Video cards, something that
is one of a few very common review items among online reviews.
Why is this? Because these reviews are easy to do, run a card
through its paces and arrive at a result, which then gets inserted
into a review of said card. Another reason is the fact that
video cards are basic necessities to playing most 3D games currently,
from games such as the Sims 2 to Doom 3, a 3D card is a requirement
of these games.
As a supplier of video cards
ATi is one of the two big non integrated video chip suppliers,
and is a company that many go to for their video cards.
Their most recent releases do not all belong at the top end of
the performance scale, in fact tere is quite a few that are a
more mid-range card to compete with nVidia based offerings in
this area.
Asus isn't one of the first
names that you think of when you want a ATi based card.
Even though this motherboard company was one of the first motherboard
manufacturers to add video cards to their stable of products,
they were basically just nVidia based cards. It was just
under two years ago with the release of the 9800XT that Asus became
an ATi partner.
Asus Extreme AX800XL-2DTV
Compared to some manufacturers
names of their video cards, this is rather short and to the point.
Basically Asus sent us the x800XL video card with 2 DVI ports
and video-in/out. For a more direct listing of the specifications
of this board please check out their website. We will look
at most of the features of this card as we go, so lets see what
this card looks like.
What do you
get with this card?
-
The Asus AX800XL card
-
2 DVI to VGA connectors
-
Driver and Manual CD
-
Break-out-Box for SVHS/Composite
in/out
-
Speed Setup guide
-
Asus DVD
-
Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising
-
CyberLink MediaShow 2 SE
-
CyberLink PowerDirector 3DE
-
Small CD container
It seems Asus
has really done a good job of supplying what you need for this
card. The provision of two DVI-VGA adaptors is very commendable
as it means that there is two DVI connections on the back of the
card. What was lacking was a complete paper manual, as the
Speed Setup book covers the bare basics, though the entire manual
is on CD. It is a nice addition to provide a CD case, as
this allows space to be saved in shipping, as the CD's are not
loose but can be stored safely.
As for the card
itself we see that Asus has decided to provide the card with
a single slot cooler, which we will see the results of later
on in the review. The outputs of the card are nice and
simple, two DVI ports and the video in/out port. One thing
that is missing in comparison to the higher end cards is the
external power connector, as this card seems to be able to take
enough power for itself from the PCI Express bus. The
card does light up with a nice blue LED which happens to enhance
the water in my water cooling kit.
The delving
a little deeper into the cards components we see that this
is as it says a x800Pro GPU, marking it as the 12 pipeline
GPU, but still saying its the R430 core which is a 16-pipeline
GPU. This might give us a little more headroom in overclocking,
as we will take a look at in our overclocking section.
The memory is Samsung GDDR3 memory with a part number of
K4J55323QF-GC20, which makes it 500MHz/1GHz memory.
The Rage Theater chip is your standard variety that is based
on the original chip and not the newer and higher quality
Rage Theater 200 chip.
The software
that is provided runs the gamut of what this video card can
do. First is the Asus DVD software that is based on the
engine. Next is Joint Operations, a team based shooter
that uses its 3D engine to supposedly give a more immersive
experience. Lastly are two CyberLink programs MediaShow
2 SE and PowerDirector 3DE, both one version prior to the currently
released versions. PowerDirector is your standard video
editing program, that allows you to capture from the video-in
this card provides and create home videos, and does so fairly
well. MediaShow or as they call it Medi@Show is a album
and slideshow creation program, the SE version does cut down
on what you can do but still provides the basic functionality
that most need. This program is rather bad, as it requires
a resolution of 1024*768 or 800*600, which I would assume no
one using this card would have their monitor set at. Apart
from that it works decently allowing you to make screensavers
from your pictures, but not video files, that is only in the
full version.
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The drivers
Asus supplied are not much to write home about, only the Smart
Doctor is of any use, as it shows voltages of the card, temperatures
and allows you to control fan speed and clock speed there.
Quality Tests
First we will
look at the 2D quality of the video card. This is one of
if not the most important aspect of the video card, though many
people do not take the time to look closely at the quality of
display that they are constantly looking at. So lets take
a look at how well the X700 Pro does with 2D quality. The
test is the same as we've been using for a while, with the reference
display being a Matrox G400 video card attached to a 21"
Dell badged Trinitron monitor. The screen resolution was
1600*1200, with a color depth of 32bpp and a refresh rate of 85Hz.
So lets see how it did in comparison.
| Test |
Matrox G400 |
Matrox Parhelia |
Asus AX800XL-2DTV |
HIS X700 Pro IceQ Turbo |
Intel 915G IGP |
Albatron FX5750 |
| Black Text / White Back: |
5 |
7.5 |
7.25 |
7 |
4.5 |
5.5 |
| White Text / Black Back: |
5 |
8 |
7.5 |
7.5 |
5 |
7 |
| Bitmap Test: |
5 |
9 |
8 |
8 |
6 |
6.5 |
| Overall Rating |
5 |
8.25 |
7.75 |
7.5 |
5.25 |
6.25 |
We can see that
this ATi based card does pretty well in our subjective test.
Compared to the Matrox Parhelia it was somewhat brighter in
all three tests, with this washing out the color slightly in
the image test, but still making it better than most of the
rest of the cards we have tested. Text was still good
but the higher brightness, which most likely could be changed
somewhat, caused the text to be a bit harder to read.
Overall however this card has very good 2D quality.
Now for the
video in tests, this test is a standard one that I have been
using for awhile, with the video being output by a Matrox Parhelia.
The video is a short scene from the claymation movie Chicken
Run, with both text and rich video colors. So lets see
the results with some cards that we have tested.
Reference Image
|
Asus AX800XL Image
|
HIS X700 Pro Test Image
|
MSI GeForce FX Test Image
|
ATi AiW 9000 Pro Test Image
|
Compro VideoMate TV Ultra Test Image
|
The images
of the cards are quite a bit different. The test image
on the TV Ultra is fairly smooth, staying close to the actual
test image which has no anti-aliasing occurring. The
best card for displaying text on this test is the ATi AiW
9000 Pro with its clear lettering. The HIS X700 didn't
do that great here with the text being fairly blurry and
slightly washed out. The image colors were out as
well, as the whole picture seemed quite washed out, especially
in comparison to the AiW 9000 Pro and the reference image.
The video in of the Asus x800XL wasn't that bad, the image
was 'softer' than the reference image, only slightly, and
more so compared to the AiW 9000. The image suffers
a little from this soft image, making the colors slightly
duller than normal, but nothing to write home about.
TV Out is becoming
a major piece that video card manufacturers are putting into
their video cards, as people are using their computer for displaying
their movies and games onto their 'big' screen TV's. Our
test uses two computers, one that contains a TV Tuner in this
case the 5750 uses the AiW 9600 while the rest are using the
ATi AiW 9000 though I haven't really noticed much, if any difference
between the two cards. However we also have a reference
image from the DVD that we used to test, that of the movie "Chicken
Run", a claymation movie with plenty of vibrant colors
and contrasts. All tests were output using a SVHS cable,
so lets see the results.
Reference Image
|
Asus AX800XL Image
|
Matrox Parhelia
|
ATi Radeon 9800XT
|
HIS X700 Pro Test Image
|
Albatron PCX5750
|
So what does
this picture show? The X700 provides a blurry text here,
only slightly better than some of the other cards. Both
the image and text of this card are much like that of the
9800XT, which isn't a great thing as for some reason ATi doesn't
have great TV-Out quality. The Albatron card does antialias
the text quite a bit. Otherwise the card slightly squishes
the text horizontally by a small amount. As for the
image quality of the output we see that there are points where
there is a slight bit of blur and a higher brightness on the
picture which isn't really desirable in this case. The
overall picture is cut slightly on the horizontal, but not
enough to distort the image greatly. The text for the
9800XT is sharper and has very little of the checkered pattern
that the AiW 9000Pro had. For the rest of the image
it is blurry but is smoother than that of the AiW 9000Pro.
The Asus x800XL has the standard ATi video out capabilities,
which is not a good thing. A blurry image, both in the
text and the images, and one that squishes the image isn't
one that I consider good While the text on the reference
image is sharp and aliased, the Parhelia does a good job of
antialiasing the text, while not overdoing it.
NEXT
