Introduction

Fresh off the launch of the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and GeForce FX 5700 family last October, retail graphics cards from NVIDIA’s third-party board manufacturers are quickly rolling in. The first card manufacturer to supply us with boards was eVGA. Along with BFG and PNY, these three companies primary purpose is to hold up NVIDIA’s retail presence at chains such as Best Buy, Circuit City, and CompUSA, although boards from these manufacturers can also be found online.

Battle of the high-end cards

GeForce FX 5700 Ultra versus 9600 XT

These boards have menancing coolers

While these card manufacturers duke it out with ATI for retail shelf space, NVIDIA’s other Tier One board partners battleground lies online where they compete with ATI board manufacturers such as Sapphire and Powercolor (as well as ATI). As one of NVIDIA’s oldest board partners, Leadtek enjoys Tier One status, which gives them access to hardware earlier than smaller, younger manufacturers that also base their card designs on NVIDIA GPUs. As a result, Leadtek is able to bring their retail products to market right after a new GPU is announced. In some instances, Leadtek can be well into the design of their second generation boards before Tier Two or Tier Three card manufacturers release their first generation cards. Leadtek was also one of a handful of card manufacturers to produce and market a GeForce FX 5800 Ultra card before it was ultimately discontinued by NVIDIA.

Unlike the BFGs and PNYs of the NVIDIA-based world however, Leadtek is not content with just taking NVIDIA’s reference board and slapping their sticker on it. Leadtek will often take the NVIDIA reference design and add improvements of their own, unique to their cards.

9800 XT is much shorter

Check out the RAMsinks on the Leadtek

Leadtek card compared to eVGA

For instance, as consumers made the move to higher screen resolutions thanks to cheaper monitors and newer graphics cards that were capable of pushing them, it was quickly discovered that many of NVIDIA’s board partners were skimping on the output circuitry used on their boards, resulting in 2D displays that looked grainy at high resolutions. Leadtek rose to the challenge by utilizing higher quality filters, resulting in razor-sharp text at high as well as low resolutions, without artifacts such as ghosting or blurring.

For the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, Leadtek incorporated a unique cooling design for their card, dubbed Twin Turbo II. Twin Turbo II utilized a ducted enclosure with dual fans – one fan acted as the intake, supplying the core with fresh, cool air, while the second fan acted as an exhaust, expelling the hot air from the enclosure. This unique combination was quite effective at keeping the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra core cool, although we did note that the enclosure would get hot to the touch during overclocking.

Both cards feature copper coolers

eVGA is 100% NVIDIA reference

Now Leadtek is back again, with their GeForce FX 5950 Ultra based A380 Ultra TDH MyViVo and GeForce FX 5700 Ultra-based WinFast A360 Ultra TDH. Let’s take a look at what Leadtek has done to make them stand out from the competition.