Stability, packaging

P4 3.0C 3DMarks

Card overclocked here

Note the CPU scores remain similar in all situations

Board reliability

Before we go any further, we’d like to address some of the questions concerning the reliability of the e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra card, especially since it ships overclocked from the factory. In our testing, the e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra performed with the reliability we expect from an NVIDIA-based graphics card, namely it was rock-solid. Early reports from some end user’s indicate problems with 3DMark 03’s CPU tests, but after an entire afternoon devoted solely to running 3DMark 03 tests exclusively, we were unable to produce anything unusual on 875P (P4C800 Deluxe) and nForce2 Ultra 400 (DFI LANPARTY PRO NFII Ultra) platforms, even while the graphics card was overclocked above 500/900MHz! In one case the P4C800 system hung momentarily during CPU test 2, but the system was able to finish the remainder of that test, as well as the synthetic shader and fill rate tests that follow.

As you probably know by now, we run all of our tests in an open-air environment, not exactly a real-world situation. So to stress the graphics card even further, we finally installed the card inside the case of a fully-fledged system, a KT333/Athlon XP 2100+ setup (my very own gaming rig). The system is composed of a Coolermaster ATC-110-SX2 with Sound Blaster Live, 3Com 10/100 NIC, and an external Promise IDE RAID controller occupying the PCI slots. In this setup, we didn’t encounter a single problem.

Athlon XP/KT333 system

Considering that 3DMark’s CPU tests transfer graphics processing to the host CPU, and not the graphics card, we have a strong feeling that the problems being reported are the result of something system-related, and are not caused by the higher clock speeds the eVGA card ships with. The fact that users are running into the same problems at NVIDIA’s default 450/850MHz clock settings (and even lower) support this even further.

One thing all users need to keep in mind is heat. DX9 cards like the RADEON 9800 PRO and GeForce FX 5900 Ultra tend to get pretty toasty under load, much more so than graphics cards of the past. As a result, adequate case ventilation is a must for these cards, even at default clock speeds. Personally, we feel heat is the most likely culprit of most end user’s problems.

NVIDIA and ATI both recommend beefy power supplies as well, but remember as we highlighted in Alan’s power supply guide, it’s not about the overall size of your power source, but the amount of power on each rail. Many of today’s latest power supplies shipping with some cases weren’t built to supply the power needs of today’s Athlon XP and Pentium 4 processors.

Packaging

eVGA ships the e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra with the full retail versions of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, nVDVD 2.0, PowerDirector 2.1, a collection of NVIDIA technology demos, and a copy of America’s Army. For less experienced computer users, eVGA has its own custom Automated Driver Management (ADM) software, which walks the end user through driver installation.

ADM software: stage 1

ADM installs GART driver

ADM don

This feature starts off by detecting the chipset your motherboard is based on. Once it has determined your chipset, it then scans to see if the AGP (GART) driver for your chipset has been installed. If it hasn’t, ADM will automatically install it for you. Finally, ADM will look for any traces of older graphics drivers that may be remaining in the OS, if it finds them, it will remove them. Once this step is complete, the NVIDIA Detonator driver is installed.

The real beauty of ADM is how seamlessly it’s tied to the graphics driver installation, if you didn’t look closely, you probably wouldn’t realize it was there. And by ensuring that your AGP driver is installed, ADM addresses one area that is often overlooked. As anyone who is experienced in PC troubleshooting can tell you, poor performance and stability are the frequent result of not having the GART driver for your chipset installed. eVGA does need to update their driver set however, as the current CD is limited to Intel’s 4.0 INF, the latest version is up to 5.0.