Specifications

GeForce FX 5900: Building on NV30’s roots

From the outset, NVIDIA has stated that the NV30 core found in GeForce FX 5800/5800 Ultra would be the foundation for NVIDIA’s entire range of DirectX 9 products. From the $79 GeForce FX 5200 all the way up to the $499 GeForce FX 5900 Ultra (NV35), NVIDIA’s entire GeForce FX family supports the same 2.0+ pixel and vertex shaders that will be found in the next generation of games and 3D applications. Lets take a look at the rest of the bells and whistles that make up the GeForce FX 5900:

The list

256-bit memory interface supports up to 256MB memory

Wider memory data path with next generation controller technology for superior performance and throughput

NVIDIA CineFX 2.0 engine

Advanced pixel shaders deliver 2x the floating-point shader pixel performance of previous generations

Support for DirectX 9.0 pixel and vertex shaders 2.0+

Long pixel programs up to 1,024 instructions

Long vertex programs up to 256 static instructions with up to 65,536 instructions executed

128-bit, studio-quality, floating-point precision computation through the entire rendering pipeline

Native hardware support for 32 bpp, 64 bpp, and 128 bpp rendering modes

Up to 12 pixel shader operations/clock

Up to 16 textures per rendering pass

Intellisample HCT performance technology

Increased visual quality at higher resolutions through advances in compression, anisotropic filtering, and antialiasing technology

Support for advanced lossless compression algorithms for both color, texture, and z data at even higher resolutions and frame rates

Ultrashadow technology

Accelerates shadow volumes for next-generation games

Accurately maintains shadows while discarding non-useful information

Advanced display pipeline with full NVIDIA nView capabilities

Notes

Like GeForce FX 5800, GeForce FX 5900 is built on TSMC’s 0.13-micron manufacturing process with copper interconnect technology. NVIDIA recently announced a foundry deal with IBM that will be used for its next generation part, due this summer. This next generation core will take advantage of IBM’s latest manufacturing technologies such as copper interconnects, silicon-on-insulator transistors (SOI) and low-k dielectric insulation on larger, 300mm wafers.

Meet Vulcan, the god of fire

Vulcan looks pretty mad

Vulcan crushes his opponents with a sledgehammer

GeForce FX 5900 contains approximately 5 million more transistors than GeForce FX 5800, bringing the total to 130 million transistors. NVIDIA has also reduced the core clock frequency of GeForce FX 5900 Ultra to 450MHz (from 500MHz), which should help the 5900 Ultra achieve higher yields than the 5800 Ultra. To correspond with this, NVIDIA has also dropped the FX Flow heat pipe cooler in favor of a more traditional aluminum heatsink. The end result is that GeForce FX 5900 Ultra operates considerably quieter than GeForce FX 5800 Ultra – it’s essentially a night and day difference! We’ll discuss the new cooling unit in more detail a bit later.

The other aspect that really stands out is GeForce FX 5900’s 256-bit memory interface, twice the width of any previous NVIDIA product. This was implemented to address one of the chief complaints of GeForce FX 5800 Ultra: its lack of memory bandwidth.