Asus V9280/TD: Asus pleases again with this video card.
Written: Jun 12 '03 (Updated Aug 02 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great performance, excellent software bundle.
Cons: Manual is lacking, fan could be better.
The Bottom Line: Not the fastest, but definitely worth it. A solid 4.5 stars.
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| rice75's Full Review: ASUS V9280 TD, (128 MB) AGP Video Card |
Computer gaming, first-person-shooters in particular, has been a driving force behind graphics cards and 3-D accelerators for the past 10 years. Many companies have come, made their mark, and are either gone or have been absorbed by another company. Unfortunately, only two companies, nVidia and Radeon, have survived the high stakes video card market. There are other companies that have their niche (Matrox still clings to a small following) but it comes down to these big two. And like the Intel/AMD battle, there are loyal ranks to Radeon and nVidia. I find myself on the side of nVidia for no other reason than I have had good experiences with their previous cards. For my new PC system, I was torn between spending big bucks on a Radeon 9700 but I decided I wanted to stay within a smaller budget and I went with the Asus V9280/TD.
nVidia built my hotrod
Powering the Asus V9280/TD is the very capable nVidia GeForce 4 Ti4200-8X chipset, which has a GPU (graphical processing unit) running at 250 MHz. This is coupled with 128 MB of DDR RAM running at 550 MHz and a RAMDAC (the part of the video card that ultimately sends the signal to your monitor) that runs at 350 MHz. The GeForce chipset has gone through many iterations, some have been barn burners and others have been boondoggles. After seeing the lackluster performance of the 4600 and other GeForce 4 video cards, I decided to go with the Ti4200, which runs on par with some very good Radeon cards and other nVidia video cards.
As far as interfacing the outside world, the Asus V9280/TD has three ports: a standard 15-pin VGA connector, an S-Video TV output, and a DVI (digital video interface) connector that can be used to connect to an all-digital flat panel display. Asus is nice enough to include an adapter that can convert the DVI connector to another VGA connector, making the Asus V9280/TD dual-monitor capable. I haven’t tried the dual monitor setup yet and I haven’t had a need to use the TV-out, either.
There is a lot more technical information concerning all the powerful abilities of the Asus V9280/TD. They aren’t necessary to this review, so I direct the reader to Asus’ website for more information.
So what exactly am I getting in that huge box?
The Asus V9280/TD does come in a rather unwieldy box for such a small video card. What else do you need besides the actual video card, an instruction manual, and the drivers CD? Well, along with those essential items, Asus included a very nice software bundle to show off the power of the new video card. Included in the software bundle are games (Morrowind III, Black Thorn, Worms Blast, and other demo games), a cool aquarium simulation program, DVD playback software, and Media Show. A very handsome software bundle, indeed. As I previously mentioned, the DVI-VGA connector is also included.
The manual is woefully lacking. The installation instructions do not include any pictures to follow, they are minimally helpful at best and they should have included a fold-out poster with visual instructions like many other computer hardware companies do. The manual is thick, but don’t let that fool you. It’s the same five pages in fourteen different languages. So I guess if you speak Polish, you’ll appreciate the translation, but that’s about the only nice thing I can say about the manual.
The included software is nice and the drivers CD makes installation of the video card easy. It has support for computers running Windows 98 all the way up to XP. Also included in the drivers software is a program called Powerstrip that is very handy. You can do all sorts of customizations with the resolution, refresh rate, everything. You can save profiles for different applications and you can even tinker with the clocking of your video card. While I don’t recommend you mess with the clocking unless you don’t know what you’re doing, I will say that the Asus V9280/TD is a very over-clocking friendly.
Plug and play at its finest
For detailed installation instructions, see my upcoming piece on putting everything together. Installation really is a breeze for the Asus V9280/TD. It’s just a matter of plugging the card (carefully) into the AGP slot, powering up the computer, and inserting the drivers CD. The program takes over from there.
The card itself is pretty cool looking, it has a nice gold heat-sink and fan, and that is my only source of disappointment with this card. The fan isn’t the highest quality and sometimes it goes off-kilter and makes a rather unpleasant noise. While sometimes it goes away on its own, I have had to crack the case open and adjust the fan by hand, which can be a pain. This happens very infrequently, and it may just be a bad fan on my card, but it’s something to be aware of.
Performance
Once again, for those keeping score, here is my current system (I've included a couple components I left out of my previous reviews):
Asus A7N8X Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2600
512 MB PC2700 RAM, PNY Technologies
Asus V9280/TD GeForce-4 Ti4200 8X 128 MB Video Card (AGP)
Western Digital 120 GB HDD, WD1200JBRTL
Cendyne 48x24x48 CD-RW
ViewSonic A90 19” Monitor
Antec Lanboy Case with 350W SmartBlue ATX12V power supply
Antec 80mm Blue LED Fan
3DMark2001 SE (default settings [1024x768/32 bit/60Hz]): 11478 3DMarks
3DMark2001 SE Fill Rate (Multi-texturing):1947.8 MTexels/s
3DMark2001 SE High Polygon Count (1 light): 49.1 MTriangles/s
3DMark2001 SE High Polygon Count (8 lights): 10.5 MTriangles/s
3DMark2001 SE Vertex Shader: 83.1 FPS
3DMark2001 SE Pixel Shader: 104.3 FPS
3DMark2001 SE Advanced Pixel Shader: 83.5 FPS
Quake 3 Arena Demo (Demo001): 216.2 fps
These numbers reflect very good scores. They are not Radeon 9700 Pro scores, but they are great scores nonetheless. For every application I do (play games, edit photos, surf the internet) I won’t tax my system very often. I do play the occasional FPS game and my system will be able to handle them without batting an eye.
In fine
The Asus V9280/TD is a graphics that card that is easier on the wallet than the heavy hitters but out-performs the cheaper wanna-be’s. While I can’t give it five stars because of the fan problem and the non-existent manual, I do give it a solid four and a half stars. This is an excellent upper-middle-class video card and will perform on par with other, more expensive, video cards, at least until we see games fully utilizing Direct X 9.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 199.99
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rice75
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Member: Tony Rice
Location: Columbus, OH
Reviews written: 73
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Resident Evil 4 will own your soul. Do not resist.
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