as the scarcity of the high end cards has driven up prices at resellers, but I can assure you in a couple weeks when the flood gates open on the GeForce 6800 chips, they will go back down (this is really the vendors faults for taking advantage of the situation, but hey, a capitalistic society does that sometimes).
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