At Comdex last year, NVIDIA unveiled a new product.  Those who have followed the path of the company know that it has followed a 6-Month product cycle, until the GeForce FX, codename NV30.  The FX was launched and we were left waiting for the product known as the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra which never made it to store shelves.  Even the GeForce FX 5800 can be hard to find to this day.  Driven by the need to innovate in a fast moving market, NVIDIA finally skipped a beat and missed a product cycle.  Whether the reason was the new .13 micron process or pushing forward with DDR II memory technology, the NV30 arrived much later than planned.  Also, add to this the fact that it was loud and didn?t outperform the 9700 Pro and it was not a successful part.

I recently went to visit NVIDIA to see the next generation of the FX line ? codename NV35.  The official name for the NV35 is the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra.  When walking into the room where the 5900 Ultra was shown to myself and other editors we all agreed on one thing ? they had fixed the sound issue.  The 5900 Ultra uses a new heatsink/fan design that is much quieter than the one from the 5800.  It will still kick into a faster speed as necessary, but even then remains under the level of most CPU fans.  If you do have a rather quiet CPU fan though, it will probably be heard over it.  The noise was fixed, but there were some other issues which needed to be remedied.  Today we?re going to find out what all the NV35 brings to the table and if it will bring NVIDIA back on the right track.


One Step Back?Two Steps Forward

Specifications:

• .13 Micron Process
  
• AGP 8X
  
• DirectX 9
  
• 256-Bit Memory Bus
  
• 256MB DDR RAM
  
• Vertex/Pixel Shader 2.0
  
• 400MHz RAMDAC
  
• 8/4 Pixels Per Clock
  
• CineFX 2.0
  
• Intellisample HCT
  
• 16 Textures Per Pass
  
• Z/Color/Texture Compression
  
• UltraShadow Technology
  
• 450MHz Core
  
• 425MHz Memory

The 5900 Ultra has taken a step back from DDR II memory to use standard DDR RAM.  Moving from 500MHz DDR II to 425MHz DDR would at first seem to be slowing things down except for one fact ? the memory bus.  The FX 5800 has a 128-bit memory bus and memory bandwidth of 16 GB/s.  The GeForce FX 5900 Ultra has a 256-bit memory bus which allows it to achieve a whopping 27.2GB/s ? not quite double.  However, the 5900 Ultra has retained support for DDR II for use in future products.  When and if these will be released we will have to wait and see.  Also taking a step back is the core speed as compared to the 5800 ? 450MHz instead of 500MHz.  Of course, the two cores are not the same so the only step backward here is simple MHz, which as we all know (except Intel?unless talking about the Centrino CPU?s) doesn?t always matter.

Moving on from clock speed comparisons, the 5900 Ultra is using AGP 8X, is DirectX 9 compatible, and supports Vertex and Pixel Shader 2.0 ? just as its predecessor.  The more important features here are Intellisample HCT and CineFX 2.0.  Z, Color, and Texture Compression is all a part of Intellisample HCT and improves antialiasing performance.  CineFX 2.0 improves Pixel Shader performance and introduces UltraShadow Technology.

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• Image Quality (0 of 9)
• UltraShadow and More (0 of 9)
• UT2K3 (0 of 9)
• VillageMark/Q3/Comanche 4 (0 of 9)
• Conclusion (0 of 9)
• More Pics / Test Setup (0 of 9)
• Overclocking (0 of 9)
• Serious Sam 2 / JK II (0 of 9)
• 3DMark / CodeCreatures (0 of 9)