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MSI NBox N5900 Ultra Review August 11, 2003 Brandon Bell |
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Summary: MSI's NBox is arguably one of the most groundbreaking game bundles ever to ship with a video card. Inside you'll find Battlefield 1942, Command and Conquer: Generals, and Unreal 2. Oh, and don't forget the 800dpi optical USB mouse with blue LED! The N5900 Ultra is the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra variant, it boasts MSI's unique Twin Flow copper cooling system and video input support. Read all about this exciting new graphics card in today's review!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 15 ) |
If you fast-forward back to March 2003, you’ll recall that both ATI and NVIDIA had a number of announcements to share with the public. Chief among these was news of their latest notebook graphics products. In the case of ATI, they were busy launching their MOBILITY RADEON 9600 family. NVIDIA countered with notebook graphics products of their own, the GeForce FX Go5200 and Go5600. These products were largely based on the respective manufacturer’s desktop graphics products, marking the first time DX9 graphics were announced for the mobile market.
Whenever a next-generation part makes its way to a new segment of consumers, it’s only natural that the announcement will generate a lot of buzz among the press; we were guilty of covering the launch as well. However, NVIDIA made one other important announcement around that same timeframe: NVIDIA was granted exclusive distribution rights to EA’s current and upcoming titles.
As the world’s largest games publisher, the EA deal gave NVIDIA and its board partners access to an extensive library of games. We’re not talking third-rate video games here either; EA has some pretty established brands. EA Sports alone has big names like Madden football, Tiger Woods golf, and NBA Live. EA Games boasts titles like SimCity, The Sims, Battlefield 1942, Medal of Honor, and Need for Speed.
When one of the most important differentiating factors for video card manufacturers is the game bundle that ships with their products, it goes without saying that this announcement was a pretty big deal. MSI, the world’s largest video card manufacturer (based on a study conducted by Goldman Sachs) and one of NVIDIA’s Tier One board partners, is the first third-party graphics card manufacturer to take advantage of the EA/NVIDIA deal, in the form of the product we’re reviewing today, the NBox N5900 Ultra. This card ships with Battlefield 1942, Command and Conquer: Generals, and Unreal 2: The Awakening!
The hardware
Based on the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra GPU, the N5900 Ultra is not another GeForce FX 5900 Ultra reference board like the MSI FX5900U-VTD256 we reviewed last month. As it’s targeted at the enthusiast gamer, MSI has elected to equip the N5900 Ultra with an extreme cooling setup as well.
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Like the GeForce FX 5900-based FX5900-TD128, the N5900 Ultra sports dual fans, one located in the traditional location above the graphics core, while the second fan is placed on the underside of the card, directly beneath the NV35 graphics core.
But it doesn’t stop there; MSI also includes a USB mouse in the package. This isn’t any ordinary mouse either; it’s an optical mouse with a blue LED!
SIDEBAR: Nbox N5900 Ultra Product Webpage
| Specifications | Page:: ( 2 / 15 ) |
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra core
With NVIDIA’s GeForce FX 5900 Ultra providing the brawn behind MSI’s NBox N5900 Ultra, you’re probably pretty familiar with the guts behind this video card, but just in case we’ll provide a quick recap.
The GeForce FX 5900 Ultra is built on NVIDIA’s NV35 core, which is based largely on the NV30 core powering the GeForce FX 5800 family; the key addition being NV35’s 256-bit memory interface, twice as wide as its predecessor. The new interface is capable of providing up to 27.2GB/sec of peak memory bandwidth to the graphics processor, and is outfitted with 256MB of DDR memory operating at 425MHz (850MHz effective).
NV35 is equipped with four pixel pipelines, with two texture units per pixel pipeline. This 4x2 architecture means that NVIDIA sacrifices some pixel fill rate in preference for texture fill rate. As most of today’s games utilize multi-texturing, this design decision isn’t as big of an issue as it was initially made out to be, but ATI can correctly claim that they’re the only manufacturer with a true eight pixel pipeline graphics architecture on the market. To help increase yields, NVIDIA lowered the clock speed of GeForce FX 5900 Ultra to 450MHz (from 500MHz in GeForce FX 5800 Ultra) so technically the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra takes a step back in overall fill rate (4 Gigatexels/sec in GeForce FX 5800 Ultra versus 3.6 Gigatexels/sec in GeForce FX 5900 Ultra) but the added memory bandwidth more than makes up for the difference, allowing the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra to shine in high resolution and/or environments with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering.
The final addition to GeForce FX 5900 Ultra is NVIDIA’s UltraShadow technology. When supported by the developer, UltraShadow reduces the workload on the graphics processor by preventing it from rendering regions of the shadow that are unnecessary. Think of it as occlusion culling, but for shadows exclusively.
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First impressions
Physically, the NBox N5900 Ultra looks like a dramatic departure from NVIDIA’s reference design. For starters, you’ve got a massive copper cooler cooling the graphics core and memory. A similar cooling system is also employed on the underside of the card, although the fan is slightly smaller. And of course, as an MSI graphics card, the NBox N5900 Ultra is donned with MSI’s fire engine red PCB.
However, if we take a closer look at the board, we see that MSI has implemented NVIDIA’s reference board layout to the letter. The card even ships with the Philips SAA7108AE video encoder/decoder chip. This addition brings video input capabilities to the NBOX N5900 Ultra.
SIDEBAR: Like the ASUS V9950 Ultra, the fans on the N5900 Ultra remained at the same RPM regardless of activity. NVIDIA reference cards run at lower RPMs while in 2D mode.
| Board analysis | Page:: ( 3 / 15 ) |
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As we just mentioned, MSI has implemented a cooling setup that looks pretty menacing. On the top of the card you’ve got a one-piece copper cooler. The area immediately above the GPU has longer fins for increased surface area, which should help draw heat off the graphics core. Of course, this also means that the PCI slot next to the AGP slot should not be used (physically, a PCI card fits, but it’s a very tight fit). Personally we don’t see this as a huge negative, as most gamers and enthusiasts leave this slot free for better airflow anyway, and the added cooling is always nice.
By going with a one piece cooler, the surface area of the heatsink is increased. But one downside is that the heat being generated by the GPU is passed on to the memory modules as well. This is why GeForce FX 5900 Ultra cards manufactured by NVIDIA feature two piece coolers, one for the GPU, and a separate solution for the memory modules (although the cooling setup on the underside of the card is one piece). To help combat this, MSI has gone with fins that are much thicker than what we’re used to seeing. Manufacturers typically integrate as many thin fins as possible. To increase cooling even further, the copper fins are actually taller on the edges, how’s that for attention to detail!
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On the underside of the card, MSI relies on a two-piece design. For the underside of the graphics core, the NBox N5900 Ultra sports a heatsink/fan unit that looks like it’s been borrowed straight from the GeForce FX 5200-based FX5200-VTDR128. The heatsink itself is considerably smaller than the heatsink on the top of the card, although both are made of copper.
For cooling the 128MB of memory on the bottom of the card, a separate copper heatsink is used. We see thick fins on this heatsink as well, although fin height is uniform.
Since the heatsink/fan unit on the underside of the graphics core protrudes just over half an inch from the bottom of the graphics card, we do have some concerns about size. Quite simply, there may be some motherboards out there that don’t fit properly with the NBox N5900 Ultra. For instance, we had to bend a few fins on the North Bridge of DFI’s LANPARTY PRO875 for the card to fit properly; this is also the case for older revisions of the ASUS P4C800 Deluxe (ours is a 1.03 board). Motherboards based on older Intel chipsets had more space between the chipset’s North Bridge and the AGP interface, so spacing shouldn’t be an issue. nForce2 motherboards should also work perfectly.
The entire apparatus is held in place with six push pins, and MSI uses a liberal amount of paste to cool the memory modules.
In operation, we found MSI’s cooling system to perform on par thermally with the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra cards manufactured by NVIDIA. MSI claims that their system performs up to eight degrees Celsius better than NVIDIA’s reference card, but we found temperatures to be within a degree or two of NVIDIA at idle and during testing.
As far as noise level, the dual fans MSI uses on the NBox N5900 Ultra are very quiet, as they don’t spin very rapidly. Because of this, the noise level of the N5900 Ultra is actually quieter than the FX5900U-VTD256, which is manufactured by NVIDIA. We still heard the squealing we first reported in the FX5900-TD128 review, although we’re glad to say that it wasn’t as loud or as consistent. It still seems to be a problem that affects some GeForce FX 5900 and GeForce FX 5900 Ultra cards however, regardless of manufacturer.
SIDEBAR: MSI refers to its dual fan cooling system as Twin Flow.
| The bundle | Page:: ( 4 / 15 ) |
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For the FX5900U-VTD256 and FX5900-TD128, MSI utilized one of the fanciest retail packages we’ve ever seen. The box dwarfs MSI’s rivals; it’s so large it actually has its own integrated handle (and it needs it)! In contrast, the packaging for the N5900 Ultra is very understated, MSI instead goes with a more businesslike approach. Inside the box you’ll find the N5900 Ultra card first, you then lift the cardboard cutout it rests in to see a treasure chest of goodies: Battlefield 1942, Command and Conquer: Generals, and Unreal 2: The Awakening.
These games aren’t demo versions either, this is the real deal here folks, complete with game manuals (although the Unreal 2 manual that came with our card was written in Mandarin). All too often card manufacturers forget this feature in particular, so we were pleasantly surprised to see that MSI shipped the NBox N5900 Ultra with printed documentation for the games. Also included in the packaging was a copy of Intervideo’s WinProducer and WinCoder.
MSI’s website also lists MSI Media Center, Virtual Drive 7, Restore It 3, and 5.1-channel DVD playback software among the list of bundled software programs, but these applications were not included in the packaging of our card so we believe that to be a misprint. Of course, if you’re considering purchasing the NBox, chances are you want it for the games and with BF1942, C&C Generals, and Unreal 2, the N5900 Ultra certainly delivers on this aspect in spades: this is clearly the best game bundle we’ve seen ship with a video card.
nMouse
In addition to the games, MSI also includes an 800dpi optical USB mouse within the N5900 Ultra’s packaging. Dubbed nMouse, the top of the mouse is constructed of brushed aluminum, while the sides and bottom are composed of plastic. This gives the mouse a hollow feel that’s a bit creepy in all honesty. The nMouse also features a scroll wheel with a swank blue LED underneath it.
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Rounding out the bundle of hardware accessories is MSI’s standard VIVO module, a DVI-to-VGA adapter, S-Video cable, and a power adapter.
SIDEBAR: Is it just us, or does the nMouse look a lot like Logitech’s MouseMan Traveler?
| Test Systems | Page:: ( 5 / 15 ) |
System Setup
AMD Athlon XP 3200+
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe Rev 2.0
512MB OCZ EL PC3200 (DDR400) SDRAM
ATI RADEON 9800 PRO – 256MB
ATI RADEON 9800 PRO – 128MB
Driver version CATALYST 3.5
ASUS V9950 Ultra
eVGA e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra
MSI GeForce FX5900-TD128
MSI Nbox N5900 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 reference card
Driver version Detonator 44.71
30GB IBM Deskstar DTLA 307030 ATA/100 Hard Drive
Windows XP Professional
DirectX 9.0
Benchmarks
NASCAR Racing 2003 Season (Bristol custom demo)
Quake III: Arena version 1.32 (fscrusher demo)
Unreal Tournament 2003 (T2 custom demo)
IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles (The Black Death track)
Splinter Cell (FS custom demo)
SIDEBAR: MSI plans on making four variants of the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra alone!
| NASCAR Racing 2003 Season | Page:: ( 6 / 15 ) |
Nascar 2003
SIDEBAR: Vsync was disabled for NASCAR.
| IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles | Page:: ( 7 / 15 ) |
IL-2 Sturmovik: FB
SIDEBAR: There were lots of good football games on this weekend.
| Quake III | Page:: ( 8 / 15 ) |
Quake III - OpenGL
SIDEBAR: MSI also plans on making an NBox variant of the GeForce FX 5900.
| Unreal Tournament 2003 | Page:: ( 9 / 15 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003 – Direct3D
SIDEBAR: The T2 custom demo was recorded online and is based on the map DM-Insidious.
| Splinter Cell | Page:: ( 10 / 15 ) |
Splinter Cell – Direct3D
SIDEBAR: Did you know that you can pick up StarLancer for $2 at EB?
| IL2:FB 4xAA, 8xAF | Page:: ( 11 / 15 ) |
IL-2 Sturmovik: FB
SIDEBAR: We’re still planning on adding Lock On: Modern Air Combat to our suite of benchmarks once it’s released.
| UT 2003 4xAA 8xAF | Page:: ( 12 / 15 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003
SIDEBAR: Unreal Tournament 2004 is currently scheduled for a November release.
| Overclocking | Page:: ( 13 / 15 ) |
Quake 3
SIDEBAR: MSI includes a pretty handy overclocking slider inside their driver now, much better than the Flash-based 3D Turbo! Experience utility they previously used.
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 14 / 15 ) |
Pros
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra core: While it’s still debatable who has the fastest graphics core, with both ATI and NVIDIA claiming their fair share of wins, there can be no doubt that the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra chip powering the NBox N5900 Ultra has more than enough power for all of today’s latest games. And with its 256-bit memory interface it has the memory bandwidth to crank up the screen resolution and/or image-enhancing features like anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering without suffering too much of a performance hit. Finally, the 128-bit floating point architecture supports 2.0 pixel and vertex shaders, so you’re all set from a features perspective for the next generation of games that will be released over the course of the next 12-18 months.
Software bundle: The NBox N5900 Ultra comes with AAA titles Command and Conquer: Generals (which earned FiringSquad’s Ricochet Award), Battlefield 1942, and, arguably Unreal 2: The Awakening. C&C and Unreal 2 were both released in February of this year, so they’re barely six-month old titles, while Battlefield 1942 is one of the hottest shooters online right now.
Sure, if you’re a hardcore shooter fan, chances are pretty good you probably already own Battlefield 1942, and maybe even Unreal 2. But how many of you own all three? We doubt many gamers could raise their hand if asked that question. MSI’s NBox bundle is easily the best game bundle on the planet right now, and probably the best the market has ever seen.
Cooling: MSI’s Twin Flow cooling system is composed of copper rather than aluminum due to its better heat transfer characteristics. This allows MSI to use fans with lower RPMs without sacrificing performance, in fact Twin Flow performed a shade better than the stock reference cooler NVIDIA uses on its cards. The main benefit of Twin Flow though is its mundane noise level. After the fiasco with FX Flow, card manufacturers have been trying hard to battle noise output. Twin Flow does an excellent job of dismissing this concern.
Price premium: Officially, the NBox N5900 Ultra retails for $50 over MSI’s GeForce FX 5900 Ultra-based FX5900U-VTD256. From a hardware perspective the card is the same, but you don’t get the awesome game bundle or the USB mouse. As far as cooling is concerned, you’re guaranteed to get Twin-Flow if you choose to purchase the N5900 Ultra, while you may or may not get Twin-Flow if you elect to go with the FX5900U-VTD256. Our FX5900U card shipped with the standard NVIDIA reference card and cooling, although we’ve heard and received reports from some consumers whose cards utilized MSI’s Twin-Flow cooling and red PCB.
Based on EB’s current pricing, the game bundle alone is a $122 value (Unreal 2 - $37, Command and Conquer Generals - $45, Battlefield 1942 $40), so you’re getting a pretty good value. MSI expects some of the $50 premium to go away once NBox supply catches up and price competition sets in among retailers.
Video input: MSI has integrated the same Philips encoder chip that ships with NVIDIA-manufactured GeForce FX 5900 Ultra cards. And with the Intervideo software included in the packaging, you’ve got video editing support right out of the box.
Cons
Price: GeForce FX 5900 Ultra cards don’t come cheap, and with the N5900 Ultra’s over-the-top bundle, it will probably never be one of the cheaper 5900 Ultra cards on the market. Currently, a handful of listings are up on Price Watch, and none of them are offered below $600. With FX5900U-VTD256 listings as low as $471 and most at $520 or more, clearly the N5900 Ultra is selling for a premium price right now.
SIDEBAR: The only feature the NBox N5900 Ultra is really missing is dual DVI outputs. Wouldn’t that have been nice!
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 15 / 15 ) |
FiringSquad says:
With so many graphics cards shipping with obscure or outdated game titles, it’s refreshing to see MSI include so many compelling games in one package. Hopefully the arrival of the NBox will inspire other card manufacturers to seriously reevaluate the game bundles that ship with their cards as well. We don’t necessarily need three cutting-edge titles and a mouse like MSI has provided, but perhaps one AAA title and something like a $10 or $15 price premium is just what the doctor ordered.
It’s because of the NBox bundle that MSI’s N5900 Ultra has earned our Bull’s Eye Award. With an MSRP of $550, there are certainly better values out there (with the $240 RADEON 9800 being our current overall favorite), but when you factor in the N5900 Ultra’s excellent packaging, we think $50 is a small premium to pay if you’re in the market for a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra card.
Just consider what you’re getting, $122 worth of games, a cooling system that is better than NVIDIA’s reference design, and an 800dpi optical mouse. And just like the cards manufactured by NVIDIA, the N5900 Ultra is VIVO (video-in/video-out) capable. Once supply catches up to demand we wouldn’t be surprised to see this premium cut by $10 or $20 at retail, as MSI has a pretty good history of flooding the market with cards. And even if you already have Battlefield 1942, you’re still getting a pretty good deal.
At the very least we’re glad to see that someone has taken the initiative to challenge the current formula in the video card market. Now if MSI could put together a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra card with just the bare essentials and give the card a bargain basement price; they’d have high-end cards at the low-end, midrange, and upper echelon of 5900 Ultra cards, making them the only manufacturer with this level of flexibility.
MSI’s NBox bundle will go down as one of the most exciting game bundles ever, and the N5900 Ultra is only the opening salvo. MSI also plans on releasing GeForce FX 5600 Ultra and GeForce FX 5200 versions of the NBox. If MSI is able to price these cards competitively, they could really stir things up in the video card market this summer.
SIDEBAR: What do you think of the NBox bundle? Is this the best game bundle ever or do you hate game bundles entirely? Voice your thoughts in the news comments and make your thoughts heard!