Short introduction....

Recently nVidia introduced the FX5700 series. These cards should become the new mid-range cards, delivering good performance at an attractive price. (~200 € for an FX5700 Ultra). Not that much later I spotted the FX5900 XT. Same price, but better specifications... Hmm worth a try, so I bought me such a card.

And I started benching, and examining the card. Let's take a closer look.



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Features:

256-bit chip technology

0.13 Micron Process

256-bit DDr Memory Bus

AGP Bus 2*/4*/8*

128 Mb Memory

Nvidia© Ultrashadow™ technology

Nvidia© CineFX™ 2.0 Engine

Nvidia© Intellisample technology

Nvidia© Nview™ multi-display technology

Nvidia© Digital Vibrance Control 3.0

Supports Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0

128-bit, studio-precision colour

Vertex Shader 2.0+

Pixel Shader 2.0+

And the clocks:

Standard (2d):

Core clock: 300 Mhz

Memory clock: 350 Mhz (700 Mhz)

Performance (3d):

Core clock: 390 Mhz

Memory clock: 350 Mhz (700 Mhz)

Package

In the package I found:

FX5900 XT

Manual

Extra short manual

Club3d Case badge

DVI tot VGA convector

3 TV-out (converter) cables

Driver CD & Win DVD creator software bundle






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TFT, CTR, TV

This is nowadays a normal thing on video cards, so I'm only mentioning it.


Connectors:

Cooling

The cooling on this VGA card has a big wow-factor. Great design, nice ram sinks, ...

When you're working in windows, using non-3d applications, the fan on this video card is silent. But as soon as you start gaming, or using 3d applications, the fan starts to spin faster and thus become louder. Not extremely loud, just louder.

But, when you stop using 3d, the fan doesn't slow down, only after a reboot.








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This card has also an integrated temperature sensor:





Test system

Test setup
CPU	Penium 4 2.4 GHz @ 275 fsb (3.3 Ghz)
Mainboard	Asus p4c800
Memory	2*256 pc3200
Hard disk	Seagate Barracuda 5 80 Gig

I borrowed a Geforce 4 ti4200 for comparison. Why this card? Just after I bought the card I posted some first results on a Dutch forum. Most reactions come from people who had a GF4 ti4x00 and were wondering if this card was worth the upgrade...

The benchmarks I ran:

3D Mark 2001 se

3D Mark 2003

Aquamark 3

Call of Duty

For Call of Duty, I played the same map every time and used Fraps to analyse my fps. You have to know that these results aren't 100% correct, as you can't play the same map exactly the same again. That's why I didn't include my Need For Speed underground benches. When you for example create a lot of smokes with your tires your fps will drop immediately. As the results from this game were thereby too different between runs, I didn't include them.

So this leaves us with some very basic benchmarks, but good enough for a general impression.

3D Mark 2001 Se

The all time favourite benchmark...

1024*768

1280*1024

1024*768 2*FSAA 8*AF

1280*1024 2*FSAA 8*AF



The FX5900 TX is in all the benches better. But what's remarkable, when you use more heavy settings, such as 2*FSAA 8*AF, the performance of the ti4200 drops remarkably more...

3D Mark 2003

Well, latest version of 3D mark. As you can see, this is a more DirectX 9 benchmark.
The FX5900 XT clearly has a great benefit because of this...

1024*768

1024*768 2*FSAA 8*AF

Aquamark 3

Also a directX 9 benchmark...

Call Of Duty

On both cards this game is very playable, but on highest settings I used, the average fps of the ti4200 is +/- 50 fps. This means that while gaming, you have sometimes frame drops to only 20 fps, this is irritating...

1024*768

1280*1024

1024*768 2*FSAA 8*AF

1280*1024 2*FSAA 8*AF

Overclocking

Clud3D is not known for using the very best memory chips. Well this is true in my case. The chips do their work perfectly on stock clocks. But overclocking doesn't go very well. I could overclock the memory from 700 Mhz to 710 Mhz, this can barely be called an overclock.....
The core on the other hand overclocked a little bit better... From 390 Mhz to 485 Mhz using the standard cooling.

This gave me only a small increase of points:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (2GHz) FX5900 XT stock speeds - 15500 3d marks
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (2GHz) FX5900 XT 485/710 - 16200 3d marks

Damn shame about the memory. Soon I'll try to give it a bit more voltage with a nice volt-mod (there goes my warranty!)


The maximum stable overclock:



CPU power

Is it worth using this card in your computer system, or should you better upgrade your subsystem? (CPU & main board)

I made a quick test with this video card on different platforms, using a default 3d mark 2001 run to do this.

AMD Athlon 1533 Mhz (1800+) - 11000 3D marks
AMD Athlon 2000 Mhz (2400+) - 13500 3d marks
AMD Athlon 2200 Mhz (3200+) - 15000 3d marks

Intel Pentium 4 2.6 GHz 200 (800) fsb - 15500 3d marks
Intel Pentium 4 3.3 GHz 275 (1100) fsb - 16600 3d marks

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (2GHz) - 15500 3d marks
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (@ 2.4GHz) - 18500 3d marks

Pictures

Here I have some nice pictures left, from this fancy card; I wouldn't want you to miss them.









Conclusion

This definitely is a decent card. It's remarkably better then a FX5700 Ultra, which is priced almost the same. And if you got a powerful subsystem, you'll be able to play every game on highest game settings fluently.

Recently Gamer, another Madshrimps reviewer, made the review of the FX5700 Ultra. You might check it out here.

Comments/Questions:forum