ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition - GeForce 6800

The HotHardware Test Machine & Methodology Getting It Just Right

HOW WE CONFIGURED THE TEST SYSTEMS:

We tested the ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition on an EPoX EP-8KDA3+ motherboard, powered by an AMD Athlon64 3200+.  The first thing we did when configuring this test system was enter the BIOS and load the "High Performance Defaults."  Then we set the memory to operate at 200MHz (Dual DDR400) with the CAS Latency and other memory timings set by SPD and the AGP aperture size set to 256MB. The hard drive was formatted, and Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1 was installed.  After the installation completed, we installed the latest Intel chipset drivers and then hit the Windows Update site to download and install all available updates. Next, we installed all of the necessary drivers for the rest of our components and Windows Messenger was disabled and removed from the system. Auto-Updating and System Restore were also disabled, the hard drive was defragmented, and a 768MB permanent page file was created. Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance," installed all of the benchmarking software, and ran all of the tests.

Image Quality Comparison Good, Better, Best...

As always, we like to throw some gaming screen shots your way to show what a video card is capable of.  Naturally, with all the fuss about the release of Doom 3, we thought it was a good place to start.  To show what the ASUS V9999 could do, we set the card to High Quality in game with 16X Anisotropic Filtering set under the advanced settings.  This resulted in a very good gaming experience with equally good graphics quality.

While I can't admit that Doom 3 is the best game I've ever played, there is no denying how good it looks.  After battling my way through the Mars station, through countless dark corridors, and piles of dead zombies and other hellacious creatures, it was time to enter Hell.  But before that, we needed to deal with some other baddies with an attitude problem.  We're particularly taken with our friend with the chainsaw.  Right down to the strands of hair, otherwise known as "comb over," he looked pretty frightening with an attitude to match.  But thanks to the BFG, we put him out of his misery.  The really impressive graphics came when we met up with the greeting party at the gates of Hell.  From the streaming fire swirling into the room to the big fella waiting at the entrance, the picture was sharp and detailed with fluid game play.  What else is there to say? The ASUS V9999 Gamer Edition has the muscle to make Doom 3 look and play great.