X-bit labs

Winter-Spring 2004: Graphics Cards on Top Graphics Processors and Their Low-Cost Versions – Overclocker’s Best Choice (page 6)

Category: Video

by Tim Tscheblockov

[ 03/16/2004 | 05:22 PM ]

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra/FX 5900/FX 5900 XT Graphics Card Family

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra

NVIDIA’s graphics chips leader, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, will be represented by a VGA card from Leadtek:

Leadtek WinFast A380 Ultra follows the reference design for NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, but unlike the reference cards with their traditional cooling solution, which sucks the air in from outside the case, Leadtek uses its own cooler of specific construction and hence doesn’t require a double bracket for the graphics card fastening. Nevertheless, you will not be able to install any PCI cards in the next PCI slot, because Leadtek’s  cooler is quite tall and even if you fit the PCI card in, it will block the air flow completely for the graphics card.

Leadtek WinFast A380 Ultra cooling solution consists of two parts: there is a copper cooler on the front side of the PCB, which covers the GPU and the memory chips at the same time, and an aluminum heatsink on the reverse side of the PCB, which dissipates the heat coming from the memory chips installed there.

The card is equipped with 256MB of graphics DDR SDRAM from Hynix with 2ns cycle time (Hynix HY5DU283222 AF-2). The clock frequency of the graphics processor and graphics memory equals 475MHz and 950MHz respectively.

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900

Graphics cards based on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 are none other but low-cost versions of the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra based solutions, which were the top ones before GeForce FX 5950 Ultra arrived.

GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and GeForce FX 5900 are based on the same PCB layout, which is very similar to that of GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. The differences can be noticed only in the voltage regulator circuitry.

The graphics cards based on GeForce FX 5900 have two major differences from the Ultra modifications. First, they feature only 128MB of memory instead of 256MB: the memory chips are only on one side of the PCB in this case. Second, the GPU working frequency in 3D mode is reduced to 400MHz from 450MHz.

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 will be represented by ASUS V9950 graphics card:

ASUS graphics card follows the reference design for NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900/5900 Ultra, but it features only 128MB of memory as it is a non-Ultra version. The card uses DDR SDRAM from Hynix with 2.2ns cycle time (Hynix HY5DU283222 AF-22). The memory chips are installed on the front side of the PCB and are covered with a cooler together with the CPU. This cooler consists of a copper footing with the ribs soldered to it and two fans blowing the air through the heatsink ribs.

ASUS graphics card carefully follows NVIDIA’s recommendations regarding the working frequencies of the chip and memory: 400MHz and 850MHz in 3D mode respectively.

When we overclocked the card it managed to work stably at 480MHz core and 980MHz memory frequencies, which is a pretty good result for both: the graphics processor and the memory. The overclocked card appeared even faster than NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra at nominal frequencies (475MHz/950MHz). Later we will see if this frequency gain is enough for the solution to outperform the today’s gaming leader from NVIDIA.