X-bit labs

ASUS Extreme N7800GT/2DHTV in SLI: Two Is Better Than One (page 2)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 11/04/2005 | 10:34 AM ]

Package and Accessories

Being a high-end product, the ASUS Extreme N7800GT is supplied in a huge box with a handle. We should say it would be a real trouble to carry the box about without the handle – so big it is! It looks really impressive and fascinating for the potential buyer.

The colorful cover envelopes a white cardboard box that contains the graphics card as well as its numerous accessories. Our readers should already know that generosity is a typical trait of ASUS when it comes to adding accessories to a graphics card, especially as concerns software. To be specific, the Extreme N7800GT brings to you the following games and applications:

• Project Snowblind;
• Xpand Rally;
• Joint Operations;
• Power Drome;
• Chaos League game;
• ASUS DVD XP;
• Media & Show;
• Power Director 3;
• CD with drivers and utilities from ASUS.

That’s a nice selection, yet we think they might have added some popular bestseller game. The discs are supposed to be repacked into a round plastic box rather than into a stylish-looking leather pouch (as the one included with the ASUS Extreme N7800GTX TOP). This box, however, doesn’t look cheap as ASUS’ older orange-colored boxes – it uses the winning combination of black and silver to look quite stylish, too.

The kit also includes two DVI-I → D-Sub adapters, a power splitter (for PSUs without a 6-pin connector for the graphics card), and a VIVO unit with a conveniently long cable. The VIVO unit offers you S-Video and YPbPr outputs (one of which can work as a composite video output) and, on the other side, S-Video and RCA video inputs. The VIVO unit displays an NVIDIA logo for some reason rather than ASUS’. Just like with the ASUS Extreme N7800GTX TOP, S-Video and RCA cables are missing among the accessories.

There is also no web-camera that you could earlier find included with top-end graphics cards from ASUS. This isn’t good since the product is advertised as a gaming solution and supports ASUS’ exclusive technologies to facilitate communication during networked play. A webcam would make the ASUS Extreme N7800GT (and the N7800GTX TOP for that matter) a more appealing purchase for any gamer.

ASUS’ installation and user guides have repeatedly and deservedly received our praises for their simple and comprehensible language and detailed descriptions of all the actions and procedures the owner of the card must perform. We think even inexperienced users should not find it difficult to install and use the graphics card if they read through the manual attentively. And you don’t have to know English to read them – the manuals are written in several languages which is another nice thing about them.

So, like with the ASUS Extreme N7800GTX TOP, there are some things calling for improvement in this product. We think the company should include S-Video and RCA cables. They are quite cheap and the user wouldn’t have to purchase them separately to connect the newly bought graphics card to a TV-set. This graphics card would also be more attractive if it was accompanied with an inexpensive webcam, especially since all the necessary software is already bundled. And lastly, we think a top-end graphics card targeted at devoted gamers should have at least a single really popular game among its accessories.