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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."
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.
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.
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.
The Crimson Dragon
> Isn't ASUS the company that does not play well with Linux? I am
> not very interested, sorry.
Isn't Linux the operating system that doesn't play well with games that use graphics cards like this?
I am not very interested, sorry.
Can you be more specific? I run linux and use mostly Asus hardware and I can't say any of it has cause any trouble.
This is not a turnip.
The Hexus.net article is just an advertisement, with links to places to buy the cards that were reviewed. The writer didn't have any technical insights because he apparently has no technical knowledge. For example, read this sentence, "35A from the two 12V rails on the ASUS PSU keep things ticking over." First, it says on the label, which is clearly visible, that the maximum is not 35A times 12V = 420 Watts, but 324 Watts. Second, neither the graphic card nor the motherboard nor the hard drives require that much 12V power.
Manufacturers make so much money from taking advantage of the technical ignorance of customers that it has in some cases corrupted an area of the industry.