ASUS Radeon 9600XT/TVD

By jw

Features

Features

  • 500MHz Core / 600MHz Memory
  • SMARTSHADER 2.1

    expands advanced abilities of vertex shader 2.0 and pixel shader 2.0

  • SMOOTHVISIONT 2.1 generates the sharpest and clearest images by up to 6x Anti-Aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering
  • FULLSTREAMT removes blocky artifacts from streaming Internet video
  • VIDEOSHADERT integrates shader features to provide unprecedented support for digital and high definition video
  • HYDRAVISIONT provides multi-monitoring management
  • 128-bit, 64-bit & 32-bit per pixel floating point color formats
  • Microsoft DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.0 support
  • AGP 8X support
  • Smart Doctor
  • Video Security
  • VGA/DVI
  • Dual VGA
  • GameFace Technology
  • Digital VCR
  • VIVO
  • 3-Year Warranty

Most of the features advertised with the ASUS A9600XT/TVD are standard for any 9600XT-based graphics card. There are a few, however, that are ASUS-specific features. The first of which I will mention is the GameFace Technology. This feature enables point-to-point video conferencing functions and online gaming to take place simultaneously. So you can see and hear your opponent while you are fragging, and if you have a webcam and microphone, your opponent can see and hear you as well! ASUS also states that you could set it so you can watch your favorite TV show instead of your opponent while gaming! Very cool!

Digital VCR is ASUS’s ability to capture your favorite video in MPEG II, MPEG I, or AVI compression.

Smart Doctor is ASUS’s monitoring software that can handle SmartCooling Technology, Dynamic Overclocking, Over-Heat Protection, Fan RPM Monitoring, and AGP Power Level Monitoring.

Video Security II is ASUS’s software that can enable users to build their own security systems. With a webcam installed, this software can detect a deviation in the user-defined region and do the following: capture the detected unusual condition in an AVI file, send a warning email with snapshots to a user-defined address, make a warning call to a user-defined phone number, and/or execute a user-defined program. Also Very Cool!

Layout

First off, I must tease ASUS for the design of their heatsink. The first thing I noticed is the word ‘ASUS’ that is molded into the heatsink was purely designed to show off the card in a marketing display case. Once you put the card in your system, not only will you not even see it, but if you could, it would be ‘Vznz’. �

The next thing worth pointing out is that this heatsink also does not hardly cool the memory at all. Not that this really matters a whole lot, because the memory on the back of the card is not cooled at all. In the image above, I have circled the places on the double-sided tape where the memory was actually making contact and another image above shows that you can see between the memory and the heatsink.

However, the main purpose of the heatsink was quite good. ASUS used plenty of thermal compound that covered the entire core and it made good contact with the heatsink. ASUS also used a thin piece of rubber-like material to function as a shim around the GPU core.

Here you can see the back panel connectors for this VIVO enabled card. The A9600XT/TVD comes ready for Dual VGA with the DVI-to-VGA adapter and comes with the VIVO extension cable to use S-Video or Composite Video as input or output. Also shown above is the ATI Rage Theater chip which handles the incoming video.

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