It should be noted that the card easily overclocked to the limits of the tweak utility slider for the memory and the core. For the memory, the SGRAM chips are Samsung -5, which means they are rated to 200 Mhz. Setting the slider from 166 to 195 isn't even an overclock! The core hit 142 Mhz probably due to the well bonded heat sink and fan. The Smart Doctor utility reported an increase in temperature from 63 to 69 deg C when I overclocked the core to 142. Asus used a nice layer of white thermal paste between the chip and heatsink instead of taking the easy way out and using the more common thermal sticky pad.

The documentation for the 3D glasses suggest that a minimum refresh rate of 100 Hz be used. I tested at 640x480 at 120 Hz. First of all, the glasses don't fit well and are front heavy. I had to perch them pretty far down on my nose to see through the lenses instead of the bottoms. The 3D works through, and the initial impression is awesome. Drakan had some neat effects, but I couldn't get rid of double vision, which was especially bad on text. I had to flip up the glasses to work with my inventory. Rollcage was better, with the double vision only noticeable on the setup pages and not during the race. Overall, the glasses started to hurt after an hour of use. They are a fun gimmick, but the technology isn't quite ready to be used consistently, not to mention that the glasses look goofy as heck.

Video images on the TV input port come out pretty good on the capture window, with some aliasing-type jaggedness, but I don't think that can be helped. The video input is an S-video connector, and an adapter cable is provided for composite connections. My previous experience with a similar converter on a TV out port was poor, but I saw no problems with this one. Capture resolutions from 88x60 to 704x480 may be selected. I found that I had to turn up the brightness a bit from the default, but adjustments are there and effects are shown in real time. I didn't test TV out, but both S-video and composite connections are available on the card.

I used the bundled AsusDVD Player application to play a DVD movie on my monitor. The controls on the application are very complete, allowing easy image adjustments and chapter selection. I had to turn up the brightness again, but I was happy with the picture quality. The only slowdowns I saw were during the initial splash screen, and when I would resize the window. The image also would got choppy when I tried to multitask with Internet Explorer while the movie was running.

Overall

I loved this card for what it was made for: fast, pretty 3D rendering. Asus did a fantastic job of implementing nVidia's chipset and added good cooling and SGRAM to set them apart from other card manufacturers. The Deluxe version is worthwhile if the user is interested in the video input and output features, but the 3D glasses aren't really worth it. I'd rather see the glasses left out and the price reduced, but if you are willing to spend the money, I highly recommend the Asus V6x00 line.