ASUS Radeon X1900 XTX

ASUS Extreme X1900 XTX card

Back of the card

While ASUS is practically a household name among enthusiasts when it comes to motherboards, in the graphics card arena their name isn’t quite as established for some reason. This is a bit odd to us, as their video cards are without a doubt just as innovative as their motherboards are.

Take for instance their first ATI-based graphics card, the Radeon 9800 XT-based ASUS A9800 XT/TVD. The A9800 XT/TVD was the first non-ALL-IN-WONDER ATI-based card to provide VIVO functionality. Today it’s unheard of for a high-end ATI card to ship without VIVO. In addition, ASUS’ Smart Doctor software offered overclocking capabilities that completely outclassed ATI’s own Overdrive utility, including dynamic and manual clock speed adjustment, and tons of hardware monitoring options. ATI didn’t offer many of those features in their own Overdrive software until their Overdrive 3 release (12+ months after ASUS), which was included with CATALYST 4.12 for Radeon X850 XT/X850 XT PE users.

More recently ASUS released their Radeon Extreme X1800 XT TOP/2DHTV card. The Extreme X1800 XT TOP/2DHTV was based on ATI’s Radeon X1800 XT GPU, only it shipped with a very unique cooling solution. Instead of using ATI’s stock cooling unit, ASUS integrated a dual-slot cooler from Arctic Cooling that ran nearly silently, and it did an excellent job of cooling both the X1800 XT’s R520 GPU and its memory. Arctic Cooling’s cooler on the Extreme X1800 XT TOP/2DHTV used four heat pipes to accomplish this.

But it didn’t stop there, in addition to implementing a more powerful cooling unit, ASUS also ran their Extreme X1800 XT TOP/2DHTV board at considerably higher clock speeds than ATI’s reference speeds for the X1800 XT called for. In fact, ASUS’ Extreme X1800 XT TOP/2DHTV ran at speeds higher than today’s latest X1900 XTX cards. ASUS clocked the board out-of-the-box at speeds of 700MHz on the graphics core, and 800MHz on the memory. These speeds were 75MHz higher than the stock X1800 XT on the GPU, and 50MHz on the memory. The only real downside to the Extreme X1800 XT TOP/2DHTV was that the card required an external power supply unit (PSU) to receive adequate power, but this wasn’t a big deal because the PSU was integrated seamlessly into the card: instead of plugging in the 6-pin PCI Express power adapter like you do with most high-end cards, you simply had to plug ASUS’s external PSU into the Extreme X1800 XT TOP/2DHTV’s backplate. In the end we awarded ASUS’s Extreme X1800 XT TOP/2DHTV with our Editor’s Choice Award, with a 93% rating as the Extreme X1800 XT TOP/2DHTV was clearly the most innovative board of its generation.

ASUS plays it more conservatively with their Radeon X1900 XTX card, sticking entirely with ATI’s reference board design. All ASUS does is slap their sticker over the board’s fan, as well as a second sticker on the right edge of the board, just below the power connector. Everywhere else the card is the same as ATI’s own board.

ASUS EAX1900XTX and packaging

Software and accessories

Where ASUS does go beyond the ATI X1900 XTX card is in their software bundle. Whereas the ATI board ships with just the driver CD, ASUS also throws in a copy of King Kong on DVD-ROM, as well as the game Project Snowblind, and a demo CD with various games on it. Productivity software shipping with the card includes a copy of CyberLink PowerDirector 3DE, and CyberLink Medi@Show SE 2.0.

Also included with the card is a leather-bound CD wallet, two DVI adapters, a VIVO cable, Composite and S-Video cables, a component video cable and a 6-pin PCI-E power adapter.