Overclocking tests
The FX 5900 cards seem to be equipped with GPUs that are almost as good as their Ultra counterparts. A few samples from various manufacturers have managed to hit the Ultra's 450MHz core without any difficult whatsoever. ABIT's cooling is both quiet and impressive, especially on the size front. A slab of aluminium, on both sides of the card, bodes well for oveclocking purposes. ABIT's own Graphics MAX software was used to see just how far the card would go beyond the 400/850 standard specifications.
The OTES FX 5900 was tested in a closed case without any external cooling directed towards it. A 'stable' speed was reckoned to be one that could withstand, without blemish or artifact, three entire loops of 3DMark 2001SE with 4x AA and 8x AF applied.
This rather pleasing set of figures emerged after strenuous testing.
475/973 was as solid as the proverbial rock. Performance for free !. The figures represent an 18.75% increase on the GPU and 14.5% increase for the RAM, giving a potential bandwidth figure of over 30GB/s. Yum, yum. Three benchmarks were retested to see the effect of extra speed. Firstly, 3DMark 2001SE.
We'd have expected more from the inflated clocks.
That's far more like it.
In two of these three benchmarks the overclocked FX 5900, running at faster speeds than the Ultra model, has fallen behind the 256MB card's figures. Is 256MB of memory merely a gimmick that will woo the deep of pocket, or does it have some practical, meaningful purpose ?. The latter appears to be closer to truth when benchmarks are set to extreme levels. We can only guesstimate the size of textures, even with compression, required for the games that will be launched in the near future. Add savage image settings into the equation and, just perhaps, 256MB of on-board memory will be seen as necessary rather than the current gimmicky luxury.
