FiringSquad: Home of the Hardcore Gamer - Games, Hardware, Reviews and NewsSubmit your own or view users' CPU overclocking results!

  
 Home   News   THE MATRIX   Deals   Hardware   Games   Features   Media   Products   Forums   FS China 
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Home : Hardware : Video Cards : GeForce FX 5900 XT Shootout
» Join the Greatest Gaming Community NOW! (It's free)

Already a member? Login
 


»» best haiku ever (0) by darkportal_4
13.1 miles of EVGA (0) by Odoyle721
Half Life 2 (Round 2) *runs* (8) by exe3
Rodent Device (2) by PS2Fish
SHOCK & Awwwwww (1) by PS2Fish
T-Shirts! (0) by Skippy989
DoW II 5-7-5, and the Limerick (1) by jarrodthome
So what if it doesn't follow the topic? (0) by ICDP
Dow II Haiku (2) by LORD ORION
Meditation of a Tyranid (0) by Aftermath

More Blogs >>


 Hottest Topics
Iwata admits the 'Wii has stalled' (50)
Modern Warfare 2 PC limited to 9v9 matches (27)
Are multi-console gamers shifting from 360 to PS3? (24)
RAGE won't support dedicated servers either (22)
Borderlands PC Review (20)
Dragon Age: The Quick Reviewing (15)
Modern Warfare 2 launch trailer released (13)
Shattered Horizon Review (10)
Fermi coming in Dec? (10)
Nintendo DSi with larger screen announced (9)
2nd generation Radeon 5870 cards hit retailers (6)
Radeon HD 5970 sighting (4)
Battlefield Bad Company 2 Limited Edition announced (4)
TSMC continues to suffer from low yields at 40-nm (4)
BioWare announces Mass Effect 2 Collectors Edition (3)
Today's News >>
Today's Siteseeing >>


 News Archive
This Month

October 1 - 31, 2009

September 1 - 30, 2009

August 1 - 31, 2009

July 1 - 31, 2009

June 1 - 30, 2009

May 1 - 31, 2009

April 1 - 30, 2009

March 1 - 31, 2009

February 1 - 28, 2009

January 1 - 31, 2009

December 1 - 31, 2008

November 1 - 30, 2008



GeForce FX 5900 XT Shootout
March 01, 2004   Brandon Sandman Bell > [View My Other Articles]
Product Info | User Reviews | Article Images(28) | Image Gallery | Comments | Forum Thread
Conclusion


While we normally like to declare a winner in our shootout comparison articles, it’s just too difficult to pick one this time. All of the cards we’ve presented today are designed to appeal in different ways, with the ultimate winner depending on your tastes and preferences.

Chaintech’s SA5900X has been designed to appeal to the consumer who wants all-out cooling. The board sports a cooler with a copper core, while its fan operates at the same (higher) RPMs at all times, regardless of which mode the board is currently operating in. This is great if you’re a hardcore gamer, especially if you’re overclocking, you always know that regardless of the situation, your card’s fan is working overtime to keep its NV35 graphics core cool. But what if you spend most of your time at the desktop browsing webpages? In this case, you may want something a little quieter.

MSI’s GeForce FX 5900 XT card, the FX5900XT-VTD128, is the exact opposite. It’s T.O.P. Tech Cooler was the quietest solution in this roundup, and was drowned out by the sound of our Thermaltake Silent Boost K8, which is one of the quieter Athlon 64 coolers on the market. It operates at the same low level of RPMs (we’d estimate somewhere between 2,000-3,000 RPMs) regardless of mode, making it perfect for those of you who want to build a near silent PC. It also boasts video input for those of you who would like to make your own home movies. This feature in particular is extremely hard to find among GeForce FX 5900 XT cards. Its only real weakness is the lack of built-in hardware monitoring.

The Leadtek board presents an interesting contrast in the sense that it does boast hardware monitoring functionality, as well as its WinFox hardware monitoring/overclocking tool, but the card lacks the exotic copper coolers present on the cards from Chaintech and Gigabyte. In operation, we did find that their Air Surround cooling solution ran quieter than the eVGA and Chaintech coolers, and largely mirrored the performance of the Chaintech cooler at stock speeds. In addition, the 2.2ns memory modules our board shipped with allowed us to overclock the board’s memory to unprecedented levels for a GeForce FX 5900 XT card. If this is important to you, you may want to check with your preferred retailer to see if their Leadtek boards use the same Hynix modules (it would certainly explain the higher price these boards tend to go for) our card shipped with. It’s also possible that Leadtek ran a batch of boards with 2.2ns memory modules because it was all they had on hand at the time.

Gigabyte’s cooler is copper-based for better heat transfer, and quieter than the eVGA and Chaintech cards, making it a worthy competitor as well. Gigabyte also has one of the better software bundles (although admittedly, this is subjective). Their V-Tuner software can also be used to overclock your graphics card, but unfortunately the board doesn’t offer hardware monitoring capabilities.

eVGA’s e-GeForce FX 5900 SE is one of the least expensive GeForce FX 5900 XT graphics cards on the market, and is a good all-round performer. It doesn’t offer some of the dazzling features of the other boards like copper cooling or hardware monitoring, but it is easy to find and was incredibly popular when it first came out thanks to the Call of Duty bundle all cards shipped with. As a first generation board design it has since faded away from the limelight a little, but it’s still a solid card that’s worthy of consideration.

In any case, NVIDIA’s GeForce FX 5900 XT core has been popular since its inception due to its attractive pricing and good performance in today’s titles. NVIDIA has certainly delivered a card that has given the mainstream market what it wanted, a graphics solution that offers all the features of the flagship cards and much of the performance, but at a price point that is much more attractive to the wallet. The GeForce FX 5900 XT is one of the best bargains on the graphics market right now, and is truly a worthy successor to GeForce4 Ti 4200.



Back! Overclocking     Back to FS frontpage
Blog + Share: Digg Del.icio.us Reddit SU furl • More: AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Send This Article to a Friend!  
Table of Contents
  Print Entire Article  

MATRIX CONTENT » RANDOM MEDIA BLOG More Blogs >>
No ratings yet
» Please rate this
I am an AMD AgentRead this Media-Blog entry!» PC in a world of Crysis (3)
by greennova () Talk with this user on their Shout Box (My other blogs) Posted 24 months ago
  Latest Content
Phenom II Gets A New Revision: 125W AMD Phenom II X4 965 Performance Preview
Phenom II Gets A New Revision: 125W AMD Phenom II X4 965 Performance Preview
Promising lower power consumption, lower temps, and most importantly for enthusiasts, more OC'ing, AMD is back with a new CPU revision for the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, which now boasts a 125W TDP. Is AMD able to deliver on their promises though? Find out in today's article!
Nov 3, 2009   [ View Similar Articles | View Comments ]
Shattered Horizon Review
Shattered Horizon Review
FutureMark, well known for their popular 3DMark benchmarks, is venturing into new territory with Shattered Horizon. This multiplayer shooter is perhaps best known for its system requirements -- the game supports DX10 only -- but there's more underneath the surface of this game than fancy visuals. Is it worth its $20 price tag though? Read Vandy's take inside!
Nov 2, 2009   [ View Similar Articles | View Comments ]
Borderlands PC Review
Borderlands PC Review
Is it an RPG or is it an FPS? Borderlands blends the best elements of both in one entertaining package. Vandy has spent the past week playing the PC version of the game and came away rather impressed. Read his full thoughts on the game in today's review!
Oct 29, 2009   [ View Similar Articles | View Comments ]
AMD Athlon II X3 435/Athlon II X2 240e Performance Preview
AMD Athlon II X3 435/Athlon II X2 240e Performance Preview
Today AMD is introducing 8 new Athlon II CPUs intended to service different segments of the budget CPU market. For HTPC users, new 45W dual, triple, and quad core offerings should deliver good performance along with low power, while performance junkies on a budget will want to look at AMD's new Athlon II X3 CPUs. See how the new chips stack up in terms of performance and OC'ing in this article!
Oct 19, 2009   [ View Similar Articles | View Comments ]
EVGA P55 FTW Review
EVGA P55 FTW Review
Looking for a good P55 motherboard to OC your CPU beyond 4GHz? If so, you may want to check out EVGA's P55 FTW. With its extra ATX12V connector, this motherboard can send up to 600W of juice to the CPU, and it's got more voltage settings in BIOS than 95% of the general public needs. But that's just barely scratching the surface of what this board can do. Check out today's review for the full details!
Oct 16, 2009   [ View Similar Articles | View Comments ]
ATI Radeon HD 5770/5750 Performance Preview
ATI Radeon HD 5770/5750 Performance Preview
With prices ranging from $109-$159, ATI's Radeon 5700 series of cards bring DX11 gaming to mainstream price points and usher in new levels of energy efficiency. But are they powerful enough to dethrone ATI's Radeon 4800 series cards? Yes and no. Read today's article for more info!
Oct 12, 2009   [ View Similar Articles | View Comments ]
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Review
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Review
While it's not the true sequel to Operation Flashpoint, Dragon Rising is billed as a modern tactical sim just like its predecessor. Does it live up to these claims? Read Vandy's take in today's review!
Oct 9, 2009   [ View Similar Articles | View Comments ]
Batman: Arkham Asylum PhysX Features and Performance
Batman: Arkham Asylum PhysX Features and Performance
One eye candy feature PC users can enjoy over the console edition of Batman: AA is PhysX. Rocksteady's PhysX implementation is more than just tearing cloth and added objects too, although that's of course in there. Vandy goes over the features and performance of PhysX in Batman: AA in this article!
Oct 6, 2009   [ View Similar Articles | View Comments ]
ATI Radeon 5850 Performance Preview
ATI Radeon 5850 Performance Preview
Not everyone's got $400 to spend on a shiny new Radeon 5870 card, which is why it can be argued that ATI's Radeon 5850 is the more relevant GPU for a lot of gamers and hardware enthusiasts. Based on the same DX11 RV870 architecture as the 5870, the 5850 delivers next-generation performance in a smaller, more efficient package, and most importantly it's priced for less than $300. ATI pitches it as their answer to the GeForce GTX 285...See how it compares in this article!
Sep 29, 2009   [ View Similar Articles | View Comments ]
Overclocking the Radeon HD 5870
Overclocking the Radeon HD 5870
We weren't satisfied with the 900MHz core/1300MHz memory speeds we hit last week with our Radeon 5870 boards. We wanted to see how far ATI's latest flagship GPU could be pushed, and how well it could perform at those speeds. We also wanted to see which component delivered better performance results: OC'ing the memory, or OC'ing the GPU?

Fortunately thanks to AMD's GPU Clock Tool, we now have unlimited speeds on tap for OC'ing. Is 1GHz within reach? Find out in today's article!
Sep 28, 2009   [ View Similar Articles | View Comments ]





 Latest Headlines
Dragon Age: The Quick Reviewing (15)
Modern Warfare 2 PC limited to 9v9 matches (27)
RAGE won't support dedicated servers either (22)
NVIDIA earns $107.6 million in Q3 (2)
Battlefield Bad Company 2 beta plans announced (2)
Today's News >>
Today's Siteseeing >>


 Table of Contents


 Talk Back
Which GeForce FX 5900 XT board one the comparison in your eyes? Are you surprised so few boards offer hardware-monitoring support? Voice your thoughts in the news comments!

Check Out These Related Articles >>
ATI Radeon HD 5770/5750 Performance Preview
ATI Radeon HD 5770/5750 Performance Preview
Batman: Arkham Asylum PhysX Features and Performance
Batman: Arkham Asylum PhysX Features and Performance
ATI Radeon 5850 Performance Preview
ATI Radeon 5850 Performance Preview
Overclocking the Radeon HD 5870
Overclocking the Radeon HD 5870
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Performance Preview
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Performance Preview
MSI R4890 Super Overclocked (SOC) Review
MSI R4890 Super Overclocked (SOC) Review
Gigabyte GV-R489OC-1GD 4890 Review
Gigabyte GV-R489OC-1GD 4890 Review
FiringSquad is powered by... Back to Top Site MapContact UsAdvertise With Us Privacy StatementAbout Us  
News RSSSiteseeing RSSArticle RSS   © 1998-2009 FS Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved