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Introducing a
new line of the Geforce FX range. The Geforce FX 5900 Ultra is a
response to certain criticisms of the FX 5800 Ultra. If you keep up with
the graphics card business you will know about certain decisions that
Nvidia had to make when releasing the FX 5800 Ultra. These decisions
made the 5800 Ultra not quite as good as it should of been. One of those
decisions was to only use the 128-bit memory interface. The drivers were
also in an early stage and so the benchmarks did not give the card
credit.
The FX 5900
Ultra has put some of these problems aside. The memory interface is now
a more modern 256-bit ala Radeon 9800/pro. Lets compare the FX5800 ultra
with the FX 5900 Ultra in terms of its basic specs.
Geforce FX Card comparison
|
Type |
Geforce fx 5800 Ultra |
Geforce fx 5900
Ultra |
|
Max Memory |
128Mb |
256Mb |
|
Memory Clock speed |
1Ghz (500Mhz*2) |
850Mhz (2*425Mhz) |
|
Clock speed |
500Mhz |
450Mhz |
|
Memory
Bandwidth |
16Gb/s* |
27.2Gb/s |
Immediately the
fact that the FX card is clocked slower in both the core and the memory
jumps out at you. It seems strange that there next card should be slower
than the previous one. However its clock and memory speed are able to be
clocked slower due to the problems being solved. A 256-bit memory
interface for example has allowed the memory bandwidth to reach
27.2Gb/s. Also with lower clock speeds on the core the yield is a lot
higher which should ultimately drive down the prices after its honeymoon
period. Lower speed memory is also cheaper and would have the same
effect on price.
If you want
to know more about the compression calculations and the memory bandwidth
of the Geforce FX take a look at
this article at The Hank Files.
The FX5900 still
uses the 0.13 micron technology and is fully DX9 compliant like the
FX5800. To learn more about the features of the FX series in general
please consult the original Geforce FX
review
FX5900
Chipset Details (Based on the MSI FX5900)
NVIDIA
CINEFX 2.0 Engine
•
Advanced pixel shaders deliver 2x the
floating-point shader pixel performance of previous generations
•
Support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 (DX9) pixel
shader 2.0+
•
Support for DX9 vertex shader 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
•
Dynamic, conditional execution and flow control
•
Architected for Cg and Microsoft HLSL for
maximum compatibility for next
generation content
•
128-bit, studio-quality, floating-point
precision computation through the entire rendering pipeline
•
Native hardware support for 32 bpp, 64bpp and
128 bpp rendering modes
•
Up to 12 pixel shader operations/clock
•
Up to 16 textures per rendering pass
•
Support for sRGB texture format for gamma
textures
•
DirectX and S3TC texture compression
•
Optimized for 32-, 24-, 16-, 15- and 8-bpp
modes
•
True-color, 64x64 hardware cursor alpha
•
Multibuffering (double, triple or quad) for
smooth animation and
video playback
Intellisample
HCT Performance Technology
• Increased visual
quality at higher resolutions through advances in
compression, anisotropic filtering, and antialiasing technology
• Blistering-fast
antialiasing and compression performance
• Support for
advanced lossless compression algorithms for both colour, texture,
and z data at even higher resolutions and frame rates
• Fast z-clear
UltraShadow
Technology
• Accelerates
shadow volumes for next generation games
• Accurately
maintains shadows while discarding non-useful information
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Advanced
Display Pipeline with Full nView Capabilities
• Integrated
NTSC/PAL TV encoder supporting resolutions up to
1024x768 without the need for panning with built in Macrovision copy
protection
• DVD and
HDTV-ready MPEG-2 decoding up to 1920x1080i resolutions
• Dual, integrated
400MHz RAMDACs for display resolutions up to and
including 2048x1536@85Hz
• Dual DVO ports
for interfacing to external TMDS transmitters
• Internal TV
support
• Dual internal
TMDS encoders (one single and one Dual link) able to
drive next generation flat panel displays with resolutions greater
than 1600x1200
• VIP 1.1
interface support for Video-In function
• Microsoft Video
Mixing Renderer (VMR) support for multiple video windows with full
video quality and features in each window
Digital
Vibrance control (DVC) 3.0
• DVC colour
controls
• DVC image
sharpening controls
Advanced
Technology
• AGP 8X including Fast Writes and sideband addressing
• 0.13-micron process technology
for higher levels of integration and higher operating clock speeds
• Advanced thermal management and thermal monitoring
• 40 mmx40 mm, BGA 1309 flip-chip package
Operation Systems and API
support
• Windows® XP /
2000 / Me / 98SE
• Complete DirectX
support, including DirectX 9.0 and lower
• Full OpenGL 1.4
and lower
Compatibility
• NVIDIA Unified
Driver Architecture (UDA)
• Fully compliant
professional OpenGL 1.4 API with NVIDIA extensions, on all Windows
operating systems
• WHQL-certified
for Windows® XP, Windows® Me, Windows® 200 |
The FX5900 is an
addition to the series and as such you wouldn't expect anything more
than extra memory or extra speed. Bu t the FX5900 and the FX5900 Ultra
are reformed cards. They are clocked lower but perform a lot better. The
price is a little hard to justify at time of release but hopefully this
will change over the coming months. Nvidia seem to have taken the crown
once again until the next card from ATI of course.
This card was
needed as the previous flagship card the FX5800 Ultra didn't really live
up to the expectations. This is not to say that the card isn't any good.
What we are saying is that at the very top of the graphics card market
it didn't quite cut it against the Radeon 9800 Pro. Now the FX5900 Ultra
has hit the mark.
Useful Links
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PCMall.com
U.S. Visitors can buy here
Other Graphics card reviews.
Looking for the Geforce 4 ? Then
you should be looking at the Geforce 4 Ti range. The Ti range
offers more speed, more features and more quality. Not to mention
the whopping great 128Mb of DDR RAM on everyone of the Geforce 4
Ti range. Featuring twin vertex shaders Lightspeed memory
architecture II Accuview Anti-aliasing, NView and more.
Click here for more
information
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The Radeon 9700 Pro from ATI is
the only real challenger to the Geforce FX at current times
featuring its own batch of technologies such as the Hyper-Z and
smoothvision II. 8 rendering pipelines as well as a fast core
clock and DDR memory. The Radeon 9700 pro is fully DirectX 9.0
compliant and is dropping in price every month. Well worth a look
into.
Read More...
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