We have been a fan of Asus products for quite some time now and it’s always with great anticipation that we await the next of their products to be sitting on our review bench. Our anticipation was further increased by the moniker that Asus have given this model, "Extreme"… regularly companies give marketing names to their products like "Golden Sample" however the product usually fails to out-do their rivals. Let’s find out if the Extreme Asus X700 Pro can live up to is marketing promise…

The Tech Specs
Before we look at the Asus model specs it may be useful to take a brief look over the first page of our X700 reference board article, here this outlines the main points of the X700 series of cards.

Graphics Engine	ATI Radeon X700PRO
Video Memory	256 MB DDR3
Engine Clock	425MHz
Memory Clock	860MHz(430MHz DDR3)
RAMDAC	400MHz
Bus Standard	PCI-E 16X
Memory Interface	128-bit
Max Resolution	2048×1536
Video-input	S-Video and Composite
VGA output	Standard 15-pin D-sub
TV-output	S-Video and Composite
DVI Output	DVI-I
2nd VGA Output	Yes

As you can see from the specifications above the Asus AX700 Pro doesn’t really deviate on paper from the reference ATI X700 Pro specifications. The core and memory clocks are exactly the same as is the amount of memory and display outputs.

The Card and Bundle

Above you’ll see the typically bright and well designed box that the Asus AX700Pro arrives in. Contained in the box are the following:

What you can see are:
Driver/Utility/Manual CD’s
Quickstart guide
DVI converter
S-video connector

As this is a mainstream card the bundle is kept to the minimum so no free games here, what you still get though is the Asus branded software such as smartdoctor (we’ll look at that later in the review) and gameface.

The AX700Pro is quite similar to the ATI reference design. The PCB layout is identical with all the components placed as expected. The first difference you’ll probably have noticed is the PCB colour, not the standard red on the Asus AX700 Pro, instead we have the burnt orange also seen on the X800 from Asus. Another difference you may notice is that the AX700Pro includes the Rage Theater Chip…

… which provides the cards video-in/Video-out functionality. This chip isn’t present on many X700 series cards so it’s a bonus to see it here. Next on the list of differences is the fan/heatsink. On the reference X700Pro the heatsink design, and noise it could produce is quite disappointing. The same heatsink is also used on the X700 XT reference card and is noticeably louder than the Pro. Asus’s design however is much better. At all times the card remains quiet, even when pushed to “extremes” its not noticeable over the case/CPU fans in our test system. For comparisons sake here is a shot of the AX700Pro along with a reference X700Pro…

On the rear of the card the design is again reference, only the heatsink bracket (or lack of it!) is different to the ATI model. You can also see on the back of the card the type of memory used. Its Samsung DDR3 rated up to 500mhz (1000mhz ddr), considering that the card comes clocked at 430mhz (860mhz ddr) there would appear to be quite some headroom here for overclocking.

Test System Specifications

Asus Extreme AX700pro 256mb
ATI Reference X700pro 256mb

AMD Athlon64 4000+
ATI Bullhead Radeon Xpress motherboard
OCZ DDR400 PC3200 2-2-2-5
Samsung 80gb SATA 7200rpm 8mb Cache Hard Drive
NEC ND-2510A DVD/CD Writer
AOC 19” CRT monitor

Windows XP SP2
DirectX 9.0c
Catalyst 4.12Beta
Asus Smartdoctor

Fraps
Powerstrip
Half-Life2
Doom3
Colin McRae Rally 2005
Need For Speed Underground 2
Prince Of Persia Warrior Within
Medal Of Honor Pacific Assault
Tiger Woods 2005
Rome Total War

Good Benchmarking Practice:
Where possible each benchmark was performed 3 times and the middle result for each resolution/setting is shown in the tables which follow. All games/applications had their latest patches applied.

Next: Colin McRae 2005

 

Select 1. AX700Pro 2. Colin McRae 2005 3. Need For Speed Underground 2 4. Medal of Honor Pacific Assault 5. Prince of Persia Warrior Within 6. Tiger Woods 2005 7. Half Life 2 8. Rome Total War 9. Overclocking 10. Conclusion