Asus Extreme AX600XT/HTVD Review --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Temperature Testing

In this segment, we find out just how effective the ASUS cooling solution is to another equally well built RADEON X600 XT graphics card from MSI:-

According to our temperature testing, the MSI RADEON X600 XT operates even cooler than the ASUS graphics card in all areas but the forward memory parts (which were actively cooled to a certain extent on the ASUS card). Had the ASUS cooler not been regulating the memory parts, it might have achieved similar temperature levels of the MSI graphics card. Not forgetting is the ATI Rage Theater chip and supporting circuitry on the ASUS AX600XT/HDTV graphics card and these contribute to the overall heat output level. Overall, the outcome from temperature testing is quite acceptable for the ASUS card. We also added in temperature results obtained from the Gigabyte GeForce PCX 5900 128MB for another point of reference, which is a slightly higher end product than the ATI RADEON X600 XT class of cards.

What We Disliked

The most glaring issue due to the design decision on the ASUS Extreme AX600XT/HDTV 128MB has got to be its limitation to support only a single monitor. With a HDTV output connector replacing the usual secondary monitor output, there's no way this card will support dual monitors. Although we can sight that the card does have the Component output advantage, we don't really see a need for this design. ATI offers a HDTV adaptor device that converts analog VGA or DVI-I outputs to Component output. As such, the card could have been designed like any other graphics card with dual monitor outputs and ASUS could have bundled this adaptor to convert one of the outputs for Component connectivity. For those who are fond of this card's design but require dual monitor outputs, you could purchase the slightly less expensive ASUS Extreme AX600XT/TD and opt to purchase the above-mentioned adaptor from ATI or other online stores. Some might argue about connectivity losses, but generally, the losses are too minor to be evident.

One other complaint we had was the lack of any significant performance improvement when ASUS HyperDrive was enabled and set for 3D mode. The results we gathered reflected very little change in performance, but thankfully manual overclocking worked as expected. Perhaps future software improvements to HyperDrive could better its usefulness. We will monitor this option in newer ASUS graphics cards in the near future.



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