2. Choosing the Card

2.1 What brands are available?

Here’s a list of manufacturers who offer 5900XT-based graphics cards (and also 5900SE, 5900LE and 5900LX): ASUS 5900SE, Albatron, AOpen, BFG Technologies, Canyon, Chaintech, Club-3D, Inno3D, InsideTNC, Gainward (three models) and  one more, Galaxy, Gigabyte, ELSA, eVGA 5900SE and  5900XT, Leadtek 5900LX and  5900XT, Manli, MSI, Palit (XpertVision), PNY, Point of View, Prolink 5900LE and  5900XT, Sparkle, Soltek, Xelo, XFX.

2.2.  Differences between the brands

2.2.1.  Do all 5900XT-based graphics cards use the reference PCB design?

They do, with two exceptions. Palit adjusted the reference design for their 5900XT card, especially the power supply circuitry. The 1300 series cards from Gainward come on a PCB from the true GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, but with a 5900XT chip and 256MB of 2.8ns or 2.5ns memory.

2.2.2.  Do all the cards have the same operational frequencies?

No. An overwhelming majority of them uses the recommended 390/700MHz clock rates, but there are exceptions. For example, Sparkle cards (Point of View, Canyon) of the first revision work at 390/680MHz by default; 5900XT cards from Gainward work at 400/700MHz. Besides that, Gainward, InsideTNC and BFG Technologies are shipping overclocker versions of the 5900XT with higher nominal frequencies (see Item 2.8 for details).

2.2.3.  What are the differences between cooling systems of different brands?

In fact, it is only the cooler and the color of the textolite that visually betray the brand. There are three approaches to creating the cooling system for a 5900XT-based card: a single massive cooler that covers the GPU as well as memory chips (Gigabyte, Sparkle); a cooler on the GPU and individual heatsinks on memory chips (Albatron, Gainward, Prolink, ELSA, Club-3D); a cooler on the GPU and naked memory chips (AOpen, MSI, Leadtek). From the point of view of choosing the best card, the last variant seems preferable since you see what memory chips are installed there. In the first case, you can also remove the cooler and examine the memory. You can’t do that with individual heatsinks because they are dead-glued to the chips (without any fastening holes like in the 5700 Ultra card). Well, memory doesn’t need much cooling on a 5900XT card, so some manufacturers don’t use heatsinks at all, without any problems for the end-user.

2.2.4.  Do 5900XT cards have thermal monitoring capabilities?

Not all of them. The graphics card manufacturer decides whether to implement thermal monitoring on the particular card. For example, cards from Club-3D, Albatron and AOpen have hardware monitoring functions, while Gigabyte and Sparkle don’t offer it.

2.2.5.  What about accessories?

Different brands don’t greatly differ in the set of accessories they include with the card. Of course, the design of the package differs among the manufacturers (XFX is beyond competition here), but all retail versions of 5900XT cards have a similar accessories set that typically consists of a user manual, a couple of  CDs (drivers, software, games), a DVI adapter and cables for TV-Out/VIVO. If you’re looking for the criterion of the best 5900XT graphics card, accessories won’t make one.

2.2.6.  Are there any 5900XT-based cards with 256MB of memory?

Yes, two models from Gainward (Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT TV-DVI and Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT TV-DVI Golden Sample) are based on the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra reference design and carry 256MB of memory onboard (16 chips, 8 chips on each side).