Review: MSI GeForce FX5900 Ultra

It's obvious that the Ultra 256MB version of FX5900, in MSI's VTD256 guise here, is fast. It's very capable hardware, but the driver issues hide the true standing compared to any Radeon's. ATI seem to have a driver upper hand as I write this, there doesn't seem to be a comparable NVIDIA driver in terms of rendering consistency.

So while it's fast, the spec tells us that, I'm now resigned to not having an opinion as to which is ultimately the fastest. Previously I'd have said the FX5900 was faster than a 9800 Pro, now I can't say so with certainty. We need a nicer driver, and quickly.

That said, it's not slow, by any stretch of the imagination. It's the fastest consumer accelerator money can buy. On paper.

Overclocking

Like it's lesser FX5900 sibling, the VTD256 was an overclocking champion. With simple air cooling, I managed the heady heights of 515/1060 with the review sample. With slight case fan assist, I'd imagine you can do much the same with any retail board. Your mileage will of course vary. Just for giggles, 1.06GHz memory on a 256-bit memory bus is just shy of ~34GB/sec. Good grief that's a lot. Without the rear fan attached, core clock overclock drops to 502. Not too bad, cooling the back of the GPU works it seems. Memory clock remained unchanged

Noise

There was none. It was as quiet as the regular FX5900, and since it shares the same fan arrangement, that's no surprise. Pretty much whisper quiet, there will almost certainly be louder components in your system.

Overall Conclusion

I've said before that a 256MB equipped graphics card is a silly purchase. It still is. Kudos to MSI for building it, it's a great card, but it's slightly irrelevant in a world of cheaper FX5900's that do Ultra clocks and 9700 Pro's and 9800 Pro's available for very nice money.

The feature set gets the thumbs up. VIVO is a nice addition to the high end hardware, making the card capable of that little bit more than usual, for your money. Whether VIVO matters, especially when it's not wrapped up to the extent that ATI go to in an All-In-Wonder product, is up to you. I like it however. TV-Output quality is simply excellent, recent nView2 implementations are one of the good things to come out of NVIDIA's driver team recently.

The presentation makes sure you get value for money, the software bundle is nice, if a little out of date, and you get VIVO. But it's expensive, for the deep of pockets and ultimate performance seekers only I'm afraid. Better cards exist for less money, I can't really tell you to waste yours.

Score