Introduction

Up to now, the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra card market has been fairly tame. Cards from third-party manufacturers have all been based on the same NVIDIA reference design; in fact, NVIDIA has handled all board production in house. The end result is that consumers have been purchasing the exact same hardware regardless of the card manufacturer chosen.

ASUS V9950 Ultra and e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra

Because of this, early board manufacturers have split into three camps. You’ve got eVGA all alone offering their e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra at higher clock speeds than the rest (500MHz core/900MHz memory). This gives them a performance advantage over other GeForce FX 5900 Ultra manufacturers that has so far gone unchallenged. The second camp has used its software bundle to gain an advantage over others. This group includes Gainward and MSI, who has an over-the-top software bundle with their FX5900-VTD256. The final group is about as no-frills as it gets, these guys include the card and its accessories in the packaging, but no game bundle. This camp consists of the three-letter companies, BFG and PNY, who are currently locked in a battle with each other at retail.

Complicating matters have been the early reports of some cards with flickering issues and/or a mysterious squealing noise coming directly from the card itself, an issue we witnessed firsthand with the MSI FX5900-TD128. Clearly things have not come easily for board manufacturers up to this point.

As one of NVIDIA’s oldest board partners, with products dating all the way back to the original RIVA 128, we had no doubt that ASUS would be offering a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra card, the question was just a matter of timing. It turns out that while other card manufacturers were busy bringing their first generation GeForce FX 5900 Ultra cards to market, ASUS has been playing it more conservatively, quietly working on their own card that wasn’t manufactured completely by NVIDIA.

To be honest, this probably shouldn’t come as a surprise if you’re familiar with ASUS’ previous graphics offerings. Their V8460 Deluxe was one of the first second generation GeForce4 Ti 4600 cards with video input support, and if you read our V9280S review last Winter, you certainly saw how impressed we were with this third generation GeForce4 Ti 4200 offering. Not only had ASUS integrated a Ti 4200 core on a Ti 4600 printed circuit board (with accompanying BGA memory), they also bumped the core clock to 275MHz and outfitted the board with 128MB of 600MHz memory.

The end result was a Ti 4200 card that outperformed the more expensive GeForce4 Ti4400, plus it offered built-in video editing as an added bonus! It’s no small wonder why this card was easily awarded our Editor’s Choice Award; ASUS had really upped the bar with the V9280S’s release.

Slim profile heatsink

Now ASUS is out again to stir things up, this time in the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra market. For the V9950 Ultra they’re representing with a 5900 Ultra board that doesn’t consume the PCI slot adjacent to your AGP card!