[Dave Baumann]

Although the buzz has been around NVIDIA's newest high end introduction in the form of GeForce 6800 Ultra, this still presently accounts for the very high end and NVIDIA vendors are still looking to the FX range to fill in the lower end of the range. GeForce FX 5900 XT's are ostensibly high end chips brought into the mainstream and in this review we are looking at examples from both Galaxy and Gainward.

"Overall the pixel shader results highlight that the 5900XT cards are a better option than the 5700 Ultra for games which have shaders forming a large portion of the rendering workload. When one looks at all of the results from the synthetic tests, it would seem that the XT models are the better option altogether, as most games will be limited by the fill rate and memory bandwidth of the graphics adapter, if it isn't CPU-bound."

Read the full review here

[digitalwanderer]

Nice review Nick, although I must admit I'm a bit more of a Gainward fan and would have given them the nod for being rock-solider.

[Anonymous]

Given you have two cards which are almost identical, I'm sure I can't be the only one who would like to make a choice of card based upon fan noise, and yet you make no mention of it at all.

[Neeyik]

You're correct that I should have made more about the heatsink solutions but they were equally as effective as each other. In terms of noise, I didn't note any difference between them; tricky to do so over the CPU fan anyway.

[bigz]

I've always been a fan of the technical content of the B3D reviews... but this review has raised some interesting things for me :?

The Gainward specifications state that the 1100XT Ultra/Golden Sample is designed to run at 450/780, so I was wondering why you've ran the card at 390/700 in your review? In order to get the card to run at its correct frequencies, you have to install EXPERTool - I am guessing that EXPERTool wasn't installed if you ran the card at the clocks you did.



It would only be right to run the Golden Sample at its correct clock frequencies, otherwise the whole selling point that lies behind the Gainward card is removed - they don't include much in terms of bundled software in their package, but they do include a card that is clocked considerably higher than its competitors. For the price its performance is like you-know-what off a shovel.

That aside, the technical content is great as expected - I notice you had an interesting situation with the Zeus card, where you were getting the scrolling line problem, has anymore light been shed on this matter?

[Dave Baumann]

Sorry, we're aware of this now - the review isn't currently in the reviews list (although may still be directly accessible) as we're currently rerunning no's for the Gainward with the guaranteed clock speeds. Oversight on our part and we appologise to Gainward.

[bigz]

Originally Posted by DaveBaumann

Sorry, we're aware of this now - the review isn't currently in the reviews list (although may still be directly accessible) as we're currently rerunning no's for the Gainward with the guaranteed clock speeds. Oversight on our part and we appologise to Gainward.

Thanks Dave, cheers for the quick reply

[Neeyik]

Originally Posted by bigz

I notice you had an interesting situation with the Zeus card, where you were getting the scrolling line problem, has anymore light been shed on this matter?

Nothing so far at least. The problem wasn't as bad as I've seen on other cards but it was noticeable, and somewhat distracting.

On the point of the Gainward clock speeds, that's entirely my fault for not checking the product thoroughly enough during the reviewing. As per normal, the cards were tested using NVIDIA reference drivers and not the supplied software - this is why the clock speeds are right down of course! I've made such a mess of it that I'll need to seriously rework that review...oops!

[Anonymous]

hi ive just pruchased the 5900 xt golden sample though it hasnt arrived yet im wondering if ive made a bad choice after readin this review.im upgrading (i hope ) from a gf4 4400 ti. my machine specs are as follows: p4 2.53ghz, gigabyte mobo w/sis 648 cs,512mb corsiar xms@400mhz,sblivexgamer5.1,ibm deckstar ata 133 hd. i like to play quake3 uto4 painkiller and im looking forward to doom3 hopefully my machine will run it ok with this new card :?

[Neeyik]

Don't forget that I've made a fairly big mistake in the review - which is why I'm redoing it right now. Wait a bit more before making any further judgements.