Board analysis

As you can see in the board shots, eVGA is sticking with NVIDIA’s reference design for their e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra card, right down to the use of NVIDIA’s stock cooler. Actually, we should say that NVIDIA is sticking with the same fundamental board design for the e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, as the card was produced directly by NVIDIA. As we saw with GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, NVIDIA manufactures all GeForce FX 5900 Ultra cards themselves; card manufacturers like eVGA then slap their sticker on the board and ship it out to consumers.

GeForce FX reference and eVGA GF FX card

eVGA versus GeForce4 reference

This may come as a disappointment to some enthusiasts, as reference boards tend to come with tamer cooling solutions than some of the third party offerings, but with NVIDIA controlling all manufacturing a consistent level of quality is ensured, regardless of the board manufacturer. This practice is also employed by ATI with its high-end offerings.

With that out of the way, what separates the e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra “reference” board, from NVIDIA’s official reference design we previewed last month? For starters, the e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra board is significantly shorter than NVIDIA’s reference card. You can see that the number of capacitors has been reduced significantly. As a result, the card is 9” long from end-to-end, the same length as GeForce4 Ti 4600 cards. This should make card installation a little easier for those of you with cramped cases. NVIDIA’s feature connector has been removed and eVGA has added their sticker to the cooling unit, other than those changes we’re looking at the same card.

The cooling system itself is a three-piece design; somewhat reminiscent of the cooler NVIDIA has implemented on its Quadro FX 2000 NV30-based cards. One towering heatsink is used to cool the graphics core. The fins on this heatsink are so long in fact that they will consume the first PCI slot in your system; requiring end user’s to keep that space free in order for the graphics card to fit properly. The heatsink responsible for cooling the graphics core is flanked by an equally daunting cooling system for the memory on the top of the card; fins are placed above the memory modules to increase surface area even further. Finally, one large heatsink is used to cool the underside of the graphics card, which includes the other 128MB of DDR memory.

eVGA cooling

e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra card

Bottom of the card

Fortunately the system is effective without being overtly loud (read: GeForce FX 5800 Ultra), and to further reduce noise levels the cooling fan operates dynamically. As temperatures increase, the RPMs spin up. In 2D mode the card is incredibly quiet. At first we weren’t big fans of this system, as we found the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra would actually clock itself below stock speeds in some cases, but with newer driver releases these quirks have been resolved.

Since the AGP card isn’t capable of supplying the card with enough power, GeForce FX 5900 Ultra cards will also require an external power connection. Unfortunately eVGA doesn’t include a power cable in the e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra packaging, so you will need to feed it directly off the system power supply.

For video encoding, Philips SAA7108AE video encoder/decoder chip is used. This brings video editing duties to the e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra card. A VIVO cable that comes bundled with the graphics card provides composite and S-Video inputs and outputs.