Win, Lose or Ti: 21 GeForce Titanium Boards

The Cards

ASUS - Choices, Choices

ASUS offers a very wide range of boards based on Titanium GPUs. Traditionally, an ASUS video card family consists of the no-frills Pure versions and the feature-packed Deluxe models. In addition, now there are also hybrid versions: a Pure with only the extra TV-Out and/or DVI connector.

We decided to test the Deluxe versions of the two GF3 boards, since, at this level of pricing, the price difference can be considered relatively small. As for the GF2: since the Ti is aimed more at the budget-minded buyer, our choice fell on the V7700 Ti Pure.

The V7700 Ti is based on the old GeForce2 Pro board layout. The 64 MB of RAM consists of 8 MB memory modules rated at 5ns, and has no extra cooling. The GPU is cooled by a very effective HSF combo, which features an rpm-sensor and allows hardware monitoring. The V7700 Ti uses the same hardware monitoring chip as the Deluxe models, a Winbond W83781D.

The Deluxe versions of the V8200 T2 and T5 additionally feature TV-In, TV-Out and the stereo vision circuits for the shutter glasses. ASUS treats the T5 (Ti500) to 3,8ns memory, while the T2's (Ti200) memory is slightly slower, at 4ns. Feature-wise, the boards are identical, aside from their layouts and colors. Both cards' chips are cooled by an identical heatsink/ fan combination.

Like most other manufacturers, ASUS bases its drivers on NVIDIA's reference release, and ships its own utilities on the driver CD with the card. These include an overclocking tool, the ASUS SmartDoctor hardware monitoring suite, and, depending on the model, some additional utilities and tools. The extensive gaming bundle should be especially interesting, especially, because the games aren't just run-of-the-mill bargains. Unfortunately, none of them can make full use of the GeForce3's capabilities.