The last thing about the cooling system is the metal it is made of. All the heatsinks on the card look as if they were made of copper, but they are actually produced of some aluminum alloy. I have made a small cut with an ordinary paper knife and you can see a metal of another color:

The panel of the card carries D-Sub, DVI-I and composite connectors.

At the opposite side of the PCB, there is a connector for additional power supply. We see it on any GeForce FX 5900 Ultra based card.

Once again, the card features the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra GPU and has 256MB of graphics memory onboard. The memory chips are made by Hynix and have 2.2ns cycle time:

The regular frequencies of the card in the 3D mode are standard: 450MHz for the graphics chip and 850MHz (425MHz DDR) for memory.

The special unit integrated into the GPU shapes up the television signal for the video-out, while the popular SAA7108 chip from Philips is responsible for decoding it. The Sil164CT64 chip from Silicon Image supports the digital output (DVI).

So, MSI’s FX5900U-VTD256 model included with the NBOX kit is a well-made graphics card following the reference design. This product is distinguishable from other graphics cards for its original looks, quality cooling solution and very low noise level. Its voice practically dies away against the roar of other system components.

As for the package and accessories, I think that top-end graphics cards must come packed like the NBOX from MSI. When you count out a few hundred dollars, you wish to have something more than a standard set of the card, a couple of cables and a CD with drivers – all in a tasteless carton, don’t you?

Winding up this section, I’d like to mention the overclockability of the card. The FX5900U-VTD256 worked stable at 570MHz GPU and 950MHz (457MHz DDR) memory frequencies. This is a good, but not very impressive performance. But this is only the beginning! :)