GeForce FX 5900 Ultra takes graphics speed crown--barely.
Alexandra Krasne, PCWorld.com
Monday, May 12, 2003
With the release this week of its GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, NVidia pushes ahead in the graphics chip wars--but not by much, according to first tests.
NVidia touts its new GeForce FX 5900 Ultra chip as "the fastest GPU in history." PC World Labs tests find its performance provides little boost over either NVidia's last-generation 5800 FX or a reference card based on ATI's Radeon 9800 chip.
Improvements Noted
NVidia is eager to make up shortcomings of its last release, the GeForce FX 5800, which arrived to market much later than expected and uses a cooling mechanism so loud some dubbed it "the lawnmower." The FX 5900's cooling system is much quieter than its predecessor's, but like the FX 5800, it's big, taking up two slots and requiring a 300-watt power supply.
The test board that PC World evaluated came with a whopping 256MB of DDR SDRAM and is expected to cost about $500. A 128MB version is also available and should run about $400. Expected to ship GeForce 5800 cards are NVidia partners Asus, PNY, MSI, AOpen, Gainward, and others.
Still, based on tests, it may take the arrival of advanced games to really exploit the card and make it most worthwhile.
Test Results
PC World tests found notable performance differences in games only at higher resolutions. At 1280 by 1024, the 5900 FX Ultra boosted games like Serious Sam 2 and Unreal Tournament 2002 (UT) by just 3 to 5 frames per second over a 5800FX Ultra-based card. Only at 1600 by 1200 does the 5900 pull noticeably ahead of the 5800, though still by 11 to 14 frames per second. (We tested the FX 5900 card with an early version of the driver.)
NVidia maintains its lead over ATI on Serious Sam, but ATI's 9800 excels at lower resolutions of UT, offering about 10 to 11 fps more than the 5900 FX. It drops off, however, at higher resolutions, earning 123 fps to the NVidia's 138 on UT at 1600 by 1200.
In the UT anti-aliasing tests, the 5900 falls behind both its chief competitors, earning 130 fps (using 4X anti-aliasing, 8X anisotropic filtering), while the 5800 gets 138 (using 2X AA, 8X AF), and the 9800 gets 136 (using 4X AA, 8X AF). Anti-aliasing technology softens the jagged edges of 3D images and anisotropic filtering smoothes scenes in which a textured image, like a tiled floor, starts in the foreground and extends into the background.
Overview
The new NVidia chip offers a reworked anisotropic filtering engine. However, the preproduction ATI Radeon 9800 chip provides far superior image quality, according to subjective tests.
Still, the FX 5900 is tuned to take advantage of features in games that haven't arrived yet.
One new function, UltraShadow, will render shadows and scenes more quickly and efficiently, making games such as yet-to-be-released Doom III, Half-Life 2, and Aquamark 3 run faster and smoother, according to NVidia.
That's tough to verify at this point, however, because DirectX 9 titles are yet to be found. They aren't expected to show up on store shelves until the fall--when the payoff for investing in the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra might be more apparent.
Alexandra Krasne, PCWorld.com
Monday, May 12, 2003
With the release this week of its GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, NVidia pushes ahead in the graphics chip wars--but not by much, according to first tests.
NVidia touts its new GeForce FX 5900 Ultra chip as "the fastest GPU in history." PC World Labs tests find its performance provides little boost over either NVidia's last-generation 5800 FX or a reference card based on ATI's Radeon 9800 chip.
Improvements Noted
NVidia is eager to make up shortcomings of its last release, the GeForce FX 5800, which arrived to market much later than expected and uses a cooling mechanism so loud some dubbed it "the lawnmower." The FX 5900's cooling system is much quieter than its predecessor's, but like the FX 5800, it's big, taking up two slots and requiring a 300-watt power supply.
The test board that PC World evaluated came with a whopping 256MB of DDR SDRAM and is expected to cost about $500. A 128MB version is also available and should run about $400. Expected to ship GeForce 5800 cards are NVidia partners Asus, PNY, MSI, AOpen, Gainward, and others.
Still, based on tests, it may take the arrival of advanced games to really exploit the card and make it most worthwhile.
Test Results
PC World tests found notable performance differences in games only at higher resolutions. At 1280 by 1024, the 5900 FX Ultra boosted games like Serious Sam 2 and Unreal Tournament 2002 (UT) by just 3 to 5 frames per second over a 5800FX Ultra-based card. Only at 1600 by 1200 does the 5900 pull noticeably ahead of the 5800, though still by 11 to 14 frames per second. (We tested the FX 5900 card with an early version of the driver.)
NVidia maintains its lead over ATI on Serious Sam, but ATI's 9800 excels at lower resolutions of UT, offering about 10 to 11 fps more than the 5900 FX. It drops off, however, at higher resolutions, earning 123 fps to the NVidia's 138 on UT at 1600 by 1200.
In the UT anti-aliasing tests, the 5900 falls behind both its chief competitors, earning 130 fps (using 4X anti-aliasing, 8X anisotropic filtering), while the 5800 gets 138 (using 2X AA, 8X AF), and the 9800 gets 136 (using 4X AA, 8X AF). Anti-aliasing technology softens the jagged edges of 3D images and anisotropic filtering smoothes scenes in which a textured image, like a tiled floor, starts in the foreground and extends into the background.
Overview
The new NVidia chip offers a reworked anisotropic filtering engine. However, the preproduction ATI Radeon 9800 chip provides far superior image quality, according to subjective tests.
Still, the FX 5900 is tuned to take advantage of features in games that haven't arrived yet.
One new function, UltraShadow, will render shadows and scenes more quickly and efficiently, making games such as yet-to-be-released Doom III, Half-Life 2, and Aquamark 3 run faster and smoother, according to NVidia.
That's tough to verify at this point, however, because DirectX 9 titles are yet to be found. They aren't expected to show up on store shelves until the fall--when the payoff for investing in the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra might be more apparent.