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.
Batman: Arkham City PC Review Batman: Arkham City is the sequel to 2009’s smash-hit action game Batman: Arkham Asylum. As the name suggests, you will be reprising your role as the Caped Crusader and going against an even larger 'prison' filled with Gotham's criminals and villains. A textbook example on how to do a proper sequel, Arkham City takes what worked in the original, excised or improved upon what didn’t, and elevated everything to an even greater scope. The PC version suffered from a few months of delay, but in that time, Rocksteady worked closely to NVIDIA to implement some familiar technologies from the last game, such as PhysX and 3D Vision, along with new DirectX 11 optimizations. But how well was the whole package executed? Read on to find out!
Saints Row: The Third PC Review Saints Row is one of most unique series of games to build upon the open-world action template forged by Grand Theft Auto, and has met with plenty of critical and commercial success since it began on consoles back in 2006. This latest iteration, titled Saints Row: The Third promises the most outlandish fun and freedom of customization of them all, and in a much more PC-friendly package than its predecessor. Does it live up to those expectations and, more importantly, is it worth the price of admission? Find out in Will's latest review!
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim PC Review The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is Bethesda Softworks’ latest offering in their series of epic fantasy RPGs, as well as one of the most highly-anticipated PC titles of 2011. As the Dovahkiin, or Dragonborn, prepare to take the fight to the mythical beasts that have returned to the realm after centuries of slumber, all the while exploring a huge and highly-detailed open world.
The PC version of the game promises enhanced graphical fidelity, standard RPG trimmings such as hotkeys and quick-save, as well as unbridled mod support, something we’ll all be thankful for once they release that SDK. Skyrim has already sold millions of copies and set records for play-time on Steam... Find out why in today's review, which happens to be one of the biggest and most in-depth articles on the subject out there!
L.A. Noire Complete Edition PC Review L.A. Noire, as the name clearly states, is a video game built on the tropes of one of the greatest periods of American cinema: film noir. Developed by the now defunct Australian developer Team Bondi and published by Rockstar Games, this title has been out on consoles for a full six months before finally making its way to the PC. This “Complete Edition” of the game features improved graphics, keyboard/mouse controls, and every bit of previously-released DLC for free. But was it truly worth the wait? Read on and find out!
Intel Core i7-3960X Sandy Bridge-E Performance Review
Today marks the launch date for Intel’s Sandy Bridge-E line of processors, a new family of high-end Core i7 products based on the LGA 2011 platform. This new socket is poised to replace the existing LGA 1366 specification used by the more powerful Nehalem and Westmere parts from the past couple years, specifically Bloomfield and Gulftown, the Core i7-9xx+ line of CPUs.
With 6 cores, 15MB of cache, and support for quad-channel DDR3-1600 memory, the Core i7-3960X sounds like quite a catch. Want to know more about it and how it performs? Read on!
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Xbox 360 Review
The self-appointed "most anticipated game in history" launched worldwide this past Tuesday. Why, it's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, of course (of course), what else? Unsurprisingly, the military FPS debate between this and Battlefield 3 rages on, but now that both have been released, surely we can take a look and objectively evaluate them both? Luke's taken the Xbox version of MW3 for a spin this week, so to find out what he thinks of it in today's review!
Stronghold 3 Review
The latest sequel in the long-running real-time strategy franchise from FireFly Studios, Stronghold 3 is all about building your dream castle and defending it against sieging enemies. Almost exactly one decade after the first game was released, this new title promises a return to the classic and well-received gameplay that has been strayed so far from in more recent iterations. Does it live up to those expectations? Will (AKA Synchronous Failure) tells us all about it in his first official FiringSquad review, so read on!
Battlefield 3 PC Review - Single-player Impressions
One of the most highly-anticipated PC games of the year is upon us; Battlefield 3 is now available in North America! EA/DICE have finally delivered a sequel to the core Battlefield franchise, a proper follow-up to BF2. Having played through the game's single-player campaign already, ahead of the multiplayer festivities kicking off around midnight, I figured I'd share my impressions ASAP. Is it really a worthy addition to the core Battlefield series, or just another bullet point on the back of the box? Read on and find out!
Wrecked: Revenge Revisited Supersonic Software Interview
Following up on our hands-on preview from earlier this month, here's an interview with Supersonic Software, creators of Wrecked: Revenge Revisited. The game's coming out on XBLA and PSN in a matter of weeks, but for now, Luke chats with the developer about its predecessors Mashed and Micro Machines, how difficult it can be to get an indie game published, the closure of Codemasters' Guildford branch, and more!
Orcs Must Die! PC Review Orcs Must Die! is the first release from an independent developer named Robot Entertainment. Fans of classic real-time strategy games may have heard that name before, as the outfit is comprised of many veterans from Ensemble Studios, creators of the Age of Empires series.
Equal parts action and strategy, this is a tower defense game that not only puts you in command, but on the front lines of combat, as well. Slaughter thousands of orcs, ogres and other vile creatures of fantasy that invade your fortresses through 24 levels of the story-based campaign. With high levels of replayability thanks to its scoring and leaderboard functionality, multiple difficulty levels, and various styles of play, it sounds a steal at only $15. Does it deliver on all that’s promised, though? Read on and find out!
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!
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