The V7700 Deluxe is based off the NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS GPU, but it strays far from the path set by NVIDIA's reference design. While it appears that the core circuitry around the GeForce2 GTS GPU is essentially standard fare, adding video digitizing is not just a matter of cutting and pasting. ASUS pulled out the scalpel to do some major reconstruction on the outside portion (nearest the back of your machine), both front and back, of the V7700 Deluxe. They made room for several new video components as well as an S-video in, an S-video out, a composite-out, and their own VR-out for 3D glasses.

The V7700 Deluxe's 32MB of 333MHz DDR SGRAM provides plenty of memory bandwidth, over 5GBps to be exact, and plenty of room for textures. Most of today's games can get by just fine with 16MB, and since the GeForce2 GTS uses texture compression, 32MB is usually more than enough. The only case where we see the V7700 Deluxe not having enough 3D power would be if you regularly run at 1600x1200. In that case, getting a 64MB card would be wise. For personal use though, we rarely run 32MB or 64MB GeForce2 GTS video cards at 1600x1200 in 3D. The newest games, such as Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, do not provide a high enough frame rate to satisfy us at 1600x1200 with either 32MB or 64MB. For those who demand 1600x1200 at high frame rates, a GeForce2 Ultra, with its faster core clock and DDR SGRAM, is the only thing we know of that will be available soon which will provide great performance at 1600x1200 in the newest games.

The V7700 Deluxe card uses a funky circular fan with side exhaust ports to keep the GeForce2 GTS GPU cool. Well, it looks spiffy, so we have no complaints, and it does a perfectly fine job of preventing overheating. As for all the extra video digitizing components, they have no heat sinks or fans and we saw no problems with them overheating.