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ASUS V9280 Ti4200-8x "Super Fast"Date: 03/01/2003
The name of this company has fixed in the users' mindset as expensive but invariably high-quality components for the PC. Next year, ASUSTek is celebrating its 15th anniversary, and on the Russian market the company has been successfully working for 10 years already. ASUS's leading positions are firmly held in many ways due to the rational marketing policies. Just another proof of that is the decision to launch the manufacture of cheap motherboards under the ASROCK trademark. This is very similar to the situation on the car market. Even though Toyota is associated in the consumer mindset as a manufacturer of no-frills inexpensive Japanese cars, it also produces prestigious technically perfect Lexus cars. Asus follows suit and can't afford diluting the quality of the brand name. In the 3dfx epoch, ASUS started producing boards with support for 3D acceleration. By that time, the market was represented by such chips like Intel i740, nVidia Riva 128 and ATI Rage II. By the way, ASUS was the only third-party company to be able producing video cards on those chips. Accelerators made by ASUS have always been distinguished by excellent shipment bundles, the superb quality of video cards themselves, innovative design and, naturally, the price which was much higher than that offered by competitors. By now the situation is as it used to be then. That is, Asus video cards are fast, stable and the shipment bundle puts the competitors at a loss. Today we'll be looking into another video card from Asus that we received for testing. This is Asus V9280S based on NVidia's Ti4200 chip with support for AGP8x (codenamed as NV28). As ever, Asus hasn't disappointed its amateurs and added some nice novelties into the new video card. Anyway, let's examine them step by step...
The video cardFrom year to year the package design is getting more catchy, and on the New Year eve the exterior of the package is especially topical. Even if you see it when buying and unwrapping all the property at home, the product does leave quite a bright impression since, as is well known, "clothes make the man.." The box follows the ASUS classical style and keeping up with the times it has slightly grown in size. It's amusing to see the PCB design style of the '70's brought to the background of the eye on the box.
Inside the cardboard box, another one made of plastic is enclosed in which all the accessories and the card are packed.
The shipment bundle inside the splendor can be regarded as one of the richest ever for the whole line of GeForce 4 Ti cards among all the manufacturers. The card comes bundled with the following:
The bundled software includes:
Another distinguishing feature of the driver is the more complete control panel invoked from the tray. All the other panels are completely matching the nVidia reference drivers.
Of special mention is the SmartDoctor 2 utility shipped on the drivers CD. The Asus9280S does not support electronic monitoring of the card's condition which is displayed by the installer during setting up the utility. Anyway, the utility does install but runs only as a primitive frequency tweak. Therefore, there is no practical sense in using the program.
Also remember that to make the TV-in and TV-out work, install the WDM capture driver from nVidia supplied on the bundled CD. In this regard, Asus has somehow degraded since the company has always been trying to produce own drivers with the full-featured control panel.
Chip and memoryAs we have already mentioned, the card is built on the Ti 4200-8x (NV28) chip. These days the chip is gaining more popularity among graphics accelerators manufacturers. Recently, most manufacturers have announced products based on the new chip. In our test lab we have already had a video card based on this chip, and prior to reading this review on the ASUS video card it makes sense familiarizing with what Abit contrived to do with their Siluro OTES 8x 128Mb video card. On the Asus V9280S board, there is a similar chip installed that was produced at the 36th week of the year 2002, which is about early September.
As is the case with the OTES, the chip runs at frequencies pushed up to the Ti4400 levels, that is, 275MHz, using the most regular cooling. This by no means a flaw, since Ti4200 chips run without an issue at increased frequencies using the standard cooling. By the way, there is another possible reason why the Ti4400 chips have been laid off - if the process technology allows making all the chips with the quality high enough without screening, then one should admit that the documented frequencies are understated and the manufacturer will thus be able raising them, then there is no need in the Ti4400 chips any longer. The memory installed on the video card of the BGA type and is manufactured by Samsung. As per the online documentation on the manufacturer's website, its fetch time is about 2.8 ns, which meets 350 MHz (700 MHz DDR), but it anyway runs at 600 MHz. Nevertheless, this is also a good result because as per the documentation the memory in Ti4200-based video cards should run at 250 MHz (500 MHz DDR), while the 300 MHz frequency should belong to the higher-end chip Ti4600. Considering the memory cooling, the V9280 in theory should offer quite good overclocking potentials. But we'll dwell on that later on.
The card is assembled following the ASUS innovative PCB design, of dark brown color which is standard for Asus video cards. By its exterior and dimensions, this PCB resembles more of the PCB in the higher-end chip Ti4600, but upon a closer look it becomes clear this is not the case. For the case with the V9280, Asus made a top-level showing by developing own unique PCB design in when the Ti4600 was taken as the base that was further re-worked. This is well seen on the photo below:
You can also notice that the filters block has been essentially changed, and the placement of most finer elements close to the chip has been revised. But the module responsible for output on the monitor and TV-out has remained intact. Let's now make a brief summary - we have a Ti4200 assembled on a more expensive PCB taken from the Ti4600 and using the memory running at a frequency matching the Ti4600. But the chip has slightly made a mess of it and in fact runs at the frequency of the Ti4400. Cooling systemThe system for cooling the graphics processor looks balanced enough and even though by its exterior can be related to the higher-end video cards, it does look more natural unlike the swollen-up OTES cooling system being an illustrative example of how on a weak chip you hoist a cooler looking as impressive and making a noise as high as that coming from the Su-27 jet-fighter. As is seen from the photo, the cooler can't control the rotational speed since the signaling wire for that is missing. Nevertheless, the noise level is pretty small. On the whole, one can say that a similar cooling system could be there on the Ti4600 video card as well. A proof of that is the cooling fitted on the memory chips in the form of quite massive radiators from the front (glued to the chips) and a big flat wafer behind fitted with the pins used in the GPU radiator.
Note that under the wafer from behind there is no thermopaste at all, and its lack may cause unstable operation as well as restrict overclocking. We recommend removing it with small pliers and apply a layer of thermopaste on all the memory chips and then revert all back to the original state. The cooling system does not need further improvements and is almost free of any noticeable flaws.
Outputs to external devicesThe video card features two outputs to monitors, one for the D-Sub15 and one DVI. As was mentioned earlier, the card comes bundled with an adapter with which you can plug in a regular analogous monitor to the DVI-out. It is impossible to plug in two DVI panels simultaneously though, and this is a minus for a card of such class. During the tests there was nothing to complain about the 2D quality, it was high enough up to the highest resolutions no matter which output is used. The card supports image output onto two monitors simultaneously using the nView technology, and instead of the second monitor an output to the TV set can be used. The implementation of the TV in/out merits a special mention. In this, Asus applied a new smart technological solution which along with the ease of use offers no quality losses in connection. To achieve that, Asus simply improved the standard splitter cable recommended for use by Nvidia itself in the reference design. So, what has been done?
As is seen from the photo, all the four sockets are placed in a separate plastic block plugged in to the card via a pretty long cable (a bit longer than 1 meter). The card is also bundled with a double-sided sticker with which you can fasten the block in a whatever place as you like and thus facilitate access to the sockets. As is easy to notice, inputs and outputs are brought to the block. Video-In and TV-OutThe video In/Out on the card is implemented with the Philips7108AE chip typical for cards of this type. Although the driver support is not perfect, this chip is quite good, has its own pros and cons. Among the cons is that the system automatically detects any device plugged to the video-out without rebooting the PC. That is, as soon as you plug in a device you can output image to it via the tab 'nView' in the monitor properties that becomes enabled. The TV-Out supports resolutions up to 1024x768 and what is above it is brought into the mode of virtual scroll display. As for the output quality, this remained on the same level as before. The color blends on the TV look unnatural, but we didn't notice any visible interference like snow and stripes. There was also no image instability as a result of voltage drops found. As for the TV-in, let me point out some details. This first relates to nVidia's driver itself. Wasn't it possible to drive decent proper drivers where selection of the TV standard (PAL,SECAM,NTSC) for Composite and S-Video is in the driver properties? To switch to a TV standard, you've got to practice a witchcraft ritual singing out taboo songs before the computer.
At first, as soon as the operating system installs the driver and detects all the four devices (yes, there has got to be four of them, not one), you should reboot the system. Then install the bundled software Asus Digital VCR that comes on the CD and follow tuning via the Wizard. You don't have to lean over backwards - it won't remember anything at first try. Then run the program and highlight 3 channels in the channels settings.
Don't mind the errors that might come up in the process. After that reboot the PC and re-start the Wizard. Define the regional settings in it to 'Russia (SECAM D/K)' upon which an error message window pops up, but don't mind it either. Tune the brightness (no use, it will reset anyway)... Select NEXT and there you are - you see that the pre-highlighted channels have activated. Now start the program and in its setup window define the parameters shown on the screenshot below. That's it. Got it.. now you have three buttons to switch between the TV standards, so enjoy the video cassette in PAL as well as all other channels available to your video cassette recorder. Then, to save the video capture settings, you've got to press the 'Apply' button, otherwise all your settings will get lost and re-set to defaults. I can say this software suite was written with as crooked hands as one did ever see, but anyway there is a silver lining in the cloud. The fidelity and, what is most important, the recording quality are simply fantastic to make the BT878 turn green of envy because it offers a variety of de-interlacing modes (when switching it on, the frame does not interlace). On a Pentium4 2.8 GHz, we managed to record a file on the disk in 5 minutes and get the 25 fps under the 10 Mbps data flow, at the 720x576 dots. The quality is pretty high which allows digitizing any favorite movie, converting it into MPEG4 and writing it on a CD. But keep in mind that if you decide to repeat the experiment, the file length under my parameters was increasing by 1.5 MB every second, i.e. 15 GB of the hard disk space which would be as long as 166 minutes recording time. Of course, in this process the performances of both the CPU and the disk subsystem are critical. The card also comes bundled with the Asus VideoSecurity utility which merits a special consideration. With Asus VideoSecurity you can turn your PC into a surveillance system. The idea behind the program is this. If you have a statically fitted video camera focused at a certain object which either no one or a limited circle of people should approach, then connecting the camera to the video-input of the graphics accelerator you get a static image of the object being guarded. Then, starting the program you define the scan range and the sensitivity level. Now any motion within the scan range will make the PC roar immensely (sounds like a security alarm system in a bank) and the picture of the intruder object will be taken instantly, with the time record registered into a log file. The program allows smooth variation of the illumination levels. For example, you target the camera at your car parked overnight outside the house and enable the program in the monitoring mode. So, if the intruder approaches your car you will be immediately notified of that, and the bad guy instantly photographed at the moment of committing the harassment, then a record of date/time of the crime will be added to the log file. If you come up to the monitor when the alarm snaps you will see the spot through which the perimeter was broken highlighted as a blinking red square; but if the intrudes keeps moving, the red square will precisely follow him - the way it is in hardcore action movies :). But the system has a minor flaw typical of all systems without AI - with this going on you might end up compiling an extensive database of all the neighboring cats, dogs and other pets around regarded by the system as intruders.
OverclockingThere we are, arrived at last at the long-awaited topic... but there's nothing to make you happy. The overclocking potentials of the card proved to be quite middling. Frankly, we expected much more. We managed to get the cards run stably at the following frequencies: 303 MHz on the chip and 324 MHz (648 MHz DDR) on the memory. While it is a normal overclocked frequency for the Ti4200-8x, for the memory with its 2.8 ns timings and documented 700 MHz the resultant 648 MHz is not impressive at all. This is especially annoying because the memory is cooled and the cooling was improved through adding thermopaste under the wafer from behind the card. You may get a better luck since overclocking always depends on a particular specimen. 3DTo test the performance of the AsusV9280S video card based on the Ti4200 AGP 8x chip we assembled the two test systems: Test system No. 1 (Hi-End system):
Test system No 2 (Mid-Range system):
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
This benchmark shows a strong dependence on the processor resources. So at low resolutions all the cards performed with practically identical results. Anyway, since the processor is powerful enough, the higher the resolutions the more vivid is the difference in scores. As is seen from this graph, the Asus card powers ahead of the Abit contender. As you can guess, that was possible due to the higher memory frequency offered by the Asus video card. But anyway the Ti4600 takes the lead.
With a less powerful processor, the card performed at very similar results. At high resolutions, the performance gap was slightly getting narrow, and at low resolutions a difference in scores albeit small did appear. As for the video card in question, the performance difference as compared to the 128 MB Abit becomes visible only at higher resolutions and it is negligible. Note that the 64 MB Abit video card on that platform showed much greater performance loss than on the former. Let me remind you that all 128 MB video cards, but for Gainward Ti4600, support the AGP8x (3.0), which anyway does not prevent Gainward from holding the first place. Unreal Tournament 2003
Amusing enough, but in this benchmark the AsusV9280S card showed a performance absolutely adequate for its 'frequency/potentials' ratio. This can't be said about the Abit contender card which due to unknown reasons showed a performance higher than Ti4600. As for the remaining video cards, their performance is absolutely adequate Let's take a look how the situation changed on another test system:
As we see, it has changed radically. At first, the result looks more adequate although hard to explain. The performance of the cards varies no matter what their frequency characteristics and chip potentials are. At the highest resolution, AsusV9280S left a Ti4600-based video card behind at performance which was possible only due to optimizations inside the NV28 and using the AGP8x. In any case, both video cards based on the Ti4200-8x are on par with the Ti4600 and are quite competitive. Note that in a video card featuring 64 MB local memory performance losses at higher resolutions are substantial enough, which is another proof of necessity to have 128 MB onboard. Code creaturesThis benchmark is a real torture for the video subsystem and leaves the processor practically unloaded. It outputs up to 600 thousand polygons per frame and makes use of the vertex and pixel shaders version 1.1, that is why it does not run on Nvidia MX-Series video cards.
As is seen from the graph, the Asus9280S performance is practically matching to that of its competitor, Abit OTES 8x, although the latter takes a lead over Asus at high resolutions by merely 1 fps (this falls within the measurement errors). The Ti4600 preserves leadership in this benchmark, and the 64 Mb video card is well behind the 128 MB counterpart. See that GeForce3 on this graph is also used for reference :).
On another test system the result becomes more adequate again. AsusV9280 takes a lead over the Abit contender due to higher memory frequency at low resolutions and shows identical scores at high resolutions. The AGP8x does not help much and anyway the Ti4600 holds the leadership crown although does not support this new standard. The 64 Mb Ti4200 has once and for all lost its grounds at high resolutions. 3DMark2001SE
At this benchmark, all the Ti4200-based video cards showed practically identical performance scores, and only the 64 MB counterpart has fallen well behind the pack at 1600x1200. By now this benchmark is a bit outdated and does not pump up the accelerator to the full. The 64MB of local memory onboard are definitely insufficient, so the performance does not drop on cards with such memory capacity. This is contrary to latest games which do enjoy the memory on board the accelerator. In any case the leadership is indisputably taken by the Ti4600 that has gone well ahead of its lower-end brothers.
On a less powerful test system the trend stays the same. The Asus video card has slightly lagged behind the contender at low resolutions and performed a bit better at higher resolutions, but at any rate the Ti4600 has firmly taken a lead as ever. Doom III Lite
At this benchmark, AsusV9280S showed itself as a fantastic performer. It only failed to outperform Abit video card at low resolutions, but anyway left the Gainward Ti4600 card behind. The similarity of results for video cards based on the Ti4200-8x chip is just another proof that the NV28 differs from NV25 not only in the presence of AGP8x. By the way, the 60 fps at 640x480 is quite enough for moderately decent playing the Doom. But the final version is unlikely to improve the speed characteristics essentially by virtue of several reasons. Processor dependenceThese days we quite often hear questions like in what extent the video card depends on the processor. To answer it in part we prepared some graphs in which we presented comparative data for one and the same video card, in particular, AsusV9280S, tested on our two test systems.
This graphs shows a strong dependence of the RTCW on the processor resources. On a more powerful system, the performance demonstrates a more linear change, which means the system is balanced. Only at low resolutions the cards performed with practically identical results. This can't be said about the other platform on which all the results are practically identical, and the performance drop starts only near the high resolutions. That is, the higher FPS is needed at low resolutions, the more powerful a processor is needed. . The situation here is practically identical to the previous except that the better 3DNow instructions set & Athlon optimization gives advantages to the test system featuring much lower clock speeds. Reminding you that at this benchmark the Ti4200-8x performance on both platforms was identical to that of Ti4600 that lacks support for AGP8x. Therefore, there is every reason to assume the performance boost on the second platform is not related to using AGP8x at all.
As I mentioned earlier, this benchmark does not depend on the processor, so the result is almost identical. But we've got to note the performance on the Athlon-based platform is slightly higher than that for the Pentium4 with the clock speed difference being as high as 1 GHz.
This benchmark exerts load on both the processor and the graphic accelerator in a manner balanced enough; the performance drop is linear and practically identical. But at lower resolutions the video card's performance on the Pentium4 is growing more intensely than on the Athlon. Judging by the presented benchmarks, we can make a conclusion that a Ti4200-8x-based video card should be used with mid-end to top-end processors. Otherwise, the performance at low and high resolutions will be practically identical. As you can see, the processor dependence itself is in much extent a factor of the application that uses the 3D acceleration. While some games are insensitive to that, at other games you won't get a super FPS without a powerful processor however hard you try pushing down the resolution. There is one good piece of advice though - if your video card is good enough and the processor weak, then using the FSAA in low resolutions or gameplay in high resolutions without anti-aliasing may not strongly affect the overall performance, which in fact will give you a free graphics quality improvement. FindingsFollowing its tradition, ASUS once again has proved its high name and produced a really excellent product offering an outstanding package bundle. The V9280 "Super Fast" has every reason to be regarded as best in class and take a place of dignity among the Ti4600-based video cards. What is more, it is free of those shortcomings typical of the OTES cooling system making immense noise even with the case cover closed, at the same time it has all their pros, e.g. increased memory speeds and GPU speeds. Moreover, its cooled memory runs at frequencies as high as those the full-featured Ti4600 offers and can be even slightly overclocked.Even though we expected higher overclocking results from the Asus card, remember that overclocking requires unique approach to every video card specimen, so you may get a better luck. Among the cons is the traditionally faulty TV-in drivers that can be handled only by somebody having a decent experience in the field, showing immense patience and burning with desire to run it all up. For all that he will be generously rewarded by the excellent video recording quality provided a powerful enough processor with the good disk subsystem are there. The innovative design of the TV splitter is quite handy and hopefully will get acclimatized with Asus for a long time, so we might see it in other Asus video cards. In all the other respects, the card showed good 2D quality on all the outputs, from the DVI up to the TV-Out, and of course excellent 3D quality. Pros:
Cons:
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