by Alexey Stepin
05/20/2004 | 12:12 PM
The letters “XT” in the name of a graphics card may mean quite opposite things, although they are usually perceived as an indication of a high class of the product. This is really true for GPUs from ATI Technologies, but NVIDIA applies the XT suffix to graphics processors that are worse than their mates, usually in the frequencies.
<%BANNER[article]%>Graphics card manufacturers usually use a simplified PCB and cheaper components for the XT-marked models to reduce the cost of the end product and make it more appealing to people who want a reasonably fast and modestly-priced device. But is it always true that XT-marked graphics cards on GPUs from NVIDIA have this simple PCB design and work at reduced clock rates?
That’s what we’re going to find out today, examining the Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT Power Pack! Golden Sample graphics card!
The received the device in a nice-looking box with a gold sticker announcing that this graphics card bears a GeForce FX 5900 XT graphics processor and 256MB of memory. The Golden Sample denotation implies that we have something very special here. The design of the package is pleasing to the eye with its mild color scheme. The right part of the box depicts the face of a cute girl against a background of a mysterious planet.
The backside of the box lists the capabilities and characteristics of the product and has a table of supported screen modes. There’s nothing unusual there. We open the box up to find the following (besides the graphics card proper):
The pink translucent adapters are funny enough, but aside of that, the accessories are sufficient. Maybe an RCA cable would be of use, but many modern TV-sets come with an S-Video or SCART connector; in the latter case, you have to buy an appropriate adapter. After glancing over this stuff, we take the board into our hands.
The Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT surprises us from the start – there’s no sign of cheapness and simplicity here! All components are present at their respective places and the PCB design resembles strikingly the reference design of the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, although there are minor discrepancies…
Let’s take an ASUS V9950 card (on GeForce FX 5900) for comparison… That’s it! The Gainward board has the same design as the one used for producing GeForce FX 5900 and 5900 Ultra cards! After we remove the cooling system, we have no doubts left at all – the memory chips are placed in the likewise order, differing from a majority of GeForce FX 5900 XT versions where they form the letter L. Moreover, the amount of graphics memory is 256MB on the Gainward card, rather than 128MB so there are 8 additional memory chips at the backside of the card. The memory is manufactured by Hynix; it has 2.2ns access time, i.e. it can work at 450 (900DDR) MHz – the PCB from the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra permits that. However, the memory is only clocked at 350 (700DDR) MHz here. The lid of the graphics processor reads: “GeForce FX 5900 XT”.
The manufacturing company claims it uses specially selected and tested GPUs for the Golden Sample series. In this case, the graphics core works at 400MHz, which corresponds to GeForce FX 5900. Not bad, considering that an XT-stigmatized GeForce FX should typically belong to a cheap product series with simple design and, as a rule, low frequencies.
Gainward seems to have saved on some components, though. For example, there’s a THine THC63DV164 TMDS transmitter onboard instead of the widely-used chip from Silicon Image. Next to the transmitter, there’s place left empty for a VIVO chip.
The cooling system consists of a massive aluminum heatsink with two small fans. The fans are not quite ordinarily placed: they are closer to the right side of the PCB and they blow air towards the card’s mounting bracket, while many manufacturers prefer placing fans to the left or in the center of the heatsink.
On the backside, there is a massive ribbed aluminum plate. An ordinary white-color compound serves as a thermal interface, while at the front, between the heatsink and the memory chips, there’s also yellow bubblegum-like stuff. The front heatsink is decorated with a red flame-shaped casing. Both fans are highlighted with red LEDs so people who are into PC modding should be satisfied. These LEDs cast a beautiful glare at a SoundBlaster Audigy2 card which was three slots down.
Overall, the Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT is a well-made product in which high potential seems to lurk. Gainward sticks to its corporate style using the bright-red PCB and the “flaming” cooler.
Besides the FX Power Pack! series, Gainward is producing cards of the CoolFX Power Pack! series equipped with a liquid-cooling system and the SilentFX Power Pack! series with noiseless cooling system on heat pipes.
Noise is no problem with this card – the device is quiet, although audible in an open system case. Moreover, the top fan in our particular sample would sometimes emit a soft rustling sound –because the bearing was bad or maybe because the card was new. This may be a feature of our particular card only, though.
Overclocking was not simple. It turned out that the card could work in two frequency modes: standard (400/700MHz) and enhanced (450/780MHz). These modes, however, are not changed by the hardware – you enable the enhanced mode in the Gainward EXPERTool utility you find on the driver CD. It only installs itself into the Windows system folder and you cannot change this. After the installation, you get a cute icon in the tray, lose 5MB of system RAM, and access a menu with numerous links of questionable value, as the standard ForceWare driver already offers all these options. There is however one place in this program you may want to visit – the Performance tab.
After you click the Enhanced Mode Settings button, the frequency indicators show 450/780MHz – you can click Apply to apply the changes and make the card use these clock rates. The utility is started up automatically at the OS boot (you have an option of disabling its autorun), but its usefulness seems dubious: it takes 5MB of memory, but doesn’t perform any unique functions that you wouldn’t be able to use without it. As an overclocking utility, EXPERTool is of little interest: it offers a too-narrow frequency range with a ceiling of 480MHz GPU and 850MHz memory. Overclockers had better use advanced utilities like RivaTuner or PowerStrip. We did so and made the card work at 480/950MHz – an excellent result for a GeForce FX 5900 XT! In fact, the card surpassed the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra in the core frequency, although not much. Considering the absolute identity of the NV35 and NV38 architectures, we can expect the Gainward card to show a similar performance. Frankly speaking, we reached even higher, to 500MHz, but saw some artifacts in the image. The artifacts were fewer at 490MHz, but still persisted, so we stopped at 480MHz as the maximum stable GPU clock rate.
I should warn overclockers who are foretasting an easy speedup: the thermal conditions were very harsh for the card at such overclocking and the heatsink on the backside of the PCB was very hot. It would be a good idea to mount an additional blower on the entire card.
2D quality was good, too, in all resolutions including 1600x1200@85Hz. Well, there’s now little sense in mentioning 2D quality in reviews as all well-known companies operating in Europe and the USA take care that their products produced a good 2D image. Moreover, the growing popularity of TFT monitors makes this problem less urgent.
We gathered data on the performance of the Gainward FX Power Pack! Ultra/1300XT on the following testbed:
We used the following benchmarking software:
First person 3D shooters:
Third person 3D shooters:
Simulators:
Real-time strategies:
Semi-synthetic benchmarks:
Synthetic benchmarks:
As expected, the tested card was the worst at its regular frequencies, but its overclocked self beat the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra! Our respects go to Gainward who made such a highly-overclockable card. Buying an FX 5950 Ultra for the price of a FX 5900 XT is an invitation you can’t decline!
It’s all the same in Call of Duty, only the whole GeForce family seems pale against the RADEON 9800 XT/PRO due to the intrinsic disadvantages of the NV3x architecture.
Again, the Gainward card is an outsider working at its regular frequencies, but becomes the performance leader at overclocking, but only in the raw speed mode. When we enable FSAA and AF, the cards from ATI Technologies take what they deserve. Overall, the Gainward is a bit slower than the standard GeForce FX 5900.
We see the same picture on the Antalus level, but it’s smoother in the FSAA+AF mode: the RADEON is not so far ahead as on the Inferno map. No wonder as fast memory means much here and NVIDIA has always been careful about memories.
All participants hit against the performance of the central processor of the system in the lowest resolution, as you see. The results start differing in higher resolutions and the gorgeously-overclocked 5900 XT from Gainward becomes the leader, along with the ordinary GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and the RADEON 9800 XT. The first two cards are greatly assisted by their enormous memory frequencies, while the RADEON just has a very efficient R360 architecture. The situation remains the same in the harder eye-candy mode.
The Bridge level is easier than Torlan with its open spaces, so the numbers are overall higher here, but the leaders remain the same: the overclocked Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT, GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and RADEON 9800 XT.
Graphics cards on chips from ATI Technologies leaves others far behind in Tron 2.0. The members of the GeForce FX family ranked up according to their frequencies. The non-overclocked FX 5900 XT from Gainward is the last card; its overclocked self is the first among them.
There’s no need to comment the results of this game. RADEONs have been victorious here over NV3x-based cards that are too slow at performing ver.2.0 pixel shaders. Only the recently-arrived NV40, the new chip from NVIDIA, could overcome the results of the RADEON 9800 XT in this test.
The second next-generation game that we use has on the contrary been always favorable to NVIDIA’s graphics processors, but only until you enable full-screen antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. Graphics cards from ATI Technologies et al. would be the best in the max-quality mode. This testing session brings nothing new to this rule.
The above-said things are true for the Escape level which is richer in geometry – geometry processing is among the strong points of the NV3x architecture. The efficient algorithms of working with the memory and of FSAA and anisotropic filtering allow the R350/360-based cards to get the top places on the podium in the eye-candy modes.
The RADEON 9800 XT wins this test deservedly, and the overclocked Gainward notches the second result. As for nominal frequencies, the Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT roughly corresponds to the performance of the GeForce FX 5900.
We replaced the demo version of FarCry with its full version for this test. After installation of the version 1.1 patch all earlier problems vanished and we could test our graphics cards in this beautiful 3D shooter without any problems. In this case, we used a record on the mp_dune level.
Again, the whole GeForce FX family is impeded by their architecture – they all show similar results, while the RADEONs are far ahead.
The RADEON 9800 XT is undoubtedly the leader, but the difference between the RADEON 9800 PRO and the overclocked GeForce FX 5900 XT is very small. Moreover, the Gainward and the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra surpass the RADEON 9800 XT in 1280x1024 resolution of the raw speed mode! As for the regular-clocked Gainward card, it again shows results similar to those of the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. Alas, the cards from ATI again refused to work in 1600x1024.
The leader is the RADEON 9800 XT, just like it should be. Two pairs of matching each other cards are among the GeForces: the Gainward with the FX 5900 and the overclocked Gainward with the 5950 Ultra.
The difference in performance of the RADEON and the GeForce FX is small in this game. Particularly, the overclocked Gainward card performs at the same level as the RADEON 9800 PRO.
The superiority of the R3x0 architecture over the NV3x one is even more evident in Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. Just take a look at the diagrams.
There’s again nothing to comment upon. The GeForce FX 5900 XT from Gainward goes neck and neck with the GeForce FX 5900. The same Gainward, but overclocked, is no worse then the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. The RADEON 9800 XT, however, is easily the best of all!
There’s nothing interesting in this game: all participants are alike in the raw speed mode (with same advantage on the part of the NVIDIA cards), but the RADEONs hit back in the FSAA+AF modes.
There’s no playability here, but the cards from ATI Technologies win the raw performance mode, while the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and the overclocked Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT Power Pack! Golden Sample take the first place in the eye-candy modes.
NVIDIA and Gainward win again! The RADEON 9800 XT could only take 1600x1200 resolution in the raw speed mode for itself.
This game shows more appetite for the memory bandwidth in higher resolutions as the diagrams suggest. Cards that can efficiently work with their memory (RADEONs) and cards that have high-frequency memory (the overclocked Gainward and the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra) have an advantage here.
The RADEON 9800 XT/PRO wins both the raw speed and eye-candy modes with a considerable gap from the others. The Gainward card is spectacular again at overclocked frequencies.
Aquamark3 is a little bit partial towards NVIDIA chips as you may see in the first three diagrams. But as soon as we enable FSAA and AF, the situation is reversed and the RADEONs have some advantage. The Gainward is the slowest at its regular frequencies, but reaches the level of the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra at overclocking.
Notwithstanding its synthetic nature, 3DMark03 remains one of the most popular benchmarking suites. So here’s what it has to say:
The cause of the defeat of the Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT Power Pack! is evident – low memory clock rate. Overclocking makes amends and the device shows its potential.
The first test needs fast processing of geometry data and a high fill rate. The result is obvious.
The second test is more sophisticated and uses another scene rendering algorithm – the RADEON 9800 XT wins it. The new ForceWare driver works good, though. The NV3x cards feel well in the FSAA+AF mode, but the junior models lack the memory frequency, which the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra has. There’s no trouble in it: overclock the Gainward card and enjoy a performance similar to that of the 5950 Ultra.
The above-said things are true for the third gaming test, too, since it’s very much alike to the second.
The fourth gaming test usually runs faster on RADEON-based cards and today is no exception. The NV3x architecture is not aided even by the sky-high frequencies.
There are several points we can mention once we tested the Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT Power Pack! Golden Sample:
Expanding this brief resume further, I’d say that this graphics card is a truly overclocker product: full-fledged, not simplified PCB design, 2.2ns memory, massive cooler, specially selected GPU capable of maintaining stability at highest frequencies. Having a much lower price than the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, the Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT Power Pack! Golden Sample can easily reach the same frequencies and, accordingly, performance.
Of course, not every specimen can work at such frequencies, but you have a high chance of getting a highly overclockable product because it belongs to the Golden Sample series.
As for disadvantages, I’d mention only the accessories, which might have been more! Thus, the Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT Power Pack! Golden Sample can be recommended to every fan of NVIDIA GPUs, interested in overclocking. There’s one reservation, though. With all its advantages, this product has a GPU not very suitable for playing games with pixel and vertex shaders. Sometimes it is too slow in modern games like FarCry, not mentioning the upcoming projects like Half-Life 2 and Stalker: Shadows of Chernobyl.
Moreover, the popularity of NV3x-based solutions will go down as soon as there appear cut-down versions of the NV40 – you may want to wait for them for a while.
According to Pricewatch.com, the Gainward FX Ultra/1300XT Power Pack! Golden Sample is priced at $260-280. For comparison: an ordinary GeForce FX 5900 XT with a simplified PCB design and 128MB of memory costs about $175-190, while the full-featured GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and 5950 Ultra cost $360-390.
Highs:
Lows:
