Installation and Drivers

The card ASUS sent in for review is the V6600 Deluxe. As most GeForce based cards this one is based on NVIDIA’s reference design however the V6600 has got certain features that makes it unique and who knows, maybe this is the card you were looking for, read on…

I don’t know why I bother mentioning installation, nowadays it’s pretty strange to find a peripheral in which we have had problems to get it working, anyway, once you are setup after popping the card in an AGP slot, I really recommend you to pay ASUS a visit and download the latest drivers for your card according to the platform you are using.

From my current (and previous) experience with ASUS cards, their drivers support is excellent, they release updates very often and not because of bugs or stuff like that but they really keep up with NVIDIA’s release of reference drivers which most of the time not only fix stuff but enhance speed, you won’t find many manufacturers that keep up as updated as ASUS does – I believe I know my people and I know this is a really good thing to consider when choosing a card.

Also for first timers, ASUS includes a handy manual with basics on the hardware and its layout as well as detailed explanations for each one of the drivers’ functions and extras that come with the card.

ASUS V6600 Extras

We already mentioned that the ASUS V6600 Deluxe comes with a couple of extra features that should keep it away from the pack, for good, of course.

I will start by saying that the card comes with TV out, S-Video in/out and 3D VR glasses. I tested the video features and everything seemed to work without a hitch, of course, ASUS included a couple of programs for using these features.

Also as you should know the GeForce is NVIDIA’s first chip to use Motion Compensation for DVD playback. The card came with a software DVD decoder from the manufacturer however I preferred to use my favorite DVD playback program, CyberLink's PowerDVD that is. The latest version of the program takes advantage of GeForce MC so it was a perfect platform to test the card. In general terms the visual quality as well as speed was excellent, if you have got a P2 300mhz processor or better you won’t need a hardware decoder at all, save those bucks.

Now, onto the 3D Glasses. This isn’t the first time I use ASUS’ shutter glasses, however this IS the first time that I have used them and liked them. The first time was with an ASUS TNT2 card, back to those times, drivers were way immature and almost every game would freeze my computer however now the glasses actually work (really!… heh). The first game I tried them in was in Unreal Tournament and the results were pretty satisfying, you could really appreciate that depth effect which is the best thing you can get from the glasses.

I tried Quake III but no effects appeared, although Q3A uses OpenGL rendering, the latest drivers are supposed to support OpenGL games too.

For sure, the glasses worked this time but the truth is that if you ask me if I would spend some money on them I would say no, honestly. The effect is nice but is no good for your skills, not to mention the headaches it produces.

Finally… the so hyped SmartDoctor feature. Although this won’t improve your performance or do any of that kind of stuff for you, overclockers will be happy to have this feature available. This little utility will let you monitor the graphics card temperature, if enabled it will underclock your card automatically to prevent any lockup and also underclock it to keep it cool if you aren’t pushing it to the max, so you won’t need those extra Mhz.

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