GeForce4 MX ASUS V9180 video card
By: Dmitry Zinovyev
| ASUS V9180 (NV17, AGP8x) |
| Chipset |
NV17 (GF4 MX440-8x) |
| GPU Speed |
300MHz |
| Memory |
567MHz DDR; 64 Mb; |
| TV Out |
Yes, integrated in the chip |
| TV-In |
yes, based on Philips SAA7114H |
| Monitor output |
2xDVI |
| Two monitors |
Yes, nView |
| Specific features |
AGP8x
SmartDoctor II - card condition monitoring
TV In/Out block |
| Price: |
$140 (PriceWatch.com) |
Things with video cards used to be going much better a few years ago. When assembling a computer you didn't have much choice, and all what mattered was the difference in 2D quality. Most computers were equipped with S3Trio64V+ cards having 1 MB onboard that filled the then market. Those who had monitors better than Samsung3ne could enjoy "Windows accelerators" by Matrox which were promoted under the Millenium trademark and enhanced with 4 or even 8(!) MB memory onboard, incredible capacity for that time. No, we don't mean to say the choice was exhausted, but the mentioned cards were real hits. Want crystal-clear image? Here you are - fork out for a Matrox. Want to save? There it is, - a cheap S3 card especially for you.
Many users are still buying computers not for super-cool wired games or drawing smashing 3D animations, but for running regular office applications like MsOffice and 1C. On the other hand, value solutions are also in demand among those into playing games but still are short of budget to buy a quality graphics accelerator. Nowadays, absolutely every company, a player on the video market, does offer low-end value solutions. What is more, it's just the budget offerings which sell in greater quantities and at better quality. Today we'll be looking into video cards based on the nVidia NV17 chips.
The chip
Since its inception, it's been a fashion for NVidia to produce "cut-down" cards, but up to the GeForce3 line that very "cut-down" way was noticeable from the performance and declared specifications only. Today, by a "cut-down card" I am defining the cards whose potentials were intentionally reduced to save production costs and thus push the retail prices down. The MX series was launched at the times of the GeForce2 line which was much slower than the higher-end brother, but didn't differ in functionality in so striking way. With the advent of GeForce3 supporting the 1.1 shaders things changed, and the gap of functional differences between the higher-end NVidia chip and the lower-end brother turned wider. It was not until the release of GeForce 4 Ti when the MX series was updated, so GeForce 4 MX emerged on the market. It would seem the GeForce 4 MX could eliminate the functionality gap (support for shaders missing) although leaving some performance gap. But no miracle occurred, and we saw practically the same GeForce2MX with slightly improved performance.
That is, GeForce4MX-based video cards are becoming increasingly uninviting for modern games where state-of-the-art technologies are used more extensively. That's why at the very start of this review I mentioned office applications, since the GeForce4MX is no longer a card for new-generation games to be released in the near future. Nevertheless, modern games run not bad at all at these chips, but we'll talk of it a bit later.
Note that the new NV17 chip also supports AGP8x still loudly hyped on the retail boxes and whose principles were discussed in our previous reviews. Let me point out that the performance boost gained from using AGP8x in the higher-end powerful chips like Ti4400 and ATI R300 is questionable, - it seems to be no more than a tribute to fashion.
The video card
Again, one more ASUS product found itself on our surgical table. The card proved to be of high quality and with a good package bundle, albeit showing no visual differences from the Reference design, but - talk about it later.
As always, let's start with examining the package. Asus strictly follows its rules, and a whole new series of cards is made with the same design - a big eye straight in the center of the box. Compared with the 9280, only the color spectrum has been changed.
Amusing enough, but the box dimensions as well as the inner plastic housing proved to be absolutely identical to that of the higher-end version, AsusV9280S. Moreover, these cards are fairly alike in the package bundle, so the unsophisticated used might be misled much. In computer shops I have so many times heard this question "Well, why does this card is $100 as expensive while they both are packed and look identically?.." Many choose their video card by the box look-and-feel, some follow the marketing. But... it's time we got down to our card.
 There are few differences from the higher-end version. The documentation is the same, but the copy we got describes the AsusV8460. Upon a closer look at the screenshots and the captions, you see the documentation is almost useless, albeit in the Russian translation. For instance, the Devices window shows V2740 based on the Intel740 and during the driver installation it suggests installing RivaTnT2 Model 64. Let me point out straight off - the card does support TV inout, so the bundle has it all to operate Video.
As you can see, the card is again bundled with a smart module to arrange the TV ViVo that comes with a small piece of double-sided sticker which is handy enough for placing it on the CPU unit. There is an adapter to connect D-Sub monitors to the DVI sockets, but I wish they were two. Anyway, talk about it later.
The bundled software:
- A drivers CD (WDM Capture Driver, Twain Driver, Tweak Utility, SmartDoctor, VideoSecurity, DigitalVCR, VR Viewer, etc)
- AsusDVD (a software-driven DVD player)
- MediaShow SE 2.0 (a software suite to prepare presentations)
- PowerDirector 2.1 ME (a software suite for video editing)
- Ghost Recon (a game, full version)
- Black Thorn (a game, full version)
- Worms Blast (a game, full version)
- Battle Realms (a game, demo version)
- IL2 Sturmovik (a game, demo version)
What makes the V9180 different from the V9280S in terms of the bundled software is the lack of the "Virtual Aquarium". The package bundle is extraordinarily rich for a value card. I think it is aimed at the Western consumer who is used to counting every dime and thinks a third-party software kit is a must. Now it's time we looked at the card itself.
As I have already mentioned, the card fully complies with NVidia's NV17 reference design, shows 300MHz of the chip clock speed and 283MHz (DDR567 MHz) on the memory. Amusing enough, but the card has a component even not of the most top-end cards boast - the two DVI connectors to plug in LCD panels. That's why I mentioned the lack of the second adapter - you won't get by without it when plugging two analogous monitors. On the rear panel, there is a connector to plug in a TV splitter.
The chip, of stepping A2, was produced in Taiwan early in September 2002. The chip has a "AGP8x support" mark, similar to that on MX440-8X.
The BGA form-factor memory is made by Samsung and is marked as K4D26323RA-GC33 and, as per the manufacturer's information, features 3.3 ns access time, which is equivalent to 300 MHz. The modules are produced in Korea.
Cooling system
The cooler on top of the chip is large enough and quite good from the technical viewpoint. It does its job quite fine and is designed to control the rotational speed. It's really annoying that memory cooling is missing completely, but if necessary you can solve this problem through installing a third-party memory cooler. This is useful if you either intend to overclock the card or whenever the card needs to be kept cooled when running 3D applications for much longer time. It's worth noting the lack of cooling in the card running under heavy 3D loads results in unstable operation (some artifacts typical of the excessive memory overclocking might come up). The thermopaste between the radiator and the chip is of fairly good quality.
TV ViVo
The TV-Out support is natively implemented in the NV17 chip, so no additional chips are required for the card. But to implement the TV-In, you anyway have got to use external chips. In this case, the TV-In is arranged with the Philips SAA7114H chip:
While testing the TV-In on NVidia cards, we earnestly lamented about the WDM drivers for these chips - it seems like who wrote them either had a poor idea of the field or was a rookie programmer. Not displaying the TV-Standard (PAL, NTSC, SECAM) selection dialog into the Control Panel is a really annoying bug. After that you won't be able to use a third-party program for recording video files that runs via the standard WDM interface, e.g. Microsoft VidCap32.
So there is no other option left than resort to the dubious native ASUS VideoVCR software which seemed to have been made by the guy who had written the WDM driver. Every time you start the program, you have to practice witchcraft rituals to make it work. This time it was a bit easier to make it work than with AsusV9280S. No Wizard is needed for that, and in the Video Source tab of the program Setup it suffices to change the Video Standard into the currently used. The recoding quality is really good, and nothing to complain.
By the way, at the NV30 presentation the same TV-In chip was used in the GeForceFX specimen as the one in this review. It means the video output in the NV30 is also integrated into the chip, and the quality of the Video input remains at the same level. As for the TV-Out: generally, it works fine since it was not spoiled by the hands of programmers developing the Asus VideoVCR, but there is one thing almost unobvious to most users. As I mentioned earlier, there are two DVI-outs on the card, but one of the DVI outputs is shared with the TV-Out. So if you plug the monitor connector into the DVI socket closest to the motherboard, you won't be able to make use of the TV-Out at all. Plug the monitor connector into another DVI and all will be OK. The thing is that all GeForce 4 cards have two RAMDACs, one of them being the main to which the first monitor is connected, and the second monitor is connected to any of the outputs (DVI, D-Sub, TV-Out), in so doing you can use no more than two devices simultaneously. The TV-Out supports resolutions up to 1024x768.
Self-diagnostics: SmartDoctor
The card comes bundled with Asus SmartDoctor 2 that is used for real-time monitoring. Of note is the fact the more expensive and powerful Asus9280S lacked the monitoring tool, while with this card it is there in full. This function used to be provided by Asus for the higher-end Deluxe models. The program allows monitoring the GPU cooler rotational speed as well as the AGP voltage, memory & graphics core temperature. The program also has a utility for overclocking the card, which comes in handy.
Nevertheless, flaws were found even in here. The program sometimes loses track of the card and pops up messages like "no voltage on the AGP bus" or something like all failed :) but in a second all breaks even. Sometimes this problem last longer, in this case it is solved through re-booting the SmartDoctor.
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