Video Excursion with the Asus V7700 Deluxe

Introduction

With the ongoing battle between ATi and NVIDIA reaching what many would consider a standoff in the high-end 3D performance arena, users are now looking at additional features that each company is offering in their boards. ATi will be releasing various performance versions of their Radeon as well as the popular video solution known as the "All in Wonder." As many of you already know, various manufacturers produce NVIDIA-based products so each company sets their own configurations. One such company is Asus who has been making NVIDIA based product since the days of the TNT chipset. Like ATi, Asus has produced a versatile line of products but using the latest and greatest NVIDIA chipset (like the GeForce2 ). One of the most fully featured GeForce2 boards available is the Asus V7700 Deluxe that I recently had the pleasure of reviewing. Typically we have focused on the mostly 3D performance in a majority of our graphic reviews but your requests for more information on the video aspects of these "All in Wonder" and "Deluxe" versions has prompted this review. We'll still cover the 3D performance but focus more so on the software and hardware specific benefits to these solutions. For the time being, I only have the Asus V7700 Deluxe solution while I await the ELSA VIVO module upgrade and the Radeon "All in Wonder" to ship. With this in mind, let's take a deeper look at the V7700 Deluxe.