The Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH MyViVo
&
The Abit Siluro FX 5900 OTES
Two GeForce FX 5900s Square-Off...

By - Marco Chiappetta
August 19, 2003

       

On May 12, NVIDIA formally introduced the NV35 to the public, dubbed it the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, and enthusiasts began to drool.  The original FX-Flow cooler found on the 5800 Ultra was gone and a 256-bit memory interface had replaced the 128-bit interface used in the NV30.  The NV35 was everything the NV30 should have been.  Unfortunately, one thing did carry over from the 5800 Ultra to the 5900 Ultra, the exorbitant price tag.  Even today, over three months since its introduction, GeForce FX 5900 Ultra prices are well over the $400 mark, with some brands approaching $500.  Many enthusiasts want NVIDIA's latest and greatest, but dropping nearly half a $K on a video card just is not an option for everyone.  Luckily, there are mainstream cards like the Radeon 9600 or GeForce FX 5600 available for less than half the price, but these products aren't going to win any performance contests.  For the money, they may be great solutions, but you don't find many hard-core gamers lusting over a mainstream product.  What to do?  Well, you could go with one of the cards we'll be looking at today.  We're going to take a long look at two GeForce FX 5900s from Leadtek and Abit, the WinFast A350 TDH MyViVo and the Siluro FX 5900 OTES.  These cards have less memory and a lower core clock speed, but they offer all of the features of a 5900 Ultra and at a significantly lower price point.  Take a look...   

  

     
CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN ENLARGED VIEW

Specifications & Features of the GeForce FX 5900
Not Quite An Ultra, But Damn Close
 
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 GPU
  • CineFX II Engine
  • Intellisample Technology HCT
  • High-Precision Graphics
  • nView Multi-display Technology
  • Digital Vibrance Control (DVC)
  • Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
  • AGP 8X
  • 0.13 Micron Process Technology
  • 400MHz RAMDACs
  • 1.3 Billion texels/ sec fill rate
     
     
  • Graphics Core: 256-bit
  • Engine clock 400 MHz
  • Memory Interface: 256-bit
  • Memory Bandwidth: 27.2GB/sec
  • Fill Rate: 3.2 billion texels/sec.
  • Vertices/sec. 338 million
  • Memory Data Rate: 850MHz
  • Pixels per Clock (peak): 8
  • Textures per Pixel: 16(Maximum in a single rendering pass with 8 textures applied per clock.)
  • RAMDACs 400MHz
 
  • Architected for Cg
  • Microsoft DirectX9.0 Optimizations and Support
  • New 64-phase Video Scaler
  • OpenGL1.4 Optimizations and Support
  • Video Mixing Renderer (VMR)
  • High-performance, high-precision 3D rendering engine
  • On-board DVI support up to 1600x1200 resolution
  • On-board TV-out support up to 1024x768 resolution
  • Integrated Full Hardware MPEG-2 Decoder
  • Vivid NTSC/PAL TV-out support with flicker filter


CLICK TO ENLARGE

THE GEFORCE FX 5900
CORE CLOCK: 400MHz
MEMORY CLOCK: 850MHz
FILLRATE: 3.2 GT/s
MEMORY BANDWIDTH: 27.1 GB/s


     
Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH MyViVo

Leadtek included a slew of software and accessories with the WinFast A350 TDH MyViVo, to appease both gamers and video buffs.  For the gamers, Leadtek ships full versions of Gun Metal and Big Mutha Truckers with this card.  Leadtek also includes a group of useful utilities like Cult 3D, Coloreal Embedded, Coloreal Visual and Coloreal Bright along with their own proprietary WinFast PVR, WinFast DVD and WinFox II applications.  Rounding out the software bundle are two products from Ulead, Video Studio 7 SE and DVD Movie Factory 2.  These two programs compliment the Video-In and Video-Out capabilities of the A350 TDH MyViVo.  There were also some manuals, adapters and cables tucked away inside the box.  A blue dongle with composite and S-Video in / out connectors, an S-Video cable, a composite video cable, a DVI-to-DB15 adapter and lastly a Molex power cable splitter were included as well.  All in all, a very well rounded, complete bundle.


     
Abit Siluro FX 5900 OTES

Abit's bundle was a bit understated.  The Siluro FX 5900 OTES shipped with two user's manuals, one explaining the card's features and the other outlining the benefits of the OTES cooling system, two CDs and a few adapters and cables.  One of the CDs contained drivers and a copy of Abit's SiluroDVD 4 software.  The other disk had copies of WindowBlinds NVIDIA Edition, a demo of Earthviewer 3D and a demo of Soldier of Fortune II.  An S-Video cable, a Composite (RCA) Cable, an S-Video to Composite adapter, a Molex power cable splitter and a DVI-to-DB15 adapter, were also included.  The Siluro's bundle was decent, but we would have liked to have found a game or two included to showcase the card's features and performance.

Up Close & Personal