Asus V9950 Ultra GeForce FX 5900 Ultra

The Asus V9950 Ultra - GeForce FX 5900 Ultra
The First Single-Slot Ultra to Hit Our Lab...

By - Marco Chiappetta
September 9, 2003

To benchmark with Splinter Cell, we used the Oil Rig demo created by the folks at Beyond 3D.  Like Gun Metal, this test is heavily dependant on Pixel Shader performance.  Shaders are used to render the realistic looking ocean water that surrounds an Oil Rig in the demo.  As we've mentioned in the past, Antialiasing doesn't work with Splinter cell (at least with the current version).  Due to this fact, we do not have any AA scores listed in the graphs below.

Benchmarks With Splinter Cell What a Cool Game

Its higher core clock speed and increased memory help the V9950 Ultra take a firm 8-10% lead over the standard GeForce FX 5900, at both resolutions in Splinter Cell.  However, the Radeon 9800 Pro took the overall lead here.  At 1024x768, the Radeon pulled ahead by a fraction of a frame per second, but at 1600x1200 it was a full 5.5% faster.  Going from the v44.67 drivers to the newer v45.23s gave the GeForce FX 5900 a nice boost.  There's probably more performance to be had here with future driver optimizations from NVIDIA.

Head-to-Head Performance With Comanche 4 Did anyone see the Comanche Bike on American Chopper?  PHAT!

We used Novalogic's combat helicopter simulator Comanche 4 for our next batch of DirectX benchmarks.  Comanche 4 uses DX8 class pixel and vertex shaders to produce some of the realistic visuals used throughout the game.  Unlike the previous tests, this benchmark is heavily influenced by CPU and system memory performance, especially at lower resolutions.  However, when the resolution is raised and AA and Aniso are enabled, the current crop of video cards tend to slow down quite a bit.

The Radeon 9800 Pro and V9950 Ultra swap the lead in Comanche 4, depending on what resolution or AA level is used.  At 1024x768 without AA the V9950 Ultra managed to squeak by the 9800 Pro, but the Radeon pulled ahead when AA and Aniso were enabled.  Things flip-flop at 1600x1200, where the Radeon was top dog without any anti-aliasing enabled.  With AA and aniso enabled at the higher resolution the V9950 Ultra led by a hefty margin in some tests.

UT2003 & Quake 3 Benchmarks