Introduction
ABIT OTES GEFORCE FX 5900 128MB
FX 5900 from yet another manufacturer
Look through decent on-line vendors' graphics cards lists is a pretty reassuring business. Graphics card cores and structures may change, but we see the usual suspects adding new cards and dispensing with antiquated models. NVIDIA's long list of partners include, amongst other lesser lights, ABIT ASUS, MSI, Creative, Gainward, and Leadtek. If your memory goes back far enough to pre-GeForce days, a time that seems an eon away in the computing age, pretty much all of these manufacturers had TNT-based cards out to market. The cards' power and rendering ability has increased almost exponentially over the past few years, but the usual suspects have been quick to bring out their own version of NVIDIA's GPUs.
It now seems that producing homogeneous cards, based largely on Flextronics' reference design for NVIDIA, isn't enough to satiate most end users. The manufacturers listed above now produce individual designs with the emphasis on effective and efficient cooling. NVIDIA's very own FX 5800 Ultra was much-maligned for its attack on your aural sense, so newer FX 5900 cards have needed to mix power and decibel ratings in equal measure.
ABIT, well known for its Siluro line of NVIDIA-based cards, have put great store in the OTES (Outside Thermal Exhaust System) cooling system. It's reckoned to be quiet and effective - an enviable duo. It's ABIT's turn to see if it can produce the best FX 5900 yet.
