Review ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition video adapter 256MB: Tested 10 Famous Games

Review ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition video adapter 256 MB

Review ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition video adapter 256MB: Tested 10 Famous Games – While NVIDIA and ATI tackle the supply of graphics chips for high-end graphics cards, their partners are releasing mid-range solutions based on affordable chips, targeting gamers and enthusiasts looking for high performance in today’s demanding applications.

The situation with the GeForce 6800 family currently does not look the best – the older model, the GeForce 6800 Ultra, is almost impossible to find on sale, and even if it succeeds, the price for it often turns out to be much higher than the $ 499 recommended by NVIDIA and fluctuates within from $ 530 to $ 600 and above. A slightly less productive model, the GeForce 6800 GT, is more common, and its prices, according to Pricewatch.com, start at $ 400, which is only $ 1 higher than the recommended price of $ 399.

The most affordable new generation card from NVIDIA is the GeForce 6800, and the prices for this model sometimes turn out to be even lower than the recommended $ 299 mark. However, this card is equipped with a rather slow by today’s standards memory operating at a frequency of only 350 (700) MHz, which leads to a paradoxical situation – the card, in some cases,

ASUSTeK Computer has found a solution to this problem and implemented it in the ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition video adapter. It is impossible to call this solution original, but more on that later. Like all ASUS products that visited our site’s test lab, the V9999 Gamer Edition arrived to us in full combat gear, ready to take a place on the shelf of any store and start the fight for the attention and money of a potential buyer.

The main ASUS weapon in this struggle is the huge colorful box, which we have already mentioned more than once. The new product, V9999 Gamer Edition, was no exception – it was packed in the same huge box as ASUS AX800 XT, ASUS AX800 PRO and ASUS RADEON 9800 XT:

Its design does not differ much from the design of the boxes in which ASUS supplies cards of the X800 family, except that the blue tones here are replaced by green ones, and the girl on the front side of the box has given way to a young red-haired magician. This box also has a folding flap, traditional for ASUS boxes, under which there is a window through which you can see the card, enclosed in a transparent plastic box. In addition, there is also a carrying handle, which is very convenient with such a huge package size. Inside the box, we found the following contents:

ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition video adapter (in a transparent plastic box);
Video adapter quick installation guide;
CD with detailed technical manual;
CD with ASUS drivers and utilities;
Adapter DVI-I -> D-Sub;
S-Video -> RCA adapter;
ASUS webcam box.

This bundle is somewhat poorer than that found in boxes with ASUS AX800 XT and AX800 PRO video adapters, but still quite sufficient. The only complaint is the absence of a Molex splitter in the bundle, which in the absence of a free power supply connector can make it difficult to install the card into the system. It is possible that in this way the company is trying to force a potential buyer to connect the card to different power supply lines, as NVIDIA recommends.
Familiar from other ASUS products, the orange plastic box with the software kit contains the following discs:

CD with ASUS DVD player;
CD with CyberLink MediaShow SE 2.0;
CD with the game Battle Engine Aquila;
CD with the game Gunmetal;
CD with demos of various games;
2 CDs with Deus Ex: Invisible War.

The set of software emphasizes the gaming orientation of this product; the set does not contain any software for video editing, but in this case it is not needed – the card does not have the ability to input a video signal. Fans of all sorts of combat robots will especially like the software kit – the kit includes 2 games with this theme at once: Battle Engine Aquila and Gunmetal. As for the proprietary ASUS utilities, they remain the same – you can read about them in the reviews dedicated to the ASUS V9950 , ASUS RADEON 9800 XT / TVD , or ASUS AX800 PRO / TD video adapters . The latest review also details the webcam included with the V9999 Gamer Edition and all its pros and cons.

Unlike the cards belonging to the AX800 line, this product, like the ASUS RADEON 9800 XT / TVD, supports the SmartCooling technology, which allows adjusting the rotation speed of the cooling system fan depending on user settings and the temperature of the graphics core. To fully implement this technology, the V9999 cooling fan motor is equipped with a tachometer with a separate pin, while the standard motors of NVIDIA reference coolers have only two pins through which they receive power.

Taking the card in his hands

ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition makes the most favorable impression with its appearance – take a look for yourself:

The combination of the blue color of the PCB with the silver color of the cooling system looks very aesthetically pleasing – perhaps the card looks no less attractive than the ASUS RADEON 9800 XT / TVD once looked. True, the color scheme is different here – the dark blue color of the PCB is combined with the silver color of the cooling system, but it looks just great! For the appearance of the card, you can safely put the highest point – it deserves it. From a technical point of view, the card is even more interesting – despite the fact that it is a variant of the GeForce 6800, it is based on a slightly revised PCB from the GeForce 6800 Ultra:

The right parts of the printed circuit boards are absolutely identical down to the smallest details, even the number of power connectors is the same – each card has 2 Molex connectors. Small differences start on the left side of the boards – the ASUS V9999 GE lacks an additional TMDS transmitter, since the card is equipped with the usual configuration of D-Sub + DVI-I output connectors, and not two DVI-I ports, like the GeForce 6800 Ultra. In addition, the ASUS product has changed the location and type of the connector for connecting the cooler, which is due to the support for SmartCooling technology.

The GeForce 6800 Ultra has a hole in this place. If you turn over the cards, there is also a slight difference in the area of ​​the fan power connectors – the original GeForce 6800 Ultra has another TMDS transmitter from Silicon Image in this place, But the ASUS V9999 GE has a cooler speed control circuit wired in this place, which is based on an unknown chip labeled F75375S.

The rest of the boards are completely identical. The situation with the presence of two external TMDS transmitters in the reference GeForce 6800 Ultra should be clarified. In all likelihood, a pair of these chips work in parallel, in order to provide an image output in QUXGA (3200×2400) resolution in digital form via the DVI interface. This is of interest for professional applications, but in a gaming video adapter, support for such resolutions is useless, so ASUS V9999 GE uses a built-in transmitter, the capabilities of which are quite sufficient for domestic purposes. The rest of the boards are completely identical.

The situation with the presence of two external TMDS transmitters in the reference GeForce 6800 Ultra should be clarified. In all likelihood, a pair of these chips work in parallel, in order to provide an image output in QUXGA (3200×2400) resolution in digital form via the DVI interface. This is of interest for professional applications, but in a gaming video adapter, support for such resolutions is useless, so ASUS V9999 GE uses a built-in transmitter, the capabilities of which are quite sufficient for domestic purposes.

The rest of the boards are completely identical. The situation with the presence of two external TMDS transmitters in the reference GeForce 6800 Ultra should be clarified. In all likelihood, a pair of these chips work in parallel, in order to provide an image output in QUXGA (3200×2400) resolution in digital form via the DVI interface. This is of interest for professional applications, but in a gaming video adapter, support for such resolutions is useless, so ASUS V9999 GE uses a built-in transmitter, the capabilities of which are quite sufficient for domestic purposes.

The cooling system of the V9999 GE is also unique – it is a hybrid of the GeForce 6800 and 6800 Ultra cooling systems with some modifications from ASUS itself. The plate with needle fins, cooling the memory chips, is almost identical to that installed on the GeForce 6800 Ultra, but the blover and its cover are half height, as in the case of the GeForce 6800. But the main difference lies under the cover of the system – the the heat from the GPU crystal here is not aluminum, as usual, but copper. The use of copper will improve the cooling of the VPU core, but it will also require better airflow, since copper has a 1.5 times higher thermal conductivity than aluminum, but 2.3 times less heat capacity.

Special attention should be paid to the cooling system casing, decorated with the embossed ASUS logo, and the blover installed in it – these details are also very different from the standard ones. Firstly, the casing is not made of black plastic, but of blue smoky-translucent, secondly, the blover with transparent blades is equipped with bright blue illumination, and, finally, thirdly, the casing outlet nozzle, which directs the air flow to the radiator, cooling memory, is also equipped with a line of bright blue LEDs that transform a working video adapter from a regular computer board into something enchanting.

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This extravaganza will delight modders and owners of cases with a window; the rest will be indifferent to it, but nevertheless, it’s nice to see that the company is trying to create not only a high-quality, but also a beautiful product,

Let’s move on to the technical characteristics of the described product. We remind you that in the original GeForce 6800 the memory frequency was only 350 (700) MHz, which did not allow it to perform well in high resolutions and / or when full-screen anti-aliasing was enabled. ASUS solved this problem in the simplest, but not the cheapest way – 8 GDDR3 chips from Samsung with an access time of 2.0 nanoseconds, instead of 128 MB of slow DDR, are hidden under the V9999 GE needle heatsink.

Unlike the usual GeForce 6800, the installed memory capacity is 256 MB, as in the older models of the 6800 family. The memory operates at its nominal frequency of 500 (1000) MHz. As for the frequency of the graphics processor, it is also slightly increased and amounts to 350 MHz against 325 for the original. In this way, ASUS V9999 GE closely resembles the GeForce 6800 GT – both in the design of the PCB and cooling system, as well as the VPU and memory clock speeds.

The most significant difference between these cards is the number of pixel pipelines – while the GeForce 6800 GT has all 16 of them enabled, the ASUS V9999 GE has some of them disabled, and only 12 pipelines work. The company claims that the performance of its version of the GeForce 6800 exceeds that of the original by more than 25%, but whether this is so, we will find out in the chapter of our review devoted to gaming tests. and only 12 conveyors work.

The company claims that the performance of its version of the GeForce 6800 exceeds that of the original by more than 25%, but whether this is so, we will find out in the chapter of our review devoted to gaming tests. and only 12 conveyors work. The company claims that the performance of its version of the GeForce 6800 exceeds that of the original by more than 25%, but whether this is so, we will find out in the chapter of our review devoted to gaming tests.

Noise, acceleration and 2D quality

The noise level emitted by the V9999 GE cooling system, as expected, turned out to be the same as in the case of the reference GeForce 6800 Ultra operating in 3D mode. However, the card does not change the rpm depending on the operating mode, since the fan control functions in it are assigned not to the standard control scheme developed by NVIDIA, but to ASUS SmartDoctor. After installing and loading it, you get the ability to control the card fan in both manual and automatic modes. By default, according to the tachometer, the fan rotates at approximately 2700 rpm. If you reduce the speed to about 2300-2400 rpm, the noise level emitted by the card is significantly reduced,

Overclocking, as we expected, turned out to be excellent – the graphics processor easily worked at a frequency of 430 MHz, which not every GeForce 6800 Ultra can handle. The memory with an access time of 2 nanoseconds did not disappoint and from the very first attempt it was able to squeeze out 100 MHz above its nominal 1000 MHz, which can also be considered a good result. Thus, ASUS V9999 GE can be safely called “the overclocker’s choice”, especially considering the fact that we managed to achieve these frequencies using only one additional 120mm slow-speed fan.

We were also pleased with the quality of the picture displayed in 2D mode – the maximum resolution in which it was possible to work comfortably turned out to be 1800x1400x75 Hz, which is the maximum for our laboratory monitor. So, in all three parameters, which this section of our review is devoted to, ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition deserves the highest score. Let’s see if he manages to perform just as well in the gaming tests.

6 vertex pipelines on the GeForce 6800? Are they needed?

NVIDIA officially says that the “standard” version of the GeForce 6800 GPU has only five vertex processors versus six in the GeForce 6800 GT and GeForce 6800 Ultra, which some consider a drawback of the hero of today’s review. However, synthetic tests show that this is hardly a correct statement, since the relatively low frequency of modern NVIDIA GeForcr 6800 graphics chips makes the main limiting factor of geometric performance not the vertex pipelines, but the triangle preparation unit. Below are a number of benchmarks that support this thesis.

As you can see, the GeForce 6800 Ultra and non-Ultra show approximately the same performance level in relatively old test applications like 3DMark 2001 SE. Therefore, we could assume that either this GeForce 6800 chip has all 6 active vertex pipelines, or that the geometric performance is limited by the triangle preparation unit. In more modern benchmarks, such as 3DMark03, 3DMark05, ASUS V9999 Gamers Edition lags slightly behind the GeForce 6800 Ultra, which indicates a certain “cutback” versus the “full” version of the chip.

One way or another, we see that the NV40 chip does not receive a large increase from the presence of the sixth vertex pipeline, which means that it is not very legitimate to blame the GeForce 6800 GPU for low geometric performance due to the lack of certain logic in the chip, it is much more logical to criticize the GPU for relatively low clock speed.

Testing methodology and test platform configuration

To test ASUS V9999 GE, we used our standard AMD64 platform:

Athlon 64 3400+ CPU (2.20GHz, 1MB L2 cache);
ASUS K8V Deluxe mainboard;
OCZ PC-3200 Platinum EB DDR SDRAM (2x512MB, CL2.5-3-2-8);
Seagate 7200.7 HDD (SerialATA-150, 8MB buffer);
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2;
Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2, DirectX 9.0с;
ATI CATALYST 4.8, NVIDIA ForceWare 61.77 (60.85 для 3DMark03).

The following games and applications were used as test software:

3D First Person Shooters:

Call of Duty;
Doom III;
Unreal Tournament 2004;
Halo: Combat Evolved;
FarCry;
Painkiller;
Counter Strike: Source Beta


3D third-person shooters:

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow;
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time;
Hitman: Contracts;
Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness;
Thief: Deadly Shadows;
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne


Simulators:

IL-2 Sturmovik: Aces in the Sky;
Lock On;
Colin McRae Rally 04


Strategy games:

Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour;
Perimeter


Semi-synthetic benchmarks:

Half-Life 2 Stress Test;
Aquamark3


Synthetic benchmarks:

Futuremark 3DMark03 build 340

In each game, the graphics quality settings were set to the highest possible level, the same for solutions from ATI and NVIDIA. For cards based on NVIDIA GPUs, anisotropic and trilinear filtering optimizations have been enabled in ForceWare settings.

Game tests: Call of Duty

In the very first test, we see that the performance of ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition roughly corresponds to that of the RADEON X800 PRO, which, however, should have been expected, given the presence of fast memory in the described product.

With FSAA and anisotropic filtering enabled, the picture changes somewhat – if at 1024×768 the ASUS card is the leader, then RADEON X800 PRO catches up with it already in 1280×1024, which then goes ahead in 1600×1200 resolution. However, the excellent overclocking potential helps the V9999 Gamer Edition not to lose its face, albeit in such a simple game as Call of Duty.

Game tests: Doom III

As we expected, in Doom III the new product showed itself from the best side, significantly outperforming its main rival, RADEON X800 PRO. This is not surprising, given the unique mutual adaptability of the NV4x architecture and the engine developed by id Software, as well as the outdated OpenGL driver included in ATI CATALYST.

When tested in the Eye Candy mode, the gap between the V9999 Gamer Edition and the RADEON X800 PRO narrowed, but the ASUS card retained its leadership thanks to the support for the Ultra Shadow II technology and other features of the architecture used by NVIDIA in the new generation video adapters. It should be noted that the high efficiency of the RADEON X800 family cards when working with memory showed itself here as well – in high resolutions the advantage of ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition over RADEON X800 PRO was only 2-4 FPS.

At this level, intended for multiplayer games, the results shown by the test participants are generally higher due to its simplicity and the absence of monsters, but even here the cards carrying the new generation architecture from NVIDIA are at their best. ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition demonstrates excellent results, only slightly lagging behind the GeForce 6800 GT.

In the mode, when full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are simultaneously involved, ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition continues to lead. Due to the simplicity of the level, the RADEON X800 PRO cannot close the gap as much as it did at the Hellhole level in the Eye Candy mode.

Game tests: Unreal Tournament 2004

The diagrams obtained in Unreal Tournament 2004 at the Torlan level do not yet show anything interesting – in the pure performance mode all cards, except for the GeForce 6600 GT, demonstrate practically the same results, reaching the performance ceiling set by the system’s central processor.

As you can see, even with FSAA and anisotropic filtering enabled at the same time, the differences between the tested cards start to appear only at 1280×1024 and higher resolutions, which clearly indicates a CPU limitation. The RADEON X800 PRO shows a slightly better result than the ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition, however, the latter does a good job, especially in comparison with the original GeForce 6800. Fast memory is what the original lacked, the diagram says.

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The Metallurgy level is not so difficult in terms of the load on the central processor, therefore, noticeable differences between the tested cards are already visible here in Pure Speed ​​mode, albeit only in 1600×1200 resolution. The ASUS product easily competes with the RADEON X800 PRO, however, there is no merit in the fast memory – look, the original GeForce 6800 lags behind by only 6-7 FPS with the overall FPS values ​​exceeding the “100” mark. However, there is nothing surprising – at this level the main load falls on the vertex processors of the video adapter. The hero of our review and the RADEON X800 PRO have 6 of them each, the prototype GeForce 6800 in our laboratory probably has the same, which is the reason for such a small difference in the results. We remind you that the serial GeForce 6800 contains only 5 vertex processors.

The simplicity of the Metallurgy level helped ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition to remain the leader – here the gap between this video adapter and the RADEON X800 PRO is more noticeable than at the Torlan level, which is full of complex textures and open spaces. Pay attention to the difference in performance between the GeForce 6800 and the card from ASUS – it is very large; this once again underlines the importance of having a modern fast memory adapter on board when using FSAA and anisotropic filtering.

Game Tests: Halo: Combat Evolved

Halo is a game full of pixel shaders, but textures in it are usually not very complex, since this shooter is a port from the X-Box console, where the amount of video memory is extremely limited, and, therefore, there is simply no place to store complex textures. Due to these features, the difference between GeForce 6800 and ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition is not too great. The greatest effect in this game is to increase the frequency of the GPU; to be convinced of this, just look at the result obtained on the overclocked card from ASUS. On the whole, the hero of our review demonstrates a performance similar to that of the RADEON X800 PRO.

Game tests: Halo: Far Cry


Pixel shaders are perhaps even more common in FarCry than in Halo; Moreover, they are much more difficult, and, in addition, the game can boast of beautiful high-resolution textures and not the simplest geometry. All this puts a heavy load on modern video adapters. It should be said that the RADEON X800 PRO was tested in Shader Model 2.0b, while all NVIDIA cards used Shader Model 3.0. Therefore, we used the potential inherent in both the R420 architecture and the NV40 architecture.

The ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition video adapter showed good results, although it lagged slightly behind the RADEON X800 PRO, which works better with shaders saturated with complex mathematics. Note that the difference between the ASUS card and the GeForce 6800 turned out to be negligible again, since in this mode the GPU frequency has the greatest influence on the results. the speed of execution of pixel shaders depends on it.

In Eye Candy mode, the impact of fast memory on performance increases, which is not surprising. Here, the RADEON X800, more prepared for such an increase in the load, feels very confident, practically catching up with the 16-pipe GeForce 6800 GT in performance. The third place goes to the V9999 Gamer Edition. The performance gain from its overclocking is greatest in the resolution of 1024×768, while at higher resolutions the speed of the memory subsystem and its efficiency come out on top.

At the Research level, everything looks virtually the same as at the Pier level – the RADEON X800 outperforms ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition by 8-12 frames per second, due to its ability to process mathematically complex pixel shaders. Overclocking helps the ASUS card reduce the lag to 2-6 FPS.

With the Eye Candy mode enabled, the gap between the two main rivals, ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition and RADEON X800 PRO, narrows and reaches its minimum at 1600×1200. Since the speed of the video memory is very important in this mode, the results of the overclocked ASUS card look quite natural.

Game Tests: Painkiller

In this game ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition lags far behind RADEON X800 PRO, since the latter works faster with pixel shaders and complex geometry, however, the lag is not fatal – even at the highest resolution ASUS V9999 shows more than 180 FPS. Such indicators will satisfy even the most picky computer player. In this game, you can also observe a tendency for the impact of fast memory on performance to increase with increasing resolution.

The role of fast memory becomes even more important when FSAA and AF are enabled. It is the presence of GDDR3 memory with a frequency of 500 (1000) MHz on board the ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition that allows this card to confidently perform in this test, practically not inferior to the RADEON X800 PRO.

Game tests: Counter-Strike: Source Beta

The beta version of Counter-Strike Source is built on the same engine as the long-awaited three-dimensional shooter Half-Life 2, so the speed of execution of pixel shaders plays a very important role in it, which is perfectly confirmed by the diagrams. ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition and RADEON X800 PRO demonstrate approximately the same performance level, however, the latter looks a little better. However, the overclocking of the ASUS card makes it possible to neutralize this difference.

In EyeCandy mode RADEON X800 PRO outperforms V9999 Gamer Edition more. The reason is the same – more efficient work with the memory subsystem, the load on which greatly increases with the simultaneous use of functions such as full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.

Running the second demo did not change the essence of the results – the gap between ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition and RADEON X800 PRO is small, but still exists, moreover, in favor of the latter, and overclocking the ASUS product allows you to almost eliminate the difference in performance.

And again, with FSAA and anisotropic filtering enabled, the RADEON X800 PRO demonstrates a higher performance level than the ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition, leaving behind it, however, the second place.

Game tests: Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow

This game is also a port from the game console, therefore, it is not very rich in textures, but pixel shaders that compensate for this shortcoming are found in it at every turn. That is why ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition lags slightly behind RADEON X800 PRO in this test. However, ATI’s advantage is insignificant, and the overclocking allows the ASUS card to neutralize it.

Game tests: Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

In this game, ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition, on the contrary, shows itself somewhat more confidently than the RADEON X800 PRO, since the shader effects are not too complicated here. However, the advantage is small – 4-10 FPS, with a high overall performance level. Overclocking has an excellent effect, therefore, the frequency of the GPU plays a major role.

Game tests: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition demonstrates approximately the same performance as the RADEON X800 PRO, however, at 1600×1200 it pushes ahead a little, probably due to the presence of fast memory, which indirectly confirms the result of the GeForce 6800 shown in this resolution.

Game tests: IL-2 Sturmovik: Aces in the Sky

In this flight simulator, which loves both the scene fill rate and fast work with pixel shaders, the ASUS card demonstrates excellent results – increased VPU and, especially, memory frequencies allow it to easily reach the level of RADEON X800 PRO and even surpass it somewhat. Overclocking the V9999 Gamer Edition gives it more strength, which is enough to reach the level of the GeForce 6800 GT, except for the 1600×1200 resolution, in which memory performance and 16 pixel pipelines come to the fore.

When tested in Eye Candy mode, ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition also excelled, surpassing the RADEON X800 PRO in all resolutions, including 1600×1200, and yielding only to the 16-pipe GeForce 6800 GT. Note that VPU overclocking in this case brings less dividends, since in Eye Candy mode, the main load falls on the memory subsystem, which was overclocked by only 100 MHz relative to the nominal.

Game Tests: Lock On

Lock On is a rather complex game, although pixel shaders are practically not used in it. In this case, ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition is considerably ahead of RADEON X800 PRO, however, this is more a merit of the architecture than the fast memory, since there is no difference in performance between the card from ASUS and the original GeForce 6800, and overclocking has practically no effect. It should be noted that the game is sometimes inconsistent, sometimes not allowing you to set the same level of settings for different platforms, which is confirmed by the results of the GeForce 6600 GT tested on a system equipped with a Pentium 4 560 processor and a PCI Express bus.

In Eye Candy mode the situation changes to the opposite, and the RADEON X800 PRO comes out ahead due to the reason that we have described more than once – it is much more efficient methods of working with the memory subsystem. It can be seen that in this mode the presence of 16-pixel pipelines is also important, as evidenced by the results of the GeForce 6800 GT, which is only slightly behind the RADEON X800 PRO.

Game Tests: Colin McRae Rally 04

Higher processing speed of pixel shaders allows RADEON X800 PRO to become a leader in this car simulator, which widely uses them, but with an increase in resolution, as you can see, the gap between it and ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition is narrowing and at 1600×1200 it is only 9 frames per second with the total values ​​over 100 FPS.

With FSAA and AF enabled, all the advantages are on the side of the RADEON X800 PRO, because, as you know, ATI Technologies cards feel best in the Eye Candy mode, since they are helped by effective memory bandwidth saving techniques. Nevertheless, the hero of our review demonstrates a good result, especially when overclocked. Such an increase from overclocking again reminds that the game is not indifferent to the speed of execution of pixel shaders, which directly depends on the frequency of the GPU.

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Game tests: Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour

Generals prefers cards that are memory efficient and are also fast with pixel shaders. In this strategic game ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition is slightly inferior to RADEON X800 PRO; the lag is most noticeable in the 1600×1200 resolution. Overclocking the described product gives a good performance boost, which, again, confirms Generals’ sensitivity to the pixel shader execution speed.

In Eye Candy mode the RADEON X800 PRO is also slightly faster than the ASUS product, except for the highest resolution, where the gap between the rival cards widens.

Game Tests: Perimeter

An excellent result – the new product from ASUS demonstrates in this super-heavy game for any video adapter the same performance level as the RADEON X800 PRO. The fast memory clearly went to the exclusive GeForce 6800 from ASUS to the advantage. The effect of overclocking in this game is quite large, however, in general, the performance of all cards is rather low due to the extreme demands of this strategy on the video adapter.

With full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled at the same time, the V9999 Gamer Edition also demonstrates results comparable to the RADEON X800 PRO, however, the latter manages to go ahead with an increase in resolution, due to its better adaptability to work in heavy modes, in which both anisotropic filtering and FSAA are used.

Semi-synthetic tests: Half-Life 2 Stress Test

This test, in fact, is used to test the execution speed of pixel shaders. Since the RADEON X800 family performs them faster than the GeForce 6800 family, the results we got are not surprising. However, the gap between ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition and RADEON X800 PRO is not great – about 6-10 frames per second with very high overall performance, which means that it also copes well with complex pixel shaders, which this test is saturated with. A small note: the test does not yet use Shader Model 3.0, however, in the future, its support may be introduced, which, possibly, will allow cards with NV4x architecture to show better performance than now. Overclocking the ASUS card has little effect, which is surprising, considering the specifics of this test.

With FSAA enabled and anisotropic filtering, the RADEON X800 PRO breaks ahead, once again confirming its adaptability to difficult conditions. The largest gap between it and the ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition is observed at a resolution of 1024×768.

Semi-synthetic tests: Aquamark3

Aquamark3 has few complex pixel shaders, but it has complex scene geometry and a high overdraw ratio. Here, in the so-called “pure performance” mode, the ASUS product is on a par with the RADEON X800 PRO, which is a merit of the fast memory. Overclocking allows the V9999 Gamer Edition to reach the level of the 16-pipe GeForce 6800 GT.

With FSAA and AF enabled, the situation becomes more favorable for the RADEON X800 PRO than for the ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition, and as the resolution grows, this video adapter starts to lag behind its main rival equipped with efficient memory bandwidth saving technologies. Overclocking allows the card from ASUS to rise slightly higher than the GeForce 6800 GT.

Synthetic tests: Futuremark 3DMark03

In the overall standings, the hero of our review lags behind the RADEON X800 PRO a little, but quite insignificantly – the difference is about 300 points. When overclocked, it takes the lead, despite the presence of only 12 pixel pipelines. Let’s take a look at the game tests separately:

ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition rightfully takes the lead in the first gaming test, since this test is simple and uses only DirectX 7. However, the RADEON X800 PRO is not far behind the ASUS product, however, the lag grows with the resolution.

In the case of FSAA and AF enabled, the V9999 Gamer Edition begins to yield to its main rival up to 1600×1200, where the situation evens out. The first gaming benchmark 3DMark03 is not that interesting due to its simplicity and lack of modern graphic effects, so let’s see what happens next.

Nothing particularly interesting happens in the second test – ASUS V9999 is only slightly ahead of RADEON X800 PRO, but its advantage is so small that it would be more accurate to speak of parity between the rivals. We remind you that the second and third game tests of the 3DMark03 package use such scene rendering algorithms, to which the NVIDIA architecture is most adapted, due to the ability to efficiently work with the Z-buffer.

With anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled, the situation changes dramatically – the above-mentioned adaptability of the GeForce 6800 architecture to the conditions of the second and third 3DMark03 gaming tests takes its toll, and ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition takes the lead.

Usually, the general situation in the third game test is the same as in the second. And so it happened this time.

This is also true for the Eye Candy mode, except that the lag of RADEON X800 PRO from ASUS V9999 in this case is less than in the previous one.

The moment of truth – in the fourth game test, the winner is always the one who can work more efficiently with complex pixel shaders 2.0, saturated with mathematical calculations. ATI Technologies’ graphics processors have always been famous for this, and the above diagram is another confirmation of this – the ASUS card has no choice but to concede the palm to its most dangerous rival.

Exactly the same picture is observed when full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are enabled at the same time. On the whole, the situation looks quite natural – given that ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition belongs to the GeForce 6800 family, the results obtained in 3DMark03 are quite natural. In three tests out of four, the described product either showed almost the same results as the RADEON X800 PRO, or outperformed it. In the fourth test, saturated with complex pixel shaders, we see a traditional lag behind a video adapter of the same class from ATI Technologies.

Conclusions and conclusion

The ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition video adapter made an extremely favorable impression on us, and we could not find any noticeable shortcomings in it. It seems that the manufacturer has thought through everything to the smallest detail, which is rarely encountered in our practice. High performance, 6 working vertex processors, efficient cooling system with a copper heatsink, beautiful appearance and rich bundle – all these are advantages in favor of ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition. The card gets rid of the main drawback of the original GeForce 6800 – slow memory. With the memory operating at such a high frequency, it easily managed to show results that are quite comparable to those of such a dangerous competitor as the RADEON X800 PRO. Take a look at the diagrams:

In some games, for example, in such a super popular shooter as Doom III, the hero of our review showed simply excellent results. However, it fell a little behind in applications saturated with complex pixel shaders, where the simpler and somewhat more efficient architecture RADEON X800 managed to gain the upper hand. These applications include games such as Far Cry, Halo: Combat Evolved and Colin McRae Rally 04, as well as the Half-Life 2 Stress Test and the famous Mother Nature test from the Futuremark 3DMark03 suite.

In the so-called Eye Candy mode, when 4x full-screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering with maximum quality are enabled at the same time, ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition also showed good results, although in most cases not as high as the RADEON X800 PRO, better adapted to work in such a difficult conditions. However, there was no complete defeat either, as in the case of the usual GeForce 6800, which was prevented from showing itself by the slow memory with a frequency of 350 (700) MHz. The only significant drawback of ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition is its price – according to Pricewatch.com, this excellent card will cost a rather big sum of $ 410-420. The usual GeForce 6800 GT is estimated at about the same price, in which, unlike the ASUS product, all 16 pixel pipelines work.


For comparison, a regular GeForce 6800 costs from $ 269 to $ 355, which is much cheaper, however, an ASUS product can be called exclusive, and, as you know, you have to pay for an exclusive. Thus, buyers aiming at purchasing a card in the indicated price range will not be able to afford the ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition, and those who are looking at higher-end NV40-based products will most likely turn their attention to the GeForce 6800 GT. As for the RADEON X800 PRO, this video adapter, according to the same search engine, costs $ 380 and more.



A new product from ASUS, the V9999 Gamer Edition video adapter may be of interest to those who need a powerful new generation video card equipped with a compact, efficient and low-noise cooling system, as well as those who appreciate a rich package bundle. Lovers of modding and transparent cases will also be delighted with him, whose gaze the product described by us is quite capable of delighting. Those who prefer efficiency to showiness are likely to opt for the more modest-looking GeForce 6800 GT.

ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition: pros and cons


Advantages:

High performance
Availability of all 6 vertex processors
Fast memory
High quality 2D
Good overclocking potential
Spectacular appearance
Effective cooling system with adjustable speed and backlight
Supports ASUS proprietary technologies
Rich bundle

Flaws:

High price


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