Oh Mumma! I can remember first hearing about GPU technology on all the tech sites last year while I was doing work experience (ermm no I wasn’t working) thinking I’d never get one of those GeForce’s... Well tonight folks, we have gone one better - We take a look at the ASUS v7700 GeForce2 GTS 32mb DDR powered by nVidia’s GeForce2 GTS GPU which is similar to the NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS reference board. TweakTown is happy to have one of the first reviews of such a card in Australia!
Specifications + Features
Highlights
Powered by the world’s first per-pixel shading Graphics Processing Unit: NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS
Built-in 32 MB DDR video memory with up to 5.3 GB/sec bandwidth: Provides more resolutions and color depths
Dual-texture pixel-fill capacities with four new Hypertexel pipelines: Sets a new milestone for realism
1.6 Gtexel fill rate, 25 Mtriangles/sec through T&L/setting: Performs up to 3x improvement over GeForce
ASUS SmartDoctor Technologies: Provide the greatest security to your valuable system
Optimized for DirectX 7 and OpenGL features: Ensures broad application support
Technical Stuff
- AGP 4x/2x with Fast Writes - Four new Hypertexel pipelines process two texture per pixel, in true color, at full speed up to 1.6 Gtexel fill rate - Built-in 32 MB high speed DDR video memory with up to 5.3 GB/sec bandwidth - Eight texture mapped, lit pixels per clock cycle - Second generation Transform and Lighting (T&L) Engine - Up to 25 million triangles per second at peak rates - Optimized for Direct3D acceleration with complete support for DirectX 7 features such as multi-texturing, bump mapping, light maps, reflection maps, full scene anti-aliasing, trilinear and 8-tap anisotropic filtering (better than trilinear mipmapping) - Fully 1.2 compliant OpenGL support - 32-bit colors, Z/stencil buffer - Multi-buffering (double, triple, quad buffering) for smooth animation and video playback - Multiple video windows with hardware color space conversion and filtering (YUV 4:2:2 and 4:2:0) - Integrated 350 MHz RAMDAC supporting from 640x480 up to 2048x1536 in true color - BRDF (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function) support - Video acceleration for Direct Show and MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and Indeo - SmartDoctor Technologies with fan RPM monitoring, AGP power level monitoring, over-heat protection, and dynamic overclocking - Software bundle including ASUSDVD 2000, Darkan, Rollcage, and 12 other game demo
What You Get
Included in the retail box is the graphics card, software bundle including - drivers for Windows 95 / 98 / 98se and 2000, ASUSDVD 2000, Darkan retail, Rollcage retail, and 12 other game demos. A detailed user’s manual is included to help with installation of hardware and software. Compared to other retail graphic cards packages I have seen, ASUS have been quite generous with their package.
Installation
Seen this was one of the most expensive up-to-date products I have held in sometime, I took a little bit longer + extra care when I was installing this card. As with any other graphics card, installation was simple. Locate the AGP, push card genteelly into position, tighten screw. As for the software side of the installation, we had no troubles installing v3.84 drivers under Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional. we’ll take a detailed look at the wonderful software included later on in this review. Now that we have installed the card, lets focus on its graphics quality...
