ASUS V7700 GeForce2 GTS Deluxe
Type: Analogue, Propriety.
Price: $699.
Distributor: Achieva Technology Australia.
Ph: 02 9742 3288; Fax: 02 9742 3188
www.achieva.com.au
There is absolutely no denying that the V7700 is an extremely potent 3D graphics accelerator card and the Deluxe variant has a swag of additional features above and beyond pumping games graphics from your PC to your monitor. Yes, the V7700 does include video capture and output capabilities (meeting the requirements for this comparison) but more of these in a moment. The card is also configured to deliver true 3D graphics with the supplied 3D LCD glasses so you can play your favourite games and literally have the monsters appear to jump out of the screen at you. I must admit I do have one of these on an earlier variant of the ASUS GeForce card and while it's a great novelty, I decided my eyesight was perhaps a tad more important. I am yet to find anyone who can wear the glasses for a protracted period of time and not develop tired eyes and a headache.
The AGP card is reasonably large with 32MB of DDR display memory, a large circular heatsink, and fan assembly on the accelerator chip. Video capture appears to be accomplished by a small Chrontel chip on the card, and it is the most basic video capture of all the products tested. External connectors include VGA, VR Out (for the 3D glasses), composite video output (RCA), S-video output and because of a lack of space, a combined composite/S-video input. The latter is a 7-pin DIN plug but the ASUS is provided with a short conversion lead that terminates in an RCA socket for composite video, a composite video fly lead, and an S-video fly lead are also supplied.
The software bundle includes four CDs with the drivers, capture utility, DVD software player, Ulead VideoStudio 4 and various utilities including a digital VCR and a Video Security program to name but two. The latter is an interesting utility as it allows the user to hook up a camera to the card, and only if the scene changes does the PC capture the image to disk. So in a static room, for example, the software will grab images if an intruder enters. The Digital VCR is very simple to operate and we used this and the Live utility to capture our video clips for the test. Installation was simple and the small 86-page manual does a good job outlining the installation of the hardware, software and the operation, in brief, of the supplied utilities. We found Ulead's VideoStudio to be a little more flaky on the V7700 than some of the other cards tested, but the application does provide the novice with a simple and easy way to carry out basic video editing.
The quality of the captured video was quite poor and the output quality was even worseâ€"all the other analogue cards tested were superior in terms of their video quality. The captured files of this card were quite good in terms of colour saturation but the definition was the real letdown, looking more like videotape that was several generations down the line from the original.
In reality the V7700 Deluxe is a kick-ass graphics card, and that is what you should be buying it for, it's just an added bonus that you can dabble in some video capture and editing at the same time.
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