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

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.