eVGA's e-GeForce FX 5900SE
A curiously named GeForce card hits the market

By Robert Maloney
December 15th, 2003

How We Configured Our Test System:

To help fully explain the scores we have listed in the following benchmarks, we felt it was necessary to first explain how this system was set up. We tested on an i875P "Canterwood" based MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R motherboard, powered by an Intel Pentium 4 3.0CGHz CPU (800MHz System Bus).  The first thing we did when configuring this test system was enter the BIOS and loaded the "High Performance Defaults".  Then we set the memory to operate at 200MHz (Dual DDR400) with the CAS Latency and other memory timings set by the SPD and the AGP aperture size set to 256MB. The hard drive was then formatted, and Windows XP Professional with SP1 was installed.  When the installation was complete, we installed the Intel chipset drivers and then hit the Windows Update site to download and install all of the available updates, with the exception of the items related to Windows Messenger. Then we installed all of the necessary drivers for the rest of our components and Windows Messenger was disabled and removed from the system. Auto-Updating and System Restore were disabled, the hard drive was de-fragmented, and a 768MB permanent page file was created. Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance", installed all of the benchmarking software and ran all of the tests. All of the benchmarking was done with ATi's and NVIDIA's drivers configured for maximum visual quality. ATi's "Quality" anti-aliasing and Anisotropic filtering methods were employed throughout our testing, while the Performance slider available on NVIDIA's "Performance and Quality" driver tab was set to "Quality".  For the "4X AA + Aniso" tests listed in our graphs, we enabled 4X AA and 8X Anisotropic filtering in both NVIDIA's and ATi's driver panels.

HotHardware's Test Setup
A powerful match up of brains and brawn

Video Cards Tested:
eVGA e-GeForce FX 5900 SE (128MB)
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra (256MB)
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra (128MB)
ATi Radeon 9600 XT (128MB)

Benchmarks Used:
Aquamark3
Halo v1.02
Unreal Tournament 2003 - Citadel Flyby
Splinter Cell - Oil Rig Demo

Final Fantasy XI v2.0
Gun Metal

Comanche 4 Demo
Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory

Tomb Raider: AOD


Common System Hardware:

MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R (I875P)
Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz CPU / 800MHz FSB
1024MB (512MB x2) Kingston HyperX PC3500 DDR
Western Digital "Raptor" 36GB SATA Hard Drive
Lite-On 16X DVD-ROM
3.5" Floppy Drive

Software / System Drivers:
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1
DirectX 9.0b
Intel Chipset Software, v5.1.0.1008
ATi Catalyst Drivers, v3.9
NVIDIA ForceWare Drivers, v53.03

Performance Comparisons With AquaMark3
DX8 and DX9 Benchmarks

Aquamark 3 comes to us by the way of Massive Development, and is the first of our tests to be based on a real game engine.  Massive's release of the game Aquanox in 1999 was panned by critics, yet was one of the first to implement DX8 shaders, which led to the creation of Aquamark 2, another widely used benchmark. Since the Aquamark benchmarks are based on a real gaming environment, they must support old and new cards alike.  Thus, Aquamark 3 utilizes not only DirectX 9 shaders, but DirectX 8 and 7 as well.  We ran this benchmark at 1024x768 and at 1600x1200 with no anti-aliasing, then again with 4 and 6 samples, and one last time with 4 AA samples but with 8x Anisotropic Filtering enabled in the drivers.

The GeForce FX 5950 Ultra may have taken the top spot in each of the tests, but that should be expected at the price it demands.  The other three cards, however, are all similarly priced, give or take 10% or so.  eVGA's GeForce FX 5900SE easily leads the other two cards, which are more or less equals here.  At 1024x768 with no AA applied, we see roughly a 20% difference in performance between the 5900SE and the other two, which only increases up to 33% at 1600x1200.  Only at 6XAA do we see the 5900SE fall behind the competition, although it still manages to keep close behind the more powerful 5950 Ultra.
 
Benchmarks With Halo
Finally on the PC, Where it Belongs

For many gamers out there, the release of Halo marked the end of a long wait, since it was originally released as an Xbox exclusive a few years back.  No additional patches or tweaks are needed to use this game's built-in benchmarking utility, as Gearbox has included all of the information needed in their Readme files.  The benchmark runs through four of the cut scenes from the game, after which the average frame rate is displayed.  We ran it twice, once at 1024x768 and again at 1280x1024. Anti-aliasing doesn't work properly with this game at the moment, so all of the tests below were run with anti-aliasing disabled.

Anti-aliasing doesn't work with Halo just yet, so we stuck with raw numbers at two common resolutions.  The GeForce FX 5700 Ultra and ATi Radeon 9600 XT are in a dead heat, but the 5900 SE steamrolls on.  The 5900 SE averaged a frame rate of 45 frames per second at 1024x768, 13 frames more than the other two cards, a 40% advantage.  Considering the fact that the 9600 XT and 5700 Ultra were released only two months ago, that's quite an increase in performance while maintaining the same price point.

Unreal Tournament 2003 & Splinter Cell Testing