With the recent success of ASUS's NVIDIA based video cards, it was no surprise when ASUS announced the SDR GeForce based V6600 SDRAM as a lead into the newly developed GeForce market. Soon after its release, ASUS moved from using NVIDIA's reference design to using their own proprietary board design, not a small feat by any measure, as ASUS is one of only two companies we currently know of who took the time and effort to change the board design. This new manufacturing template resulted in two more GeForce based SDR cards: the V6600 Pure and the V6600 Deluxe, cards which offered more advanced features such as hardware monitoring and capture functions on the Deluxe card. More recently, DDR based GeForce cards have become the card to own, so it was no shock when ASUS announced the sale of the DDR based V6800. Because they already had a proprietary design to use, ASUS skipped the whole reference board design and made the V6800 out of the same ASUS design found in the V6600 Deluxe and Pure models which received high marks in prior tests. Using the same board design with more powerful DDR memory, ASUS assumed that it had a winning card on their hands, an assumption that proved to be correct.

Specifications, courtesy of ASUS:

• Quad Engine Architecture
  Four independent pipelined engines
  15M triangles/second
  Sustained DMA, transform/clip/light, setup, and render rate
  >70% of the chip active at all times
  Up to 6 triangles "in flight" at a time (typically 1-3)
  Very low latency between engines
• ASUS Smart Doctor Technologies
  Provides the best system safety
  SmartCooling Technology
  Dynamic overclocking
  Over-heat protection
  Fan RPM monitoring
  AGP power level Monitoring
• ASUS Video Security Features
  The auto-notification system serves as your private security or reception system
  Detects and monitors any environmental deviation from the user-configurable norm
  Users can define the response procedures once any unusual condition is detected
  Capture the detected unusual condition in a high quality AVI file
  Take a single/multiple snapshot(s) of the detected object
  Send a warning e-mail with photo to the user-defined address
  Make a phone call to the user-defined phone number
  Execute other security control programs
  Full digital technology used is better than VCR-type video security systems
  
• AGP-V8600 Takes Interactive PC Graphics to More Realistic and Detailed Levels
  Full frame rate DVD to 1080 resolution
  Full precision subpixel accuracy to 1/16 pixel
  5 horizontal, 3 vertical taps
  8:1 up/down scaling
  Independent hue, saturation and brightness controls in hardware
• Optimized for the latest DirectX 7 and OpenGL features
  Transform and lighting (T&L)
  Cube environment mapping
  Vertex blending
  Protective textures
  Texture compression
  
• Superior 2D Performance
  256-bit 2D rendering pipeline
  4 pixels per clock on all scaled and indexed image operations
  1 GB/s CPU-to-GPU memory via AGP 4X with Fast Writes
• AGP 4X with Fast Write
  Enables CPU to send data directly to GPU
  System memory bus free to perform other functions
  Balanced design increases overall system performance
• High Quality Video Playback: DVD Acceleration
  Full frame rate DVD to 1080i resolution
  Full precision subpixel accuracy to 1/16 pixel
• High Quality Video Playback: Video Overlay
  5 horizontal, 3 vertical taps
  8:1 up/down scaling
  Independent hue, saturation, and brightness controls in hardware
• 3D Stereoscopic Features
  Turns D3D games into virtual reality gaming world
  VR Viewer software bundled for 3D pictures viewing
  Stereo TV software bundled for TV/VCR stereoscopic video playing and cable TV
  Real time onscreen display (OSD) control panel for VR settings
  
• Video Features for Video-in
  Complete S-VHS and Composite video-input ports support
  ASUS Live driver supports 704x480 real time video capture (for Windows 95/98 only)
• Video Features for TV-out
  Digital video output by integrated NTSC/PAL encoders
  Complete S-VHS and Composite video-input ports support
  High quality TV-out supports 800x600 resolutions