Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2006/01/20/review_asus_eax1800t_top/

Asus Extreme AX1800XT TOP

Too late, too pricey?

By Ryszard Sommefeldt, Hexus.net

Posted in Personal Tech, 20th January 2006 15:01 GMT

Review The ATI Radeon X1800 XT will go down in history as one of the shortest-lived flagship 3D graphics products in history. Launched three scant months ago, in October 2005, the lengthy delay in its introduction - said to be due to production problems with the R520 graphics processor that powers it - means that it's set to be replaced this month, January 2006, by the next generation of high-end ATI GPU.

In the bare quarter of its existence, however, the Radeon X1800 XT has gathered plenty of praise for its performance and feature set, meaning its legacy is cemented and the product that will replace it will have a strong base to build on.

Asus EAX1800XT TOP

Retail examples of Radeon X1800 XT have come from all corners of the ATI board-partner collective, including Asus. Asus is the ATI board-partner most willing to have a go at pushing the high-end boat out. As the world's largest vendor of graphics hardware, it's always serving up products with a twist from both ATI and Nvidia.

Take the the ASUS Extreme N7800GT Dual, which pairs two G70 graphics processors in GeForce 7800 GT configuration, each with its own 256MB allocation of high-speed graphics memory, on the same PCB. SLI then does its thing, combining the rendering ability of both GPUs and their memory to produce the daftest - and maybe the fastest - single-board graphics product yet produced.

It even comes with its own power supply.

Not stopping there, Asus bundles it up nicely with its own cooler and even letting you overclock the board. Not bad, Asus, not bad. Enhanced by its limited edition run of just 2000, it's as close as I've seen to the nirvana the enthusiast craves when shelling out the biggest bucks, in recent times at least.

Returning to the ATI GPU, Asus applies many of the same principles - in-house cooler, approved overclocking, mad bundle and presentation, etc - to the its flagship version of the product, the Extreme AX1800XT TOP.

Whereas ATI's reference design cools the GPU with a blower-style cooler that draws air across the chip from the case, exhausting it from your chassis, Asus has engineered a cooler that circulates in-chassis air and pushes it out over the voltage regulators, much like an Nvidia reference cooler does.

Asus EAX1800XT TOP

The fan's design means it's much quieter than the reference cooler and despite circulating warm air exchanged from the GPU by the cooler to the chassis, it still cools better than the reference cooler does, according to our tests. You'll also spot is a similar power system to the Extreme N7800GT Dual. That's right, the Extreme AX1800XT TOP ships with its own power supply, Asus deciding to use one to provide spot-on power at the pre-overclocked levels the card ships at. More on both of those things in due course.

The end result is that it's a fair bit bigger than a reference X1800 XT, making it unsuitable for some PC cases. On top of that, the card isn't the easiest to install due to what we think is a poor bracket design, retained by only a single screw mount. That single screw hole and the strength of the metal mean the heavy card will bow down towards the bottom of the chassis it's in, presumably putting more stress than you'd like on the PCB area around the PCI Express interface pins.

Furthermore, if you have a tool-free chassis that uses clips to retain the add-in boards, you might also be out of luck with this product, even if you have the room for it. A two-slot product, just like the reference design, the Extreme AX1800XT TOP is a bit of beast in terms of its physical attributes.

The backplane shows you the port for the external power supply, along with the pair of DVI ports that each can carry a dual-link digital signal for driving large digital displays. We didn't have a hard time imagining the Extreme AX1800XT TOP driving a pair of those new Dell 30in LCD behemoths, for example. Video output is taken care of with a port that'll output S-video, composite or component video depending on the cable you attach to it.

Asus EAX1800XT TOP

You can see how much further past the regular ATX backplane space the Extreme AX1800XT TOP protrudes, too. It's a tall, long, wide bit of kit.

The default clock speeds of 695MHz GPU and 800MHz memory are some way ahead of the default 625/750 on the reference product, giving the Extreme AX1800XT TOP main frequency boosts of 11 per cent and six per cent, respectively.

Those extra clock cycles are what mandate the cooler change and potential need for an external PSU. We say potential because the board can still be powered by a PSU, so long as that PSU is capable of supplying everything needed. There are more than a few high-end PSU models that have the stones to keep the Extreme AX1800XT TOP happy.

The bundle for the Extreme AX1800XT TOP is massive, frankly. You get a pair of DVI-I-to-VGA adaptors, two S-video extender cables, RGB component output cable, PCI Express power adaptor, VIVO cable (S-video and composite I/O), power cable for the external power supply (for a US plug in the review sample) and a composite video extender cable.

Along with a faux leather CD wallet, you get a fearsome array of software, including the brand new King Kong game. If controlling giant primates isn't your thing, Asus has thoughtfully thrown in copies of Cyberlink Media@Show SE 2.0 (for sharing and creating 'media'), Cyberlink PowerDirector3 SE (creating DVDs), Joint Ops: Typhoon Reason (decent game), Xpand Rally (loads of fun) and Project Snowblind (frantic FPS).

If that's not enough, you also get a driver and utility CD (although Asus SmartDoctor doesn't work with the X1800 yet), and a copy of Asus DVD 5.0, a passable DVD player software with a Cyberlink back-end.

It doesn't stop there. A bonus Gamepack CD (with fairly terrible games, though) partners a very decent dual-analogue gamepad. While it's no XBox 360 controller, it does hold nicely and it works perfectly fine with DirectX under Windows, connecting via a spare USB port.

The cable bundle would be somewhat impressive on its own since you don't always get component out, even with high-end boards, but the software bundle and gamepad do honestly add some value and desirability to the product. If you were looking to pick up a pad for your PC anyway, and the giant gorilla game gets you excited (it's awesome fun to play), the Extreme AX1800XT TOP bundle has you covered.

To analyse the performance of the Extreme AX1800XT TOP, which currently stands as the fastest shipping ATI graphics product released to date, it was compared to the XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB DDR3 XXX Edition. Driver defaults were used for image quality optimisations throughout, and stock clocks were used for all cards. If in-game controls could be used for both anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, they were, otherwise the driver was used to force the required levels (if applicable and the game allowed it without rendering errors). Tested resolutions were 1280 x 1024, 1600 x 1200 and 1920 x 1200.

Tests were run a minimum of three times at each setting, and the median value reported. In the case of manual 'run-through' testing with FRAPS, three consecutive runs that produced repeatable results, after further analysis, were used. If values weren't part of a repeatable set, they were discarded and obtained again.

F.E.A.R. loves to make a mockery of any graphics hardware you may have installed. Its basic rendering activity is shader bound on all modern hardware, therefore the better you process its pixel shader programs, the faster it likes to draw things on your screen, at a basic level at least.

Asus EAX1800XT TOP

There's not much between the two at first glance. Looking at the 1920 x 1200 score shows a five per cent lead for the Asus, though, and that board leads our F.E.A.R. test throughout.

Quake 4 doesn't have the same performance profile as Doom 3, despite sharing the same engine. Its shader program for light interaction is different, making it a harder test for modern hardware.

Asus EAX1800XT TOP

The Radeon can't hold off the GeForce in Quake 4, like it did in F.E.A.R. The XFX board has the measure of the Asus throughout, to the tune of a few percentage points at the high end.

Despite being the oldest of our tests, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory remains a stern test of a modern graphics card, despite having its origins on the original Xbox.

Asus EAX1800XT TOP

You can't really split the two unless you play at the common LCD resolution of 1280 x 1024, a setting which bring the XFX board out as the winner. Otherwise the board powered by overclocked GeForce 7800 GTX 512 is matched by the Radeon and you can't split the two.

Multi-platform EA titles, due to their engineering, sometimes don't take maximum advantage of optimisations for the various graphics parts they'll have cause to run on. That makes them a really nice cross-vendor benchmark at times, with the latest Need for Speed pretty good for that.

Asus EAX1800XT TOP

The GeForce 7800 GTX 512 outpaces the Radeon X1800 XT in this test, on the test system.

Asus EAX1800XT TOP

Similar pixel hilarity to Need For Speed ensues with Black and White 2, the GeForce hardware outgunning the Radeon by a comfortable margin.

The Asus Extreme AX1800XT TOP generally stands toe-to-toe with the tested 580/865 XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512 but just loses on balance. In our, admittedly limited, suite of tests, the GeForce only lost at 1920 x 1200 in F.E.A.R. Both boards are factory-overclocked, 512MB versions of the basic reference SKU, and both cost just the wrong side of £450. Therefore, given the money to spend on either, it comes down to a weighing up of peripheral options, given the performance levels.

This reviewer has a hard time choosing between them. The Asus definitely wins in the bundle stakes, giving you a good selection of software, a new top-title game and a gamepad to make the most of it. The XFX, while also bundling the component output cable raved about earlier in the Asus commentary, doesn't give you much more than copies of Tenomichi 3D Edit and Far Cry.

With better display output options from the Radeon, a nice quiet cooler and provision to avoid a possible PSU upgrade caused by a hungry 695MHz GPU, those are all facets of the product performance to have us smiling and nodding our approval.

However (as always), the great bundle and PSU don't come anywhere near free, the product is very hard to find, and it could be a real git to site in your chassis. At the start, we wondered if the EAX1800XT TOP might attain board perfection - alas, it doesn't.

Verdict

The Asus Extreme AX1800XT TOP is a fast, quiet graphics card with a great bundle, but Asus is pricing it out of the market by charging £100 more than XTs from other board makers. The bundle and performance aren't worth it at the time of writing, versus the cost of a bare board with reference clocks from another vendor, with the user having a stab at overclocking themselves if they wish.

It's appealing, but not at £460 - especially staring right in the face of upcoming new hardware. The product would have worked much better at, or at least a month closer to, launch.

Review by
Hexus.net