NV38 and NV36 Revealed - The FX 5950 Ultra and 5700 Ultra by Article Admin
Published: 10/22/2003
A Very short time ago we brought you news of the new ATI video cards that were recently released. These cards were launched in anticipation of Nvidia?s fall refresh and were meant to compete with the products we are reviewing today. Today Nvidia is releasing its new cards with the intent of taking the performance crown until the next generation cards hit the market. Nvidia?s fall refresh consists of the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra (5700 variant will follow).
So what has changed? The most noticeable item is the cooling system. It has changed again and it resembles the cooling setup from the FX 5800 which came under a lot of criticism. However, this card is a lot quieter than the original setup that Nvidia was using before. The 5950 is a 2 slot design and exhausts the air out of the back of your case which is one of the nice things about the cooler. The 5700 Ultra?s cooling system looks like a slim version of the 5900 Ultra?s. Clock frequencies have been increased and new drivers released, but do the 5950 Ultra and 5700 Ultra have what it takes to outperform the competition? Let?s find out!
The Cards:
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra:
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra Front
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra Back
Here you can see the cooling mechanism on the 5950 Ultra reference card. Expect most manufacturers to stick closely to this design, although some will diversify in order to make their cards stand out in the crowd. Unfortunately the first 5950 Ultra reference board we received had a bad fan and had to be replaced. The good thing was that I could dissect it without any worries about damaging something. So I took the cooling mechanism apart and took a closer look.
5950 Ultra Heatsink
5950 Ultra Top View
As you can see, the heatsink is actually held on by a clip much like Socket 370 and earlier heatsinks were held onto the CPU?s on motherboards. Not near as much force is required to hold this heatsink down though. What first came to my mind when I saw it was that the heatsink was so heavy that they needed a clip to hold it in place. The reality is that the clip seems to be the only easy way to mount this particular design. A duct covers the top of the fan and heatsink and draws air from behind the card rather than underneath it. This frees up the use of the adjacent PCI slot without fear of blocking airflow to the fan as the airflow comes from the rear of the card. Overall the cooling system for the 5950 Ultra is very well designed and they thought it through well. Here are a few more shots of the card:
Heatsink
Chip Exposed
Here you can see a shot of the heatsink. It?s all aluminum though part of me would like to see a copper base or something. It isn?t necessary but it may help overclockers out a bit. I?m sure someone out there with a knack for modding will hack away at their new very expensive video card though.
Specifications:
475MHz Core Clock
475MHz Memory Clock (950MHz DDR)
256-Bit Memory Interface
256MB DDR RAM
30.4GB/s Memory Bandwidth
AGP 8X
The specs for the 5950 Ultra are quite close to breaking that 1GHz DDR Memory Clock speed barrier, and this time with a 256-Bit Memory Interface. One thing that bugs me a little is that Nvidia is calling their thermal solution a ?Silent, dual-slot fansink.? I?m of the persuasion that if it has a fan, it isn?t silent. It may be very quiet but the only time it?s silent is when it?s running in 2D mode and the fan is stopped. I suppose that?s just nit-picking but anyway. On to the next card.
