 | |||
|
|
|
|
|
 |
eVGA e-GeForce FX 5950 Ultra Review October 23, 2003 Brandon Bell |
|
 |
|
| |
Summary: Disappointed with the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra's 27.2GB/sec of memory bandwidth? How does 30.4GB/sec sound to you! NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5950 Ultra spec list reads like a car bred in Italy, but how does it perform? Read on, as we take eVGA’s e-GeForce FX 5950 Ultra out for a spin right here!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 14 ) |
Fresh off ATI’s RADEON 9800 XT launch, today NVIDIA is countering back with a new card of their own to challenge ATI at the high-end of the market, the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. But if you were expecting a next-generation part, we’ve got bad news for you, the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra is not that product. We know that many of you will be disappointed to hear this in particular, but if you look over recent history, this shouldn’t be that surprising.
If you recall the launch of DirectX 8, NVIDIA pounced on the arrival of the new API with its GeForce3 graphics accelerator. The GeForce3 wasn’t a spectacular performance improvement over GeForce2 Ultra, but it supported pixel and vertex shaders in hardware, making it the first DX8 card on the market. NVIDIA then followed GeForce3 up with GeForce3 Titanium approximately seven months later.
GeForce 3 Titanium was essentially nothing more than GeForce3 at higher clock speeds, although newer drivers did enable new features for both cards. The GF3 Titanium wasn’t groundbreaking, but it did bring DirectX 8 gaming to a more feasible price point.
[image]
| <% print_image("01"); %> | <% print_image("02"); %> | <% print_image("03"); %> |
Then came GeForce4 Ti. Once again NVIDIA had released a DX8 board, although they added a second vertex shader, increased the clock speeds, and optimized the memory subsystem and pixel shading capabilities for improved performance. GeForce4 was again, nothing revolutionary, but it was enough to hold the market over until the arrival of DirectX 9.
Now that DX9 has been here for nearly a year, we’ve gone through the first and second generation of DX9 graphics cards. Neither ATI or NVIDIA are ready to unveil their 3.0 pixel/vertex shader cards, but at the same time neither wants the lucrative holiday shopping season to go by without a new product to sell. Hence the reason why ATI unveils its RADEON 9800/9600 XT which are essentially the RADEON 9800 PRO/RADEON 9600 PRO from last Spring with higher clock speeds, and NVIDIA is here today with the “new” GeForce FX 5950 Ultra.
We put the word new in quotes because despite the new product name, the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra is nothing more than a GeForce FX 5900 Ultra at higher clock speeds.
That’s right, in case you were wondering if you read that line correctly, you didn’t. The GeForce FX 5950 is based on the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra’s NV35 core, which supports NVIDIA’s CineFX 2.0 architecture, UltraShadow technology, and Intellisample HCT. If you’re not up to speed on these terms, you can read more about these features in our GeForce FX 5900 Ultra preview, but we bet you’re dying to know the new clock speeds: 475MHz core/475MHz memory. That’s an increase of 25MHz over GeForce FX 5900 Ultra’s 450MHz core and 50MHz on the memory (100MHz effective).
Like the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, NVIDIA ships GeForce FX 5950 with 256MB of DDR memory and the GeForce FX 5950 occupies two slots, although NVIDIA has come up with a new cooling solution for GeForce FX 5950 Ultra...
SIDEBAR: e-GeForce FX 5950 Ultra Webpage
| GeForce FX 5950 card | Page:: ( 2 / 14 ) |
[image]
| <% print_image("04"); %> | <% print_image("05"); %> |
This is eVGA’s e-GeForce FX 5950 Ultra card, which is based on NVIDIA’s GeForce FX 5950 Ultra reference board design. eVGA and NVIDIA have a very close relationship where NVIDIA manufactures eVGA’s boards, who then turn around and sell them to consumers. If you read our eVGA e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and e-GeForce FX 5600 Ultra reviews, you’ll remember that eVGA was among the first to market with both of these cards thanks in part to this relationship.
New cooling
At first glance, the e-GeForce FX 5950 Ultra looks somewhat similar to NVIDIA’s reference GeForce FX 5800 Ultra card. They both have ducting systems which take the air from outside the case to help cool the graphics core. The similarities pretty much end there though, as the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra doesn’t rely on heat pipe technology for cooling. It’s a conventional design fed entirely by air, with just an intake vent, the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra had vents for intake and exhaust. While the use of outside air is definitely an improvement over conventional designs (which rely on the air within the system case), a filter isn’t present on the intake vent to prevent dust from accumulating. This could become a real problem if you leave your case on the ground and/or near a window.
[image]
| <% print_image("06"); %> | <% print_image("07"); %> |
The heatsink itself is composed of aluminum and while it isn’t as large as the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra’s heatsink, as we mentioned earlier it will occupy the nearest PCI slot in your system. Air goes straight through the duct which then passes over the fins before exiting out the right side of the card, where a large one-piece plate is used to cool the memory modules. The plate can get pretty hot during extended use, especially while overclocking, but still nowhere near the levels of GeForce FX 5800 Ultra’s copper unit.
The fan itself is large yet quiet; at full speed it’s actually a little quieter than the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra’s fan, although in 2D mode the deeper tone of the fan’s motor is a little more audible. And like the GeForce FX 5900, the FX 5950 Ultra requires an external power source to operate at full clock speeds.
The bundle
eVGA bundles the card with Ghost Recon, America’s Army, NVIDIA’s 3D technology demos, NVDVD 2.0, WindowBlinds, PowerDirector Pro 2.5 ME, a demo copy of EarthViewer, a trial version of Roxio’s Photosuite 5 and eVGA’s Automated Driver Management (ADM) software.
[image]
| <% print_image("08"); %> |
The ADM software is designed for less experienced users who may not know about chipset and AGP drivers. ADM checks to make sure these drivers are installed on the system, if they’re not, it automatically installs them. This ensures that your system is running at optimal performance and reliability. Once ADM is done checking your system, the graphics driver is installed.
Since the e-GeForce FX 5950 Ultra supports video input, a VIVO (video-in/video-out) cable is included in the packaging, in addition to an S-Video cable and DVI adapter. Overall, it’s not the most exotic bundle on the planet, but keep in mind that eVGA’s boards tend to be priced among the lowest on the market. The inclusion of video editing software should also make creating and editing home movies a breeze.
SIDEBAR: The GeForce FX 5950 fan is set offset of the graphics core to blow air across the heatsink more effectively.
| Test Systems | Page:: ( 3 / 14 ) |
System Setup
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz
ASUS P4C800 Deluxe
512MB OCZ EL PC3200 (DDR400) SDRAM
ATI RADEON 9800 XT
ATI RADEON 9800 PRO
ATI RADEON 9800 128MB
ATI RADEON 9700 PRO
ATI RADEON 8500
Driver version CATALYST 3.8
eVGA e-GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
eVGA e-GeForce FX 5900 Ultra
MSI GeForce FX5900-VTD128
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600
Driver version Detonator 52.16
30GB IBM Deskstar DTLA 307030 ATA/100 Hard Drive
Windows XP Professional
DirectX 9.0b
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)
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (Beyond3D custom demo)
SIDEBAR: Don’t forget our e-GeForce FX 5700 Ultra review.
| NASCAR Racing 2003 Season | Page:: ( 4 / 14 ) |
Nascar 2003: OpenGL (for NV cards)
SIDEBAR: NASCAR will be wrapping up in four races.
| IL-2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles | Page:: ( 5 / 14 ) |
IL-2 Sturmovik: FB: OpenGL
SIDEBAR: Texture thrashing is rampant on the ATI cards with CATALYST 3.8 in this title, but it doesn’t seem to affect performance severely.
| Quake III 4xAA 8xAF | Page:: ( 6 / 14 ) |
Quake III - OpenGL
SIDEBAR: NVIDIA has lowered the price on GeForce FX 5200 Ultra to $100.
| Unreal Tournament 2003 4xAA | Page:: ( 7 / 14 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003 – Direct3D
SIDEBAR: You can check out NVIDIA’s tech demos here.
| Splinter Cell | Page:: ( 8 / 14 ) |
Splinter Cell – Direct3D
SIDEBAR: I still haven’t had the chance to finish Splinter Cell, it was one of the games I was most looking forward to on the PC earlier this year too.
| Tomb Raider | Page:: ( 9 / 14 ) |
Tomb Raider – Direct3D
Notes
After seeing the GeForce FX cards significantly behind RADEON in Tomb Raider, it’s pretty shocking to see how quickly NVIDIA has caught up. We previously disabled features such as Glow and Depth of Field because we run a lot of tests for each review, and these eye candy features drain frame rate, we simply wouldn’t have had the time to test all the NVIDIA cards because they ran so slow with Detonator 45.23. Now all that has changed.
In light of this development, we’ll be reevaluating the settings we select for testing. Depth of field (which is enabled by default) will likely be left on, which certainly will affect the results. In any case, it can’t be denied that NVIDIA’s Detonator 50 drivers made a significant impact in this title.
SIDEBAR: One cool new feature in Detonator 50 is the new grid mode.
| IL2:FB 4xAA 8xAF | Page:: ( 10 / 14 ) |
IL-2 Sturmovik: FB
SIDEBAR: One of the features Forgotten Battles adds over the original IL-2 is pixel-shaded water.
| UT 2003 4xAA 8xAF | Page:: ( 11 / 14 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003
SIDEBAR: NVIDIA’s Detonator 50 drivers were supposed to resolve the pseudo-trilinear issues by including an “application” button, but unfortunately they persist.
| Overclocking | Page:: ( 12 / 14 ) |
Quake 3
Unreal Tournament 2003
SIDEBAR: We used the Coolbits registry modification to overclock the e-GeForce FX 5950 card.
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 13 / 14 ) |
Pros
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra core: While the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra core is nothing new, it still has more than enough power to handle today’s games. It isn’t a groundbreaking improvement over the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, but neither was the RADEON 9800 XT. Both NVIDIA and ATI have chosen to play it conservatively this fall, with the battle for supremacy really heating up at the beginning of next year.
Performance: As NVIDIA’s new flagship product, it goes without saying that the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra is fast. ATI and NVIDIA both win their fair share of benchmarks, so we’re not quite ready to hand the performance crown to either card, but the bottom line is that both cards have more than enough horsepower to allow gamers to crank up the screen resolution and AA without suffering from unplayable frame rates.
This is the card for the guy who wants uncompromising performance, but you better be willing to pay a pretty penny for it.
Video input: eVGA elected to include video input support on its e-GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, making this card a good choice for budding home video enthusiasts. CyberLink’s PowerDirector Pro 2.5 ME software is included in the packaging as well, which is a $100 value.
Customer Support: eVGA’s forums are filled with happy consumers, many of whom are repeat buyers. eVGA has established a reputation for truly supporting its customers, a trait which unfortunately is hard to find nowadays. If forums aren’t for you, eVGA also maintains a toll-free tech support line, when was the last time you saw ASUS or MSI do that?
Cons
Price: At $500, the e-GeForce FX 5950 Ultra is by no means cheap. You can literally buy a computer for the price of this card, or two GeForce FX 5900 boards! Someone at NVIDIA must have missed the memo that the economy is still recovering from a recession. Needless to say, the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra certainly isn’t a “value”, but if you want the best, you usually have to pony up the dough to pay for it. Boards are currently shipping to retail, so if you want one of these cards, you should be able to pick it up this weekend.
Un-optimized games: One downside to NVIDIA’s GeForce FX line is its dependence on optimizations that game developers may or may not take into account for when developing their upcoming DX9 titles. NVIDIA is definitely spreading the word among developers and even publishers, but we’re still a bit concerned. How long can NVIDIA sustain this, and will NVIDIA’s new compiler, which is designed to generate code friendlier to NVIDIA’s architecture, be effective enough? Only time will tell.
SIDEBAR: The heatsink on the back of some of the GeForce FX 5950 reference boards is actually in the shape of the NVIDIA logo.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 14 / 14 ) |