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ASUS GeForce 8800GTX AquaTank |
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Written by Nebojsa Todorovic
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Tuesday, 10 April 2007 |
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Page 1 of 2 It has been quite some time since cards with G80 chip were introduced to the market. Until recently, manufacturers did not experiment in design, since they followed simple principle and obeyed rules. Whole card is being manufactured in one production line, while sticking different labels with brand logo. Not even Gainward, company being known for breaching specifications defined by NVIDIA, did not dare to make major modifications. The first one deviating from this rule is ASUS.
Its product is named GeForce 8800GTX Aquatank and it comes with water cooling, as it may be concluded from its name. System of water cooling is ASUS´s, but it is coming from renowned brand - ThermalTake. Now we come to visual effect of the card, which is quite impressive. Before all, easily noticeable characteristic is that it consists out of two parts. First part is card with water block and cooling fan. Beside cooling water block its secondary function is to conducts heat away from coolers on memory chips. Fan radiates dark-blue color, which is attempt of ASUS to make innuendo on cooling which has been provided by this system.
Second part connected by two taps is actually tank, cooler with fan and water pump, all in one. On the top of the cooler-tank is regulator of rotations of blower which releases hot air outside of casing through cooler, but unfortunately it comes down to only to two options - „low“ and „high“. In latter regime, cards becomes noticeably louder, but high number of rotations is required solely during long playing sessions, or if you choose to make somewhat higher overclock. Second part is being mounted into PCI slot. Here we encounter one potential fault. Namely, one ASUS 8800GTX Aquatank occupies space as two plain GeForce 8800GTX in SLI.
Essentially, this means in case you become proud owner of this model, you can forget about future adding of another card of this type. There might be a solution, in case you put in another conventional GTX later on. Regarding effectiveness of this cooling, it is ultimate in all senses of the word. Temperatures are drastically lower. It is not so visible in idle operating phase, as after the long session of gaming. Before we turn to actual story on performances, let’s check up what comes in big box, beside card.
Beside standard drivers and instructions, there are several valuable programs. More interesting for benchmark program fans is full version of Futuremark’s 3DMark06. It is very valuable present, but it is not the only one. There are also more or less actual and attractive games in the box. Withal, it has very nice design, and it is quite likeable card wrapped in very nice box.
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