A Look Inside the Labs of Asus

Kez writes "While in Taiwan, we had the rare opportunity to take a look around the Research and Development labs of ASUSTeK, well known motherboard and graphics card manufacturer. They had their latest dual chip 6800GT and 6800Ultra cards on the test beds (only two boxes full of which had passed quality control at that point,) and so grabbed some benchmarks while we were there."

Comments

Re:I'll tell you whats bullsh*t

[jmcmunn]

Then get off your high horse and buy a normal, inexpensive graphics card like the rest of us you fool. Oh wait, if I wait 6 months this very same card will cost half of that?? WHAT? Are you serious, the cards go down in price when the next model comes out?

What happened to the day when a graphics card didn't take up my whole machine, and it didn't needs fans to cool itself down? Then there was no question if the 50c fan was going to kill my card.

"Research"

[Bender_]

I honstely doubt that ASUS does anything that could be dubbed as "research", especially not in the graphics card section. Testing different variations of the reference design and altering fans is hardly even development.

Re:"Research"

[wfberg]

So combining two graphics chips, the required memory , power circuitry and an SLI bridge onto a single PCB isn't R&D? OK then.

Yes. It's just D, not R, seeing as how it's been done before multiple times in the exact same way in consumer products from different vendors.

This is not news.

[Crimson Dragon]

This is not news in the slightest. Regardless of the details or lack thereof, this architecture nears the end of its life. While extremely powerful, the power draw and heat generation is positively killer for the average system, and an annoying hurdle to jump for the serious custom PC builder. I had to fully watercool every 6800 I have owned just to keep the operating temperature at something that wouldn't be worrisome.

Let's be fair, the X800 is no slouch on power draw either. I am not trolling in the slightest.

What I am saying is that the future architectures that are down the pike, while designed for greater performance, also give much consideration to power draw and heat generation. The X850 series with its liquid metal cooling stock is a step in considerations of heat generation and power consumption. Nvidia's new core uses significantly less power if I read the latest buzz correctly.

This is the next great fight in the graphics card market: power and heat vs performace. Round 1, fight.

Re:This is not news.

[FidelCatsro]

The significant fight as i would see it , will be in the laptop sector.
With the rise in popularity of SFF PCs and the growing abundance of laptops which are also used for Games ,i can see the rush being towards as you say , reducing power requirements and heat .
Laptop graphics chips have come on leaps and bounds , Lets hope the trend continues .
I really do not like large loud systems , Not that i do much Gaming on a PC or Mac these days but when i do i want to be able to have it at an enjoyable level without requiring a nuclear reactor and liquid nitrogen

Re:I'll tell you whats bullsh*t

[rpozz]

Same with any cooling system. If it fails, the thing it cools is fucked. Unless you have redundant fans, in which case you'll get a load of people complaining that it's too noisy.

However, if you RTFA, you would have seen that they have gone to the trouble of getting the fan from CoolerMaster, so it's probably quite high quality.

Re:Asus?

[RabidJackal]

Ironically, if you read the Display Manager box they show, the computer name is called 'LINUX-10N56ZQMA'. Future Linux support, anyone?

Taiwanese power sockets?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

An explanation of why a lab in Taiwan has UK power sockets would be in order

And you where thinking that they would have Taiwanese power sockets? Last time I was there, the hotel I stayed in had UK socket, but that's all I know, could have been a mutant hotel... Who knows, the Brits where pretty active in that part of the world a few years back.

Re:Asus?

[Biomechanical]

When it comes to hardware, that depends on a couple of things.

If it was a case where the drivers were supplied by the manufacturer of the hardware in an easily adaptable form, or the specs were practically shouted from the rooftops, then you could say it's Linux's fault - or more accurately, it's a flaw in the F/OS Software.

But considering how manufacturers - as well as you, me, and Joe Sixpack if he so felt inclined - can quite easily download the source to Linux, the GNU software, X11, CUPS, and numerous other bits of F/OS Software, making it so damn easy to know how to program the drivers correctly, I would say that the manufacturers are more at fault than the F/OSS programmers.

Re:I'm serious

[StikyPad]

I'm pretty sure he explicitly stated he wasn't looking for the under-monitor variety. The photo in the article clearly shows a power strip with switches next to each socket. As not-very-useful as I might find it, the OP does have a point; I've never seen one like that before.