Image Quality

There's pretty much nothing to complain about here in regards to the image quality while gaming. HDR is especially impressive in Oblivion, though it's not really my game of choice. Battlefield 2, my game of choice, looks fantastic at 16x12, everything on at 6xAA and it runs smooth as butter. Considering how much the card costs, this is something we expect.

Over on the 2D side of things, we found the DVI quality to look very good, much better than the S-Video on a TV. For desktop use, the fonts were clear at 1680x1050 and very readable on a Dell 2005FPW.

Overclocking

Given the large copper and aluminum cooler, we were hoping for some decent overclocking results and we were not disappointed. ASUS includes a utility called SmartDoctor which allows overclocking not only the VPU, but the memory as well. We managed to get as high as 705 and 1625 before we started seeing corruption. During this time, the card was a very balmy 59°C.

We were testing the card in a Cooler Master Stacker 830 which we oriented in an "upside down" ATX manner. I suggested flipping the motherboard back around the traditional way to keep the motherboard's Northbridge from heating up the rear of the card.

To my surprise, the SmartDoctor allowed us to hit the maximum of 720/1650 core and memory. The card's temperatures were also lower as well, hitting 58°C. The card was able to run our gamut of benchmarks without incident, but it seems that lowering the temperature by 1°C was not completely the answer as some image corruption reappeared after about 3 hours, while the card was idle. We lowered the core back down to 705 and the memory to 1600 and the problems disappeared after our reboot.

Final Words

Let's cut to the chase... the ASUS EAX1900 XTX is simply one of the fastest cards currently on the market. It also seems to be readily available as quite a few local shops in my town have the card on their shelves. It's tough to say where NVIDIA stands with their 7900GTX since they weren't able to help us out, but compared to their 7800GTX, the EAX1900 XTX is noticeably quicker in benchmarks.

Here is the problem, at least for potential shoppers. Benchmarks don't really tell the whole story. Gameplay wise, the EAX1900 XTX was very strong. It choked a bit on some of the Battlefield 2 maps I played, but so did the other cards we tested. Overall, all of the cards provided a similar experience in terms of graphics quality and speed. However, the EAX1900 XTX really flexes its muscle at high resolution and IQ settings. Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, at 1680x1050 with every effect on ran very smooth. The other cards needed to be lowered to 4xAA and some of the water effects disabled for the same enjoyment. Now, if you play only at 1280x1024 or lower, the ASUS EAX1900 XTX is not going to be the wisest investment since none of the cards really outpace the other at those settings.

Another problem some upgraders may face is CPU power. Those of you saddled with Athlon 64 CPUs slower than 3500+ or Pentium 4 CPUs less than 3.2GHz will likely be bottlenecked. If your CPU can't keep information flowing, the EAX1900 XTX is going to be spending a lot of time twiddling its thumbs.

The package is good as far as hardware is concerned and mediocre on the software side of things. King Kong is not the greatest game on the PS2 or XBox and playing it on a PC with a $600 video card does not make it much more fun. The utility software is merely alright, but there is nothing that really stands out. As for the outputs and cables, there's enough for most users here. Anything more you may need, you would probably have to look at an All-In-Wonder.

Noise can be a factor, but it isn't intolerable. We don't really expect enthusiasts to be terribly concerned with the noise, and the noise generated by the EAX1900 XTX is not the high pitched squeal that is really annoying. The cooler does allow for some great overclocking which is something that will really put the card ahead if you're a benchmark freak.

Despite some of the rough comments, we think the ASUS EAX1900 XTX is an excellent card that well deserves a home in any enthusiast's gaming PC. It's not cheap, ringing in at $560 USD, but any premium card is going to be expensive. CrossFire is a potential option for some shoppers, and given that the latest CrossFire platform is much more stable and efficient, this gives serious gamers something to consider.