Asus announces modular graphics card with color processor

Asus has announced a video card in which the Mobility Radeon HD3850 and the memory are placed on a daughter card, a so-called mxm. The card is also equipped with a chip with Asus’ Splendid color correction technology.

Due to the modular design of the Splendid MA3850M video card, it is significantly shorter at 17cm in length than the 23.3cm of the reference design of the Radeon HD3850. As a result, the new member fits better in smaller housings. However, a double thickness must be taken into account. Asus claims that by using an mxm the card can easily be upgraded in the future, but this will probably cost the customer more than just buying a completely new video card. Asus has previously announced the Trinity video card with no fewer than three mxms with RV670 GPUs from Asus.

The GPU of the Splendid MA3850M operates at 668MHz, while using DDR3 memory with an effective clock speed of 1.65GHz. The card also contains a dvi-d and a dvi-i connector.

Asus has also equipped its new video card with the Splendid HD1 processor, so that the real-time adjustment of color saturation, brightness and contrast does not place an extra burden on the CPU. According to Asus, this makes the card very suitable for use in htpc’s. Formerly the Splendid technology, which Asus first introduced with its EAX1950 video cards, worked as an extra layer on top of ATI’s Avivo video technology.