Conclusion

So, the announcement of NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra didn’t help NVIDIA to become a leader in the High-End gaming market. However, no one had actually expected that to happen: “slightly overclocked” GeForce FX 5900 Ultra can hardly be able to compete with ATI RADEON 9800 XT in new games, which are using DirectX9 Pixel Shaders.

However, NVIDIA not just launched the new GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and 5700 Ultra. They also released a new ForceWare driver featuring an optimizing compiler for DirectX9 pixel shaders. Of course, the new driver will not be able to eliminate limitations imposed by the GPU architecture, but it definitely makes NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra look not so helpless against the background of ATI RADEON 9800 XT.

Nevertheless, ATI RADEON 9800 XT remains the performance leader in contemporary games and the today’s test session really proves this point. Taking into account that the recommended price of ATI RADEON 9800 XT is $499, which is exactly the same as the price of NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, there shouldn’t be any questions about the choice of a High-End graphics card any more.

However, the major battles will actually take place far from the High-End segment. Together with the NV38 GPU, NVIDIA announced NV36, which will be available in the market in two basic modifications: GeForce FX 5700 and GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. These graphics processors are targeted for the mainstream segment and should be selling for $149 and $199, as recommended. Well, I have the feeling that this is going to be a really exciting competition with ATI RADEON 9600 and 9600 XT.

We are going to review the new ATI and NVIDIA solutions targeted for the mainstream market in the nearest future, so stay with us!