PNY Verto GeForce FX 5900 Ultra reviewed

LIKE TODAY'S disposable pop stars, the majority of graphics chips tend to enjoy a brutally short stay at the top. No sooner has one chip hit the number one spot, the next great hope is pushing its way to the front, hungrily wanting its 15 days of fame. Recently the market has been dominated by the ATI Radeon 9700 and 9800 Pro chips, with nVidia's much-anticipated GeForce FX 5800 failing to make a big impression. At PC Advisor we found the 5800 to be a powerful card, but it wasn't fast enough to justify its high price tag and incredibly noisy fan.

The FX 5800 Ultra's cutting-edge specifications list was impressive on paper, but in practice these figures resulted in more of a roadblock. There was also the difficulty of obtaining and fitting the enhanced DDR-II RAM. On top of this, nVidia opted for a smaller 0.13-micron process rather than the usual 0.15. Smaller chips generate less heat and can be driven at higher clock speeds. Unfortunately, this proved to be unexpectedly problematic and the series of delays incurred in converting to the new process threw a further spanner in the works.

This month, however, sees nVidia back on form. PNY's FX 5900 Ultra is the card that we all hoped the FX 5800 Ultra would be - and then some. Graphics manufacturer nVidia has cut back on some of the FX 5800 Ultra's more troublesome features, creating a significantly superior product in the process.

The core clock speed, for example, has been trimmed from 500MHz to a more attainable 450MHz. And although the 0.13-micron process has now bedded in, the 5900 Ultra houses 256MB of standard DDR RAM. A drawback of the ill-fated DDR-II RAM was that nVidia had to stick with a 128bit memory bus. The more graphics a chip can pump out, the more memory bandwidth it needs to cope with the increased workload. At a time when the high-end ATI Radeon cards were enjoying the huge flexibility that comes from using a 256-bit bus, the bandwidth-strapped FX 5800 Ultra found it hard to keep up.

The FX 5900 Ultra, with its 256bit memory bus, boasts a bandwidth of 27.2GBps (gigabytes per second). This comfortably beats the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro's rate of 21.8GBps but, more significantly, it destroys the 16GBps memory bandwidth offered by the original FX 5800 Ultra. Starting at a resolution of just 1,024x768 and comparing it to the previously fastest card, the Radeon 9800 Pro, the 5900 Ultra averaged a lead of just 1-4fps (frames per second) across a range of games including Unreal Tournament 2003, Quake III and Aquanox. However, at a resolution of 1,600x1,200 the gap opens up to 8-16fps. Essentially, the more detail you add, the better the card performs thanks to its high bandwidth.

On standard computer-generated graphics, curved lines tend to appear jagged rather than smooth. By switching on anti-aliasing, the jagged lines are smoothed out and image quality improved. nVidia's anti-aliasing technology, IntelliSample HCT, compresses resource-intensive textures to make them easier and faster to handle. Thanks to more efficient techniques, nVidia claims that IntelliSample HCT's 4:1 compression technology is up to 50 percent more effective. This means that gamers not only have the chance of upping the quality of their visuals by switching on anti-aliasing, but they can do so without seeing the frame rates fall by 40-50 percent.

Again, these brave claims are borne out by the test results. At a resolution of 1,024x768 in Quake III, for instance, the Radeon 9800 Pro and both the FX 5800 and 5900 Ultra cards see a performance hit of just 3-6 percent with 4x anti-aliasing and 8x anisotropic filtering. Stretch to 1,600x1,200 and, while the performance of the 5900 Ultra falls by just 18 percent, the Radeon 9800 Pro and FX 5800 Ultra drop by 36 and 48 percent respectively.

But the 5900 Ultra isn't just about high frame rates and this chip marks the next step in nVidia's drive towards full cinematic graphics quality. The CineFX engine is up to version 2.0 and the main beneficiaries are the pixel shaders - these now have the potential to work at twice the speed and support twice as many floating-point instructions.

Perhaps the most exciting addition, though, is FX 5900's UltraShadow technology. Accurate shadows in games have to date been lacking in either quality or performance. With the game event of the year, Doom III, intending to embrace the advanced ‘stencil shadow volumes' approach, nVidia felt it was time to throw a lifeline to the gaming industry.

Currently, constructing a realistic 3D scene requires the graphics chip to accurately calculate every single part of every single shadow, despite the fact that the player can only ‘see' a certain distance into the scene. UltraShadow lets the programmer define certain portions of the scene in which the effect of the light sources will be most visible and concentrate on those. By omitting or cutting down on resource-intensive shadow calculations, UltraShadow creates stunning shadow effects with less impact on game speed.

Verdict
The 5900 Ultra is an excellent, if expensive, product offering extremely fast performance and great visuals. Thankfully, unlike its predecessor, it doesn't sound like a hairdryer when running at full speed. The immense fire power and features set of the 256MB PNY Verto GeForce FX 5900 Ultra makes it a star performer, whether you're talking about today's or tomorrow's games.

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Specifications
Nvidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra processor, 256MB DDR RAM, 400MHz Ramdac, 8X AGP, Max resolution 2048 x 1536@75Hz, DirectX 9, DVI, TV-Out, five year warranty