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Head-to-Head Performance
With Tomb Raider: AOD |
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Putting the Pixel Shaders to work! |
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| Although
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness won't be winning any
"Game of the Year" awards, it is one of the more
advanced DirectX games currently available. We've
recorded a custom demo run of Lara jogging through a
indoor garden area of the "Prague3" map. When using the
Pixel Shader 2.0 code path, this area of the game
utilizes a DOF (depth of field) blurring effect to
enhance your sense of depth and size. We ran our custom
demo at 1024x768 and at 1600x1200 using both the Pixel
Shader 1.4 and 2.0 code paths (with and without 4x
anti-aliasing in the PS 2.0 tests). |
In our final test, we saw the 5900 SE somehow beating even
the 5950 Ultra when AA was disabled, although the scores
were very close. At 1024x768, the 5900 and 5950 Ultra
lead the other two cards by almost 33%, and almost doubled
their frame rates at 1600x1200. The 5900 SE is still
producing a mostly playable 45.93 frames per second here.
As usual, 4XAA took a big bite out of our benchmarks,
putting the 9600 XT on a more footing. The 5700 Ultra,
on the other hand, consistently lagged behind the other
cards in all but one test.
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Overclocking With The e-GeForce FX 5900SE |
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Because we just couldn't leave well enough alone |
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We always like to see how
far we can push our hardware. We were able to get the
e-GeForce FX 5900 SE's core up as high as 471MHz and the
memory all the way to 844MHz. That amounted to a
17% increase in the core clock and just over a 20% boost for
the memory. To see how this translates in real-world
performance, we ran another Gun Metal test at 1280x1024, and
compared this result to our original results.
As you can see, the
overclocked 5900 SE gave had a much higher frame rate,
almost catching the 5950 Ultra. This shouldn't
actually come as a major shock, since the overclocked speeds
we achieved were similar to the standard speed of the 5950
Ultra (475/475). The major point you should be coming
away with is that we are getting 5950 Ultra like performance
at 5700 Ultra prices. Not too shabby.
| It's hard to
figure out NVIDIA's strategy here. As much as we
raved about the 5700 Ultra's price / performance ratio a
couple of months back, this card is all that and more.
We consistently got performance that was just off that
of a GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, and can overclock the card
to similar speeds. The price however, places this
card firmly into the mainstream arena. In doing
so, it makes the relatively new 5700 Ultra all but
obsolete, so expect its price to plummet. Throw in
the bundled copy of the excellent Call of Duty, and
we're hard pressed to find anything negative to say here
at all, save for the naming convention flap and the fact
that you can find "standard" 5900's with faster memory
for a few dollars more. Overall though, we were
impressed with the eVGA e-Force FX 5900 SE. This
card offers excellent performance and has a great
bundle, at an affordable price point - and its just in
time for the holidays! We're giving this card a
9
on the HotHardware Heat Meter... |
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