BIOS: Technology Means Business

As computer games get more and more advanced the requirements for high-end graphics cards increase. Being able to run the game as it was intended is a dream come true for manufactures and gamers alike, with titles like Doom 3 and Quake 4 absolutely busting to run on high-end cards. However, at the highest price level you should demand a graphics card that does more than simply run Quake 4 at the highest possible resolution.

Enter the latest offering from ASUS. Based on the reference design by ATI, the EAX1900XTX (£425) is the fastest single-based graphics card on the market. The X1900XTX chipset is designed for 16-lane PCI Express bus, offers a maximum output resolution of 2048x1536 pixels and has a wealth of specifications boasting 512MB of dedicated onboard DDR3 memory, as well as TV-out port, Dual DVI-I/Dual and VGA/HDTV/Video-in.

In addition to its market-leading performance (scored 4550 running 3DMark06 Pro), the most impressive feature of this retail board is the over generous bundle of software, utilities and interface cables. Whatever your requirements ASUS have provided all the necessary cables to connect to your CRT, LCD, S-Video enabled devise and even HDTV. And with top five games, one of which is the best-selling King Kong, you’ll not be short of something to test this beast.

Technical specifications of the X1900XTX (R580 core) include 512MB of 256-bit 8-channel GDDR3 memory, 650MHz engine clock speed (25MHz faster than the X1900XT version), 1.5GHz memory clock speed (100MHz faster than the X1900XT), dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400MHz DACs and Crossfire support (allows you to connect another ATI card for ultimate performance).

The card features 380 million transistors, 16 pixel pipelines, 8 vertex shader processors, and 48 pixel shaders, Ultra-Threading, Shader Model 3.0 and HDR. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and is also sometimes referred to as High Dynamic Range Imagery (HDRI) or High Dynamic Range Rendering (HDRR), and is the latest feature in the quest for greater rendering fidelity. Furthermore, ATI’s AVIVO video and display technologies will help accelerate MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264 decoding.

The wealth of specifications continues with support for 2x/4x/6x anti-aliasing, temporal anti-aliasing mode, and lossless colour compression (up to 6:1) at all resolutions - including widescreen HDTV resolutions - and 2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes. So does any of this gobbledegook mean that your games will look better and run lightning fast at the highest possible resolutions? You bet!

On first inspection of the card you can’t help notice the size of the box and the card that is held inside - both are huge! For this reason alone you are going to need a fairly large case, plenty of free slots and at least a 450-Watt power supply unit (PSU). The reason for the size of the card comes from the fact that it requires two blanking plates because the large heat sink and fan combo utilises one side of the plate in order to blow hot air out from the case. For its size you would expect it to be noisy granted it gets louder as the fan increase in speed, but in our tests we hardly noticed it when playing games or when the card was idle.

Comparisons will be made between this card, the lower priced EAX1900XT and of course nVidia’s range, but regardless of the outcome the EAX1900XTX is extremely fast! So fast that every game we threw at it could be run at the highest resolution and all advanced settings pushed to the maximum. But it’s not just games that are enhanced by the power of this card. One such enhancement is ‘Splendid’, built into the driver, which detects activation and usage of video applications and then automatically optimises image quality for the best visual effect. Great for those who wish to view video on their PC withought loss of image quality.

ASUS has certainly bundled a lot of useful software with the EAX1900XTX which helps to justify the high price. For instance, PowerDirector 3DE allows you to edit and create home movies and Medi@Show SE 2.0 lets you create image and video slideshows. You also get full versions of Eidos’ Project Snowblind, Ubisoft’s King Kong and a bonus pack of games: Savage, BillyBlade and Mashed. A nice touch is the inclusion of a CD holder so you can place all your gaming, driver and utility CDs in a protective case.

Other exclusive software comes in the shape of GameReplay which records gaming action into MPEG-4 video files so that you can show off your playing to other players or use it to watch and learn from your gaming mistakes. There’s also a copy of GameFace Messenger, an MSN-like IM service and game conference facility which is useful if you want to keep track of the ongoing events within your clan. GameLiveShow is included to allow gamers to stream broadcasts of their gaming experiences live over the Internet, useful for adding a professional touch to your clan?

Online Video Security Link is an excellent security suite which allows you to rig your computer up to a video recorder or a Web camera (no recording to video in this mode though), so if an intruder walks past it will alert you by sounding an alarm. And with its HTTP access you can control the system over the Web - it can even interface with Skype to inform you that an intruder is rummaging where they shouldn’t be. The quality of the images even with our basic Web camera was excellent and for a bundle piece of software we were extremely impressed - it’s not often you see a security-based piece of software included with a graphics card, which goes to show just how much thought ASUS has put into this retail package.

Finally, there are a couple of utilities that will get the attention of hardcore gamers. Smart Doctor allows you to manually overclock the GPU and memory speed of the card to increase gaming performance. The utility sits unobtrusively on the taskbar and monitors the card so if it gets too hot the Hyperdrive technology adjusts the CPU core and fan speeds. If it decides that the card is unresponsive it will notch the settings back until the card is stable again. The on-screen display utility is the best yet, allowing you to adjust the contrast and brightness of a game without leaving the program.

ASUS’ EAX1900XTX is the ultimate choice for those who want to play the latest games at the highest settings but also want a balanced and comprehensive software bundle. Performance is excellent both in game and out with graphics being vibrant and clear, and with the System Doctor utility you can safely increase the performance of the card further without risk of damaging your investment. Granted the card is very expensive, but it’s faster and cheaper than nVidia’s rival 7800GTX 512MB. If gaming is your passion, you will not be disappointed with the EAX1900XTX.

[9] - Editors Choice

[Best Graphics Card Pricing UK]
[Best Graphics Card Pricing US]

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