Micro-Star International has teamed up with old faithful NVIDIA to once again form a solid tag team, and at just under four bills a pop, this seat isn't for the faint of heart. It's safe to say that high-end cards aren't cheap these days, but MSI does well in giving you the most bang for your buck by including a plethora of goodies along with your card (we'll get to those in just a bit).
The FX5900 benefits from the several NV35 key improvements over it's predecessor, the NV30 (a.k.a FX5800). Toping this list is the 256-bit memory interface, which theoretically doubles the data bandwidth per clock cycle. Running a close second is the change over from high-clocked DDRII memory in favor of the cooler and less expensive traditional DDR memory. Today we'll be looking at the non-Ultra , so without further ado, let's take a look at what's under the hood.
Features
The CineFX 2.0 engine gives us the ability to enjoy the same picture quality that we've come to expect at our local movie theatres. Microsoft's DirectX and the OpenGL environments each have their features extensively supported by CineFX 2.0, so it doesn't matter which library your app uses. Of particular interest to the programming community are the advances afforded by CineFX 2.0 in coding those complex pixel 2.0+ and vertex 2.0+ shader programs, which will essentially make writing that code less frustrating.
For those of us that love tweaking those AA/AF settings, Intellisample High Compression Technology performance is a welcome addition to the family. A nice touch is the new 6XS antialiasing setting accessible via the control panel. Not sure what resolution you want? Don't sweat it; all AA modes are available at all resolutions. To make things even better, the compression really kicks in at higher resolutions. As for the Anisotropic engine, it's designed to be adaptive which improves performance by kicking in only as needed.
Ultrashadow is the new kid on the block. Shadow calculations can now focus on specific areas deemed critical by the programmer. This essentially accelerates shadow generation by not calculating shadows in places that shouldn't have any to begin with. Bottom line here is complex shadow patterns with minimal to no adverse effects while you continue to enjoy high frame rates.
Here are some features afforded by the Advanced Display Pipeline with full nView capabilities. Integrated NTSC/PAL TV-encoder for some top-notch TV-out functionality. High-quality HDTV/DVD playback along with dual 400MHz RAMDACs to display resolutions up to and including 2048 x 1536 @ 85Hz. Not to mention full screen, full frame-rate MPEG-2 video to your desktop courtesy of it's integrated full hardware MPEG II decoder.
Digital Vibrance Control 3.0 technology makes for a much more comfortable and controlled viewing experience. With a click and drag of just a few sliders, color intensity, image sharpness and color separation settings are now configurable at our discretion. So we can now adjust the crispness and clarity of our 2D desktop applications, which should mean less cursing at those cursed spreadsheet.
As you'll notice in the chart just above, two of NVDIA's technologies have been given a facelift. CineFX has been upped to version 2.0 and Intellisample has been revamped to include the High Compression Technology (HCT). The familiar nView technology and AGP 8X support that we've come to expect are still around. A welcome addition to the team is the Ultrashadow technology, while the maximum memory and vertices/sec have each risen since the 5200 line.
MSI FX5900-VTD128
First off let's decode the name GeForce FX5900-VTD128. Without stating the obvious, VTD128 stands for Video-In, TV-Out, Dual Monitor and 128MB of DDR memory. This behemoth measures in a at a staggering 12" x 18" x 3", so you're getting plenty of real estate with this box. The 11 CD's bundled with the card contain full versions of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind, Duke Nukem : Manhatten Project and a trial 7 games in 1 CD. As far as utilities go, MSI Media Center, Virtual Drive 7 Pro, Restore It 3 Pro, MSI 5.1 Channel DVD player and a host of MSI home made apps round out the list.
Although we feel it would have been nice to go with quality (read : newer) rather than quantity, the games are classics none the less. If you're worried about putting yourself over budget with this purchase, keep in mind you could easily sell the box as a briefcase or nightstand. Oh, did we mention there's an extra power connector, a notepad and some I/O goodies with that? (we'll get to the I/O stuff in just a sec).
Sporting their trademark red PCB along with the Twin Flow cooling system, MSI brings two words to mind with this card: eye candy. The system consists of one massive cooler-fan combo on the front (first shot) and another smaller one on the back (second shot). The card itself is equipped with 128MB DDR memory and a molex connector to power the cooling system. As we saw with the FX5800, NVIDIA has continued on with the 0.13u process for their NV35.
Combined, the top (first shot) and the bottom (second shot) cooling-fan units make up MSI's modified Twin Flow cooling system. Normally bigger would mean louder but with 26db less fan noise than NVIDIA's reference board, that's not the case here. Another Twin Flow improvement over the NVIDIA reference board is a drop of 8°C which will come in handy for OC'ing.
Once the molex connector is attached, the splitter (third shot) then re-directs power to the two fan-cooling units. Although it might seem to be, the thin sleek looking card is not a one slot solution, as the top fan-cooler does slightly overlap with the PCI slot. It is possible that there may be a tight fit between the rear cooler-fan unit and the northbridge on some older motherboards.
Right to left, we have the traditional DB-15 VGA connector, a TV-Out / Video-In (S-Video) connector and a DVI-I connector. Included are a TV-Out / Video-In 1 to 4 connecting cable for multiple devices, S-Video extension (1.8M) and for you dual monitor enthusiasts a DVI-I / VGA adapter.
Test Setup
ABIT IS7 Max II Advance: Pentium 4 2.4C (12x200: 2.4GHz), 2 x 256MB Corsair TWINX PC3200 Ram, ATi Radeon 9700 Pro, 80GB Western Digital, Windows XP SP1, ATi Catalyst 3.4.
ABIT IS7 Max II Advance: Pentium 4 2.4C (12x200: 2.4GHz), 2 x 256MB Corsair TWINX PC3200 Ram, MSI FX5900-VTD128, 80GB Western Digital, Windows XP SP1, Detonator FX 44.03.
Test Software will be:
Unreal Tournament 2003
Jedi Knight 2
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Splinter Cell
Code Creatures
Specviewperf
The comparison video card will be the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. Benchmarks will be shown with and without AntiAliasing and Aninsotropic Filtering.
Due to the fact that the ATI 9700 Pro is not designed to do some AntiAliasing testing that the FX5900 can, we'll be presenting those benchmarks at the end of each game test. Of course, same can be said, cards reversed (no 16x Anisotropic Filtering for example), and we will not be presenting those ATI numbers since you can read about that in our All-In-Wonder review.
