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On
May 12, NVIDIA formally introduced the NV35 to the public,
dubbed it the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, and enthusiasts began
to drool. The original FX-Flow cooler found on the
5800 Ultra was gone and a 256-bit memory interface had
replaced the 128-bit interface used in the NV30. The
NV35 was everything the NV30 should have been.
Unfortunately, one thing did carry over from the 5800
Ultra to the 5900 Ultra, the exorbitant price tag.
Even today, over three months since its introduction,
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra prices are well over the $400 mark,
with some brands approaching $500. Many enthusiasts
want NVIDIA's latest and greatest, but dropping nearly
half a $K on a video card just is not an option for
everyone. Luckily, there are mainstream cards like
the Radeon 9600 or GeForce FX 5600 available for less than
half the price, but these products aren't going to win any
performance contests. For the money, they may be
great solutions, but you don't find many hard-core gamers
lusting over a mainstream product. What to do?
Well, you could go with one of the cards we'll be looking
at today. We're going to take a long look at two
GeForce FX 5900s from Leadtek and Abit, the WinFast A350
TDH MyViVo and the Siluro FX 5900 OTES. These cards
have less memory and a lower core clock speed, but they
offer all of the features of a 5900 Ultra and at a
significantly lower price point. Take a look...
CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
ENLARGED VIEW
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Specifications & Features of the GeForce FX 5900 |
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Not
Quite An Ultra, But Damn Close |
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NVIDIA
GeForce FX 5900 GPU
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CineFX II Engine
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Intellisample Technology HCT
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High-Precision Graphics
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nView Multi-display Technology
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Digital Vibrance Control (DVC)
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Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
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AGP
8X
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0.13 Micron Process Technology
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400MHz RAMDACs
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1.3
Billion texels/ sec fill rate
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Graphics Core: 256-bit
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Engine clock 400 MHz
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Memory Interface: 256-bit
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Memory Bandwidth: 27.2GB/sec
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Fill Rate: 3.2 billion texels/sec.
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Vertices/sec. 338 million
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Memory Data Rate: 850MHz
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Pixels per Clock (peak): 8
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Textures per Pixel: 16(Maximum in a single rendering
pass with 8 textures applied per clock.)
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RAMDACs 400MHz
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Architected for Cg
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Microsoft® DirectX®9.0 Optimizations and Support
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New
64-phase Video Scaler
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OpenGL®1.4 Optimizations and Support
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Video Mixing Renderer (VMR)
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High-performance, high-precision 3D rendering engine
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On-board DVI support up to 1600x1200 resolution
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On-board TV-out support up to 1024x768 resolution
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Integrated Full Hardware MPEG-2 Decoder
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Vivid NTSC/PAL TV-out support with flicker filter
CLICK TO ENLARGE
THE
GEFORCE FX 5900
CORE CLOCK: 400MHz
MEMORY CLOCK: 850MHz
FILLRATE: 3.2 GT/s
MEMORY BANDWIDTH: 27.1 GB/s
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Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH
MyViVo
Leadtek
included a slew of software and accessories with the
WinFast A350 TDH MyViVo, to appease both gamers and video
buffs. For the gamers, Leadtek ships full versions
of Gun Metal and Big Mutha Truckers with this card.
Leadtek also includes a group of useful utilities like
Cult 3D, Coloreal Embedded, Coloreal Visual and Coloreal
Bright along with their own proprietary WinFast PVR,
WinFast DVD and WinFox II applications. Rounding out
the software bundle are two products from Ulead, Video
Studio 7 SE and DVD Movie Factory 2. These two
programs compliment the Video-In and Video-Out
capabilities of the A350 TDH MyViVo. There were also
some manuals, adapters and cables tucked away inside the
box. A blue dongle with composite and S-Video in /
out connectors, an S-Video cable, a composite video cable,
a DVI-to-DB15 adapter and lastly a Molex power cable
splitter were included as well. All in all, a very
well rounded, complete bundle.
Abit Siluro FX 5900 OTES
Abit's bundle
was a bit understated. The Siluro FX 5900 OTES
shipped with two user's manuals, one explaining the card's
features and the other outlining the benefits of the OTES
cooling system, two CDs and a few adapters and cables.
One of the CDs contained drivers and a copy of Abit's SiluroDVD 4 software. The other disk had copies of
WindowBlinds NVIDIA Edition, a demo of Earthviewer 3D and
a demo of Soldier of Fortune II. An S-Video cable, a
Composite (RCA) Cable, an S-Video to Composite adapter, a
Molex power cable splitter and a DVI-to-DB15 adapter, were
also included. The Siluro's bundle was decent, but
we would have liked to have found a game or two included
to showcase the card's features and performance.
Up Close & Personal
|
On
May 12, NVIDIA formally introduced the NV35 to the public,
dubbed it the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, and enthusiasts began
to drool. The original FX-Flow cooler found on the
5800 Ultra was gone and a 256-bit memory interface had
replaced the 128-bit interface used in the NV30. The
NV35 was everything the NV30 should have been.
Unfortunately, one thing did carry over from the 5800
Ultra to the 5900 Ultra, the exorbitant price tag.
Even today, over three months since its introduction,
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra prices are well over the $400 mark,
with some brands approaching $500. Many enthusiasts
want NVIDIA's latest and greatest, but dropping nearly
half a $K on a video card just is not an option for
everyone. Luckily, there are mainstream cards like
the Radeon 9600 or GeForce FX 5600 available for less than
half the price, but these products aren't going to win any
performance contests. For the money, they may be
great solutions, but you don't find many hard-core gamers
lusting over a mainstream product. What to do?
Well, you could go with one of the cards we'll be looking
at today. We're going to take a long look at two
GeForce FX 5900s from Leadtek and Abit, the WinFast A350
TDH MyViVo and the Siluro FX 5900 OTES. These cards
have less memory and a lower core clock speed, but they
offer all of the features of a 5900 Ultra and at a
significantly lower price point. Take a look...
