X-bit labs

ASUS V9950 Graphics Card Review (page 15)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 07/22/2003 | 03:17 AM ]

Codecult Codecreatures Benchmark Pro

This is highly complicated test from the geometrical point of view (700,000 polygons in a single frame). So, it can bring almost any contemporary graphics adapter down to its marrowbones.

Under regular workload ASUS V9950 working at the nominal frequencies goes a little behind ATI RADEON 9800 PRO, but as soon as we overclock it, our hero takes the lead. With FSAA 4x and Anisotropic Filtering 8x GeForce FX 5900 based graphics card shows all the power of the latest NVIDIA graphics solution leaving the competitor behind in all cases. Even in the hardest test ASUS V9950 performs almost as fast as RADEON 9800 PRO, despite higher level of anti-aliasing and much higher workload on the chip and memory subsystem. Since GeForce FX 5800/5900 processes pixel shaders 1.1 not too much slower than ATI competitors, and since GeForce FX 5900 also boasts pretty high 1st generation vertex shaders processing speed, the results obtained in this test look quite logical to us although we cannot disregard the fact that the drivers for this benchmark could be fine0tuned by the independent hardware vendors.

Conclusion

We have just tested ASUS V9950 graphics card based on the new NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 graphics processor. We liked this product first of all for its excellent design and quality and for the smart cooling system. The 2D image quality appeared simply brilliant: the card provided crystal-clear image in all resolutions up to 1800x1440x75Hz. The overclocking potential of this product also appeared very good. We were also very pleased with the rich package: ASUS’ bundle looks very impressive especially against the background of some other manufacturers who include just a CD-disk with the drivers or stuff the package with some useless items like screwdrivers or posters.

As for the performance, the situation here is not very simple. Of course, the performance was quite high, however, the products of the kind can’t boast any stable advantage over the ATI RADEON 9800 PRO competitor. Moreover, GeForce FX 5900 can even turn out slower than the rival in some games, which use pixel and vertex shaders very actively. Nevertheless, ASUS V9950 performs very fast in the today’s games and makes the impression of a very good product overall. This graphics adapter supports all the latest features and is an excellent choice for those of you who are looking for high-performance and high-quality solution for contemporary games and applications.

Highs:

• Super-high performance in contemporary games;
• Excellent overclocking potential;
• High-quality quiet cooling system;
• Very high 2D image quality;
• Rich package bundle.

Lows:

• Low performance in shader operations;
• Heavy weight;
• High price.