Review: AOpen Aeolus 6800 Ultra DVD256(E)

by Ryszard Sommefeldt on 26 July 2004, 00:00

Tags: Aopen

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Bundle and Presentation



The box echoes their design art and packaging used for the older GeForce FX 59xx range of Aeolus boards. It's simple, looks classy to this reviewer's tired old eyes, and it's not a giant behemoth of a box like ASUS tend to use.



The box rear hints at the features and performance, making a big deal out of the Ultra's ability to power two digital flat panel monitors using a number of display configurations supported by the nView 3.0 display software.

Bundle wise you get just the minimum set of cabling and adaptors needed to hook up a regular VGA monitor and a TV, via either S-Video or composite signals.



A great manual and a quick start quide round things off in that department.

As far as software is concerned you get Arx Fatalis and Spellforce, both decent but uninspiring games, along with a copy of Intervideo's WinCinema 4 software, which includes DVD player software and a CD ripping utility.

AOpen also bundled the latest (at the time) 61.34 drivers into the press sample, but you'll get recent drivers on a pressed AOpen CD at retail.



It's plain and simple presentation and bundling, but it's exactly how AOpen wish to present their hardware, for the buyer that just wants the card and little more. As close to white-box OEM as it comes, and no bad thing.