System setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.- Intel Pentium 4 3.00GHz HT S478 Northwood CP (800FSBB)
- Asus P4P800 Deluxe Springdale Motherboard
- NVIDIA GeForce FX5900 Ultra (NV35) at 450/850
- ATi Radeon 9800 Pro (380/340)
- ATi Radeon 9700 Pro (325/310)
- NVIDIA GeForce FX5800 Ultra (NV30) at 500/1000
Common components
- 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500C2 run at 2-6-2-2 at DDR-400
- 41.5GB IBM 120GXP Hard Drive
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- Samsung 181T TFT monitor
- Sony 16x DVD
- Cooler Master Fujiyama heatpipe cooler
Software
- Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
- DirectX9
- Intel 5.00.1012 chipset drivers
- NVIDIA 44.03 drivers for both FXs
- ATI CATALYST 3.2 drivers and control panel (6307s)
- 3DMark 2001SE
- 3DMark 2003 theoreticals
- UT2003 Demo (Build 2206)
- Comanche 4 benchmark
- Serious Sam 2 Demo
- CodeCreatures Pro
- Quake 3 v1.30 HQ
Notes
It's only fair to compare the FX5900 to some of the cards it will be competing against. The premium graphics card sector plays host to ATi's dominant 8-pipeline monsters, the Radeon 9700 / 9800 Pro cards respectively. The seamless synergy between impressive hardware and robust software have made them the only realistic option for those who want ultimate performance.
The FX5900 seeks to change all that by matching and surpassing the qualities that makes the ATI cards so good. It has more GPU speed, more bandwidth, and an equally impressive feature set as ATI's 9800 Pro. The question is whether its 4x2 architecture will hold it back in the upcoming benchmarks. Those benchmarks will be run at 1024x768x32, 1280x1024x32 (1280x960 for UT2003), and 1600x1200x32. Benchmarks were run 3 times and an average was taken.
Overclocking
We're not going to be focusing on overclocking numbers in the benchmark section. We'll wait until we have a number of retail boards before embarking on that run. We were still curious to see just how far the card would go. After some experimenting, we arrived at solid, games-playing clocks of 495MHz core and 955MHz memory. That's from a basic 450/850MHz specification. Not bad. Over 30GB/s of potential bandwidth.
