Board analysis

WinFast A350 Ultra TDH MyVIVO card

Bottom of the card

Cooling exposed

Twin Turbo-II cooling

The first (and most obvious) part that stands out on Leadtek’s A350 Ultra TDH MyVIVO is the extreme cooling system Leadtek has implemented for this card, which Leadtek has appropriately named Twin Turbo-II. The Twin Turbo-II cooling system starts with the copper heatsink Leadtek uses to cool the NV35 core the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra is based on. Leadtek uses one large copper heatsink that not only covers the core, it extends all the way to the top of the video card for increased surface area. This copper heatsink is flanked by an aluminum heatsink, which is located above the memory modules. As you can see in the picture above, the aluminum heatsink is no slouch in size either. This two-piece cooling design forms a formidable 1-2 punch to draw heat off the GPU and its memory.

The exhaust fan

Leadtek's Twin Turbo-II fans

From here, Leadtek has integrated an ingenious dual fan design for cooling the GPU. See the fan on the left, near the DVI and VGA connectors? That fan is the intake fan. It draws in cool outside air which is then brought inside the enclosure Leadtek has grafted. The fan on the right is the exhaust fan. It grabs the hot air off the GPU and memory heatsinks, and blows it outside at an angle opposite of the intake fan. This cycle is repeated constantly with one fan supplying the cool air, while another fan ejects the hot air. Think of it as a poor man’s heat pipe.

Leadtek claims Twin Turbo-II is the result of extensive wind tunnel testing borrowed from the aerospace industry. Whether it really is or not, we don’t know, but we certainly saw that it works. Core temperature readings on our card were about four degrees Celsius cooler than NVIDIA reference (measured by the hardware monitoring built in to the NVIDIA display driver) although the card itself would get hot to the touch after extended testing while the card was overclocked. Clearly Twin Turbo-II was working overtime though, as the exhaust fan was cranking out more hot air than a politician during re-election. We actually wish Leadtek offered an “extreme cooling” setting for end users who wouldn’t mind really cranking up the RPMs for added cooling. Acoustically the WinFast A350 Ultra TDH was a little bit louder than the other dual fan solutions we’ve tested from ASUS and MSI, but it was still nowhere close to the unbearable levels of GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. We’d rank it a hair below NVIDIA reference when both cards are operating at full tilt during overclocking.

As an added bonus, Leadtek even includes dust covers for the fans for easier cleaning!

Another shot of the copper cooling

Power connector parallel to PCB

Improved filters

Besides the added cooling, Leadtek also uses better AGP bus filters for increased motherboard compatibility (although it should be noted that we’re not aware of any compatibility issues with 5900 Ultra) and overclocking as well as higher quality video filters. This results in cleaner video signals. Finally, Leadtek has done something we wish every 5900 manufacturer would do: they’ve mounted the Molex power connector parallel to the edge of the card rather than perpendicular. This makes installation so much easier, as you don’t need as much cable to feed your card with juice.