Introduction

Several years ago, when Duke Nukem was all the rage, I had my first eye opening experience about hardware. My high end Sound Blaster Pro and I would fire up Duke Nukem and listen to the theme song in its single instrument, dull way, much in the same manner as you would watch the foam in your mouth when you brush your teeth. I decided to bite the bullet and lay down some serious cash (can’t remember how much now) for the state of the art Sound Blaster AWE32 soundboard. Upon getting home I installed the card and drivers and fired up my favorite hero, Duke Nukem. As the game started it hit me harder than if I told Mike Tyson he talked like a girl. A rock band playing the theme music?! Where did all the drums, cymbals, electric guitars and such come from?! New hardware often means the discovery of the unrealized. I had no idea a new sound card back then would make such a huge difference and show me what I was missing. When the ASUS V8200 GF3 arrived at my door, I didn’t know that I was in for a very similar experience. Before we get to far, I’d like to thank Shawn over at Arena Computers for providing us our first GF3 review card.

ASUS produces the V8200 in two flavors, the “Pure” and the “Deluxe” model. The Deluxe model includes VR Glasses, TV out with both S-Video and a Composite-out. And don’t forget the matching software. The Deluxe model carries roughly a $25 higher price tag so it is would initially seem to be definitely worth an extra 25 clams to get all the added features that the Pure doesn’t have. The Pure, is just that, pure. One VGA output and no more. Before you go asking why not make only the Deluxe model, stop and think for a second. Personally, I have had several different video cards with S-Video output over the years and I have yet to ever use it even once. VR Glasses are said to be pretty hip but most folks who own them (that I know) only monkey with them until the novelty factor wears off (two weeks tops) then shelf them. So that leaves you with using the card in it’s most “pure” form, VGA out and rock and roll! So why spend an extra $25 on stuff you won’t use? The logic ASUS uses here is indeed sound, even though the minimal pricing difference is not.

What’s in the box?

First lets look at what’s in our V8200 “Pure” box. Our card of course, a copy of 3Deep, the ASUS DVD software player, and a drivers/utilities CD (more on this later.) For the game bundle we got Messiah, Sacrifice, and Star Trek - New Worlds. All nice games but remember that the game bundle will undoubtedly change as games able to take full advantage of DX8, start to hit the retail shelves. Presently there are no games out that can take full advantage of the GeForce3’s potential. In regards to not only this game bundle but most all game bundles; you know what you never see that would be a welcome addition? A map disk, with lots of levels/maps for Q3A, UT, and Serious Sam. For me, game bundles end up being stocking stuffers for my geek friends. So for all you card makers out there.. hint hint.

Let’s start off with the physical card. I don’t know about you, but I really like how manufacturers are putting out colored PCB. A nice and welcome change from the slime green boards we have gotten used to. ASUS follows the trend and choose to make their board a dark brown color. From not too far off, the card looks black. No real functional value to this but it does carry cool points with your geek buddies.

Look at the size of that heatsink! It is a three-piece job that fits together in an overlapping fashion to make one big sink that covers the memory and the GPU. With a three-piece sink instead of a true all in one jobber, the heat transfer from the sides and center of the card or vice versa is questionable. This is in the same ballpark as some CPU heatsink fin attachment out there. The fan is a tad smaller than the reference design. The ASUS card is the first to break away from Nvidia’s reference design in their effort to improve upon it.