Card II
The RAM heatsink comes away with the removal of 4 screws. What we're then left with is 8 256M-MBit (32MB) modules of Tiny BGA DDR-1 RAM on each side. The important aspects to note here is that a) this makes up a total of 256MB of on-board memory and b) the RAM is still DDR-1 specification.
The above picture suggests that 2.2ns RAM (909MHz DDR) is being used for the NV35. With 450/850 clocks for GPU and memory respectively, the memory seems well suited for the task. It's still plain ol' DDR-1 here. We've seen specifications for 1GHz DDR-1 TinyBGA memory, therefore this isn't all that surprising. The 256MB of total memory may seem a little overkill for today's games, however newer games are, on occasion, using more than 100MB of RAM to store textures and heavy AA and AF at high resolutions needs a large buffer to work from. It's all a forward-thinking measure. On a side note, the huge RAM heatsinks used thermal tape and paste for heat transfer. We feel as if the size of the 'sinks was more of an aesthetic than performance measure.
The FX5900U's cooler is smaller in profile than the FX5800U's. Its size still dictates the use of two expansion slots. You can see that a single plate could be used on the back, but the cooler would impede any card placed in the first PCI slot down. DVI, VIVO, and HD15 connections are all present and correct.
Housed partially under the large cooler are two chips. The Sil 164CT64 and Philips SAA 7108AE (not shown). The former's role is to provide DVI duties, and in that it does well. DVI performance was crisp and sharp on a Samsung 181T TFT. The NV35 features dual 400MHz RAMDAC's for high resolution output and the Sil 164 digital transmitter is able to output to UXGA format (1600x1200, screen permitting). The Philips 7108AE is one of their premier encoders/decoders. It can encode/decode video streams up to a maximum resolution of 1280x1024 on both counts. We'd expect to see these two chips present on partner boards.
2D quality was subjectively excellent on both a standard 17" CRT and on an 18.1" TFT, run via HD15 and DVI. It's becoming harder and harder to differentiate certain cards' 2D quality.
The relative size of the FX5900 Ultra can only be conveyed by a picture. The FX5800 Ultra is no small beast, yet it's made to look pedestrian by the lengthy NV35.
