X-bit labs

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 XT FAQ: All You Need to Know About It (page 5)

Category: Video

by Kirill "ALT-F13" Balalin

[ 05/05/2004 | 04:29 PM ]

2.7.  Cards of one brand have the same memory?

No! Any brand can ship its cards with either Hynix or Samsung memory. The device marking has no indication whatsoever about that – you can only determine the memory type by looking at the chips. Moreover, the rare devices with 2.5ns chips don’t have any specific marking, either.

2.8.  Cards from particular manufacturers: differences

2.8.1.  Gigabyte

The cooling system is a mighty solid heatsink covering the GPU and memory. The problem is it doesn’t always fit tight to the core – pay attention to that! Be careful when removing the cooler – it has a “hook” from the back side with which you can scratch the PCB or damage something. This card has no thermal monitoring.

2.8.2.  Sparkle (Canyon, Point of View)

This is one of the most popular cards on the GeForce FX 5900 XT chip. Numerous color schemes are its distinguishing feature: there are cards with red, brown, violet or black textolite (most of them come with red, though), with black or silver cooler. So don’t be surprised to see the actual graphics card differ from the snapshot at the manufacturer’s website. It has been noted that the Samsung memory is much more often found on red-textolite cards than the Hynix memory. The second important feature: there are two revisions of the card. The first revision has the memory clocked below the recommended frequency, 680MHz instead of 700MHz like in a majority of cards from other manufacturers. The second revision has 700MHz memory clock rate. By the way, the reduced nominal frequency doesn’t affect overclocking. The graphics core works at 390MHz like in other cards. You can read the revision number from the writing on the PCB. Irrespective of the revision, the graphics card has no thermal monitoring. The third point of interest is Sparkle’s equipping its cards with a “stiffening rib”, fastened with screws at the top butt of the device. This rib really makes the card more robust, giving you peace of mind during the installation of a massive and heavy cooling system instead of the standard cooler. Besides Sparkle’s own brand, these graphics cards are selling under the brands of Canyon and Point of View.

2.8.3.  MSI

GeForce FX 5900XT-based graphics cards from MSI are quite often equipped with Hynix AF-25 memory (2.5ns cycle time). That’s why MSI is the best choice if you’re buying the card “blindly”, without having an opportunity to examine the memory chips visually before the purchase. The cooling system has no heatsinks on the memory chips, and the shape of the cooler (a copper Orb-like heat-spreader) will make it difficult to install memory heatsinks manually – the cooler hangs over the memory chips.

2.8.4.  Palit (XpertVision)

This is the only 5900XT-based graphics card to use an original PCB design that deviates from NVIDIA’s etalon. The power supply circuitry was redesigned most of all and the standard volt-modding recipe doesn’t work here. Notwithstanding the adjusted PCB design, the characteristics of the card (also its overclockability) don’t differ from the norm. They come into shops as Palit Daytona and XpertVision (the second trademark of Palit). If you’re willing to reflash the BIOS – the only BIOS that keeps the TV-Out operational is from the BFG GeForce FX 5950 Ultra VGA (BIOS Version 4.35.20.35.33).