Product: AGP-V3800 Ultra Deluxe
From: Asus
Price: about US$300
Pros: fast 2D and 3D performance. 3D "LCD shutter" glasses create a convincing 3D effect in virtually all Direct3D games. Good OpenGL driver.
Cons: Buggy capture driver in bundled and subsequent beta releases (beta 3 was released July 19th; the Oct. '99 driver still has severe problems). Bundled driver and downloadable updates produced repeatable crashes, problems capturing audio. 3D glasses don't work in 3D modeling programs such as 3D MAX, LightWave, trueSpace, etc.
First, the good news: this is the fastest graphics card we've tested yet in several categories, although the 3dfx Voodoo3 still beats it in Direct3D and MiniGL performance. The TNT2 Ultra beat the Voodoo3 by more than 10 percent in overall benchmark results, largely due to the fact that it provides a better Open GL driver than that currently available from 3dfx. As well, the quality of the Asus card's TV output is excellent, due to the inclusion of a Chrontel 7003B-V chip TV output chip. As noted in a review at Anandtech, the Chrontel's output is superior to that of the Brooktree 869 that is common to many other designs.
The bad news for us was the disappointing performance of the capture driver. The bundled (1.0) driver and several downloadable updates tested over a period of more than four months afterward are nearly unusable, at least on our test systems, running an otherwise problem-free version of Windows 98 and a brand new installation of Windows 98 Second Edition. On our systems, the driver crashed with a non-fatal blue screen 100 percent of the time we selected "video capture." Fortunately, the video capture still occurred and provided us with a good quality result at up to 704x480, however, the audio was not recorded. These problems persisted even after we upgraded the card's firmware and tried three different updated "beta" drivers. Problems occurred even when not capturing video. We noted repeatable crashes at the Windows desktop, in programs such as the 3DMark 99 benchmark, IE5, and other apps -- issues that disappeared as soon as we pulled the Asus card from the machine. As we've seen other reports on the net from 3800-TVR users recounting similar problems, we are inclined to suspect that this is a driver issue that, presumably, will be fixed in an upcoming revision. Fortunately, despite blue-screen errors and problems capturing audio, our tests of 352x240 mode video captures yielded no dropped frames and 30 fps performance, suggesting that, once the bugs are ironed out, this will be a decent capture solution for casual use. The card supports a maximum capture resolution of of 704x468. For more serious video work, we continue to recommend a Motion JPEG capture solution, of which the US$269 Matrox Marvel G200-TV is one of the least expensive.
Asus has a couple of other ASUS 3800 offerings, including the AGP V3800-TVR (TNT2 + TV out and real-time video capture) for about US$250. The company also offers an AGP-V3800TVR Deluxe bundle (TVR model + 3D VR "LCD shutter" glasses) for about $40 more. Note that these TVR models only feature the cheaper plain TNT2 chip. The AGP-V3800 Ultra Deluxe model is the only model currently available from Asus that is based on the TNT2 Ultra chip. Other Asus 3800 series models are based on the slower "standard" TNT2 chip. If you want to get a TNT2-Ultra chip, be sure it is the "Ultra Deluxe" model.
The 3D glasses produced excellent results. We've seen many implementations of 3D shutter glasses over the years and reasonably priced models have been on the market since the mid-'80s, when the Atari ST was new, but this is definitely the best implementation we've seen to date. Early glasses typically required custom drivers to be written and thus only worked with a handful of games, or specially encoded video sources. Asus, apparently taking a cue from Wicked3D, have created a driver that works with virtually all Direct3D games, providing nearly seamless compatibility with existing titles. Believe me, you haven't experienced Star Wars:Rogue Squadron until you've flown an X-Wing fighter, feeling like you're actually in the cockpit. The glasses, or similar models from Elsa or Wicked3D, are a must-see and, we think, a gaming accessory well worth the small additional cost. We had the best results when we set our screen's refresh rate to 120 Hz. At this speed (which requires a fairly decent monitor, by the way), the shutters produced no discernable flicker, while alternating left and right images in sync with the interlaced 3D data on the screen.
Oddly, the glasses don't produce 3D effects in non-game titles, such as Internet Explorer's VRML add-on, or 3D modeling programs such as 3D Studio MAX, LightWave 3D, Hash Animation Master, Caligari trueSpace, or any other non-game title we tried, even if they used Direct3D to render images. Apparently, there is some game-oriented API that these glasses exploit. We did, however, successfully use a shareware program called 3D Stereo Image Factory from SOFTreat to create interlaced images compatible with the glasses and the VR viewer utility included with the Asus board. In other words, you can produce your own 3D photographs!
The AGP-V3800 is also upgradeable with TV-tuner and ASUS DVD with Macrovision options (as yet untested).
In conclusion, despite currently unsurpassed 3D performance in 32-bit display modes and a great feature set, we can't recommend this board as a video capture solution -- yet.
See the multimedia section at www.asus.com.tw for details on the bugs addressed by the Asus beta drivers for the 3800.
For Further Reading
Other Shutter Glasses
Macintosh compatible 3D LCD shutter glasses (including full support integrated into the QuickDraw3D drivers) are allegedly available as an option for a product called the G-REX 3D, which we have not yet tested.
Note: some links are to external sites and are thus outside our control.
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