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While ASUS is most commonly recognized for their distinguished line of motherboards, they have also developed a reputable name in the graphics industry with their V3400 TNT and feature-rich V3800 TNT2 graphics cards. In an attempt to continue their legacy, ASUS has launched their salvo into the GeForce battle in the form of the AGP-V6600, based on the GeForce 256.

Having so many manufacturers producing GeForce-based boards means stiff competition, and ASUS has strategically released the V6600 Pure and the V6600 Deluxe; the former offering a basic card at a low price and latter offering a power packed card for about fifty dollars more.

ASUS AGP-V6600 GeForce 256 Pure   |   ASUS AGP-V6600 GeForce 256 Deluxe

In order to turn heads with the Deluxe model, ASUS has added 3D VR glasses, S-Video input, and both S-Video and RCA outputs. Coupled with a software package that includes a hardware monitoring utility, a tweaking utility, video editing software, and video security, the V6600 becomes quite an alluring card. Appealing to a different audience then the Pure card, the V6600 Deluxe is the most feature-complete GeForce card we've seen yet, so how does it perform? Lets take a closer look at the card.

Like all other shipping GeForce 256-based boards, the V6600 runs at 120 MHz core and 166MHz memory speeds. Although the first revision of the instruction manual states that the V6600 used SDRAM, we found that the card actually uses SGRAM, which speeds up 3D applications. At 5ns, the SEC SGRAM is actually rated for 200MHz operation, showing quite a bit of overclocking potential which will be discussed in a bit.