Powered
by NVIDIA's latest chip, the RIVA TNT2, the ASUS AGP V-3800
is one of the first cards based on this chip to appear in
the market and although the cards aren't in store shelves
yet, its shipment should be very near by the time you read
this.
Some of you might remember when the
TNT1 was announced, its core as supposed to run at 125mhz
but NVIDIA had some problems running at those speeds in a
.35 micron fab. so when cards were released only ran at
90mhz, they still were very fast cards but not as they
should.
Then some info of the TNT2 was
leaked, it was going to be what the TNT1 was first supposed
to be, running at 125mhz core clock but using a .25 micron
heat could be decreased and higher speeds could be achieved.
A couple of months ago more details
of the TNT2 were released, there are going to be three
versions of cards based on the TNT2, the only difference
between them is that the core clock and memory speeds are
increased. It depends on manufacturers what version to use
but of course, the higher clocked ones need a better cooling
solution as well as better quality memory, that results in a
faster but more expensive card.
Although some manufacturers have
announced TNT2 cards running at 140/170mhz and 183/183mhz
(core/memory), the most common combinations you'll see in
final products are 125/150 (basic one), 150/175 and 175/200
("TNT2 Ultra").
In the case of the ASUS V-3800, it
comes default clocked at 125/150mhz, however I was able to
clock it much higher thanks to a handy little utility ASUS
included in the drivers and also because the card came with
a heatsink/fan combo mounted on the chip. I included
overclocked benchmarks of the card, you can take them a look
in the next pages.
Also note that there are different
configurations of the V-3800 card, price will vary depending
on the model you choose, here they are:
