LOSTCIRCUITS

Final Thoughts

It is interesting to watch the market swing to ATI and then to nVidia and then back to ATI and again to nVidia. With all other players confined by now to a wall flower existence, this is essentially what it comes down to. Arguably, there have been attempts by ALI with their line of Trident cards and by SIS with the Xabre series and the final spinoffs into XGI -- and interestingly, all of the above are owned by the same holding company -- and nobody has even been able to put a dent into the shared dominance of ATI and nVidia. The DeltaChrome series announced by VIA could be interesting but realistically, it is too little too late - and Matrox -- hardly anybody even remembers that name.

Currently there is no doubt whatsoever, that nVidia is reigning the high-end graphics market, ATI simply has nothing to hold against the 7800 series. Granted that there are the x1800s but exactly where are the cards?

Over all the nVidia vs. ATI battle, it is easy to forget who are the actual suppliers of cards and in this case, the manufacturer is ASUS. Essentially, there is little to criticize, most of our gripes came from the lack of actual documentation of the specifics of the card at hand and the use of the breakout dongle. Arguably, the ASUS manual is still above average. However, it is in comparison to the standards set by ASUS in the mainboard sector where the one size fits all (or none) write-up takes in the bad scores. One other issue we had with the Extreme n7800GT is that on average, it costs a bit more to get the same from ASUS - compared to other manufacturers. On the other hand, we have always found that ASUS quality has been a notch above most other manufacturers and that may justify the price for some, but maybe not for others. And then, there are the daily fluctutations in pricing .. we have found the Extreme n 7800 GT as low as US$ 330,- -- for a few days at least, currently, it appears to run a bit more expensive.

Along these lines, the physical implementation of the cards is as good as it gets and that's where ASUS has always been our favorite supplier. We have looked at other cards from different manufacturers that were a far cry from the ones we reviewed here today, with lacking hardware accessories, the wrong drivers bundled with the card and whatever nuisances one could possible fathom. In view of all of the above, the ASUS Extreme n7800 GT is a clean solution and worth the mark-up over the competition. This holds regardless of whether the Extreme n7800 GT is destined to be used as single card or in SLI configuration and, thus, the card deserves no less than our monthly award.

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