THG Graphics Card Buyer's Guide

GeForce FX 5900

Only a few months after the introduction of the previous top model, the 0.13µ GeForce FX 5800 (NV30), NVIDIA replaced the heavily criticized card (loud cooling solution, great heat dissipation, too low memory bandwidth) with the FX 5900 (NV35). In addition to re-designing the reference cooling solution so it is much quieter, NVIDIA also decided to drop the very hot DDR II memory on this card, instead widening the memory bus to 256 bits. 3D features saw only minor improvements or tweaks (Color Compression and floating-point performance, UltraShadow feature). Of note is the fact that the FX 5900 Ultra chip is clocked 50 MHz slower than the FX 5800 Ultra. In exchange, the memory bandwidth grew from 16.7 GB/s to a very impressive 27.2 GB/s. The number of transistors also increased slightly, from about 125 million to 130 million.

Obviously, the FX 5900 Ultra is the fastest card of the family. Since the Ultra version is only available in a 256 MB configuration, it is also the most expensive of the bunch. 128 MB and a lower price might have made more sense in making the card more attractive. The non-Ultra version runs at slightly lower clock speeds, while the GeForce FX 5900 XT seems to offer the best price to performance ratio. Although running at lower frequencies than the two faster models, it offers the full feature set.

Versions:

• GeForceFX 5900 XT - 128 MB - 256 bit - 400/700 MHz
• GeForceFX 5900 - 128 MB - 256 bit - 400/850 MHz
• GeForceFX 5900 Ultra - 256 MB - 256 bit - 450/850 MHz

Articles:

• NVIDIA GeForceFX 5900 Ultra: The Way FX is Meant to be Played!!