NVIDIA GeForce SDR Roundup (February 00)

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After establishing itself in the GeForce market with the reference V6600 SDRAM, ASUS switched to their own board design to allow for additional features. Built in TV-out, TV-in and VR functions all contribute to make this card a multimedia powerhouse. While the TV-in features are not meant for professional video editing, it can surely be used to transfer home videos to your computer. The built in VR port and included glasses will provide a few days worth of entertainment, however don't be surprised if the glasses end up in your desk drawer after the novelty wares off. The high quality cooling, fast SGRAM, and aforementioned video functions provide for a GeForce powerhouse; one with a high price of almost $45 more than some of its competitors.

The drivers used here are unified for the V6x00 series, meaning that ASUS had time to add a few features and change a few cosmetic points, but the fact of the matter is that the drivers are based on the NVIDIA reference ones. The card also comes with the highly useful Smart Doctor utility which provides hardware monitoring via the onboard Winbond W8371D chip. Temperature, voltage, and fan speed are all tracked in an easy to use utility. Also worth mention is the V6600 Deluxe's ability to dynamically overclock, meaning that the card will automatically underclock when the graphics card is not being used to any great extent. The speed jumps right up to normal levels when stress is placed on the GPU.

Pros: Widely available, video-in support, composite and S-Video out support, good cooling via thermal grease, fast SGRAM, dynamic overclocking, hardware monitoring.

Cons: Expensive, VR is more of a toy than a useful feature, video-in pictures may show interlacing.