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MSI nBox N5900 Ultra-VTD256: We take a look at MSI's flagship FX card. Dubbed the nBox, it packs in the goodies, and is backed up by the killer FX5900 GPU.

Date: October 8, 2003
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    Serious Sam SE is a very graphically intense game, with high quality textures and plenty of enemies.  So does the MSI FX5900 Ultra perform like it did in Jedi Knight II?

Video Card Minimum FPS Average FPS Maximum FPS
MSI FX5900 Ultra Oc'd: 68 147.95 256
MSI FX5900 Ultra: 71 144.94 263
Radeon 9000 Pro AiW: 65 101.55 173
Matrox Parhelia: 42 75.27 159

    Here we see results much like that of Jedi Knight at 1600*1200.  The two Ultra's are performing close to a 150fps while the lower end Radeon 9000 is running just slightly over 100fps.  The Parhelia offers half the performance of the FX5900 Ultra cards in this test, but again all cards are going to be playable, with all but the Parhelia offering minimum frame rates over 60fps.  Lets see what happens when we increase the quality of the image, with AA and ansio.

Video Card Minimum FPS Average FPS Maximum FPS
MSI FX5900 Ultra Oc'd: 72 141.75 247
MSI FX5900 Ultra: 69 136.88 231
Radeon 9000 Pro AiW: 9 23.02 33
Matrox Parhelia: 32 51.52 108

    We can see a dramatic drop in frame rates for at least one of the cards we tested here.  The Radeon 9000 Pro loses over 80fps with AA and ansio enabled.  The FX5900's on the other hand barely drop at all, by about 7fps at most.  The Parhelia performs well but can't reach 60fps, though it 'only' loses about 25% of its frame rate, even though it is fill rate limited in this test.  The FX5900Ultra is the only card tested here that can do this, though we don't have results from the 9800 or other cards that are between the ones you see here.  How does the FX5900 Ultra perform at 1600*1200?

Video Card Minimum FPS Average FPS Maximum FPS
MSI FX5900 Ultra Oc'd: 72 141.75 247
MSI FX5900 Ultra: 69 136.88 231
Radeon 9000 Pro AiW: 9 23.02 33
Matrox Parhelia: 32 51.52 108

    Here we see that there is a very large difference between the MSI card and the lower end cards, especially the Radeon 9000 AiW.  Even the Parhelia is outperformed by just under 300%.  The FX5900 Ultra performs very well not really losing any performance compared to at 1024*768.  The frame rate is above 60fps in all situations.  Overclocking offers a minimal improvement, showing that this card is still CPU limited even at this resolution.  What happens when we add AA and ansio at this resolution?

Video Card Minimum FPS Average FPS Maximum FPS
MSI FX5900 Ultra Oc'd: 65 98.04 158
MSI FX5900 Ultra: 61 88.62 138
Matrox Parhelia: 17 26.84 55

    Here we finally see a bit of fill rate limitation kicking in for the FX5900 Ultra.  The difference between the standard clocked card and the overclocked card is about 10% which is helps bring the card near to 100fps average and 65fps at a minimum.  The difference between the FX5900 Ultra and the Parhelia is over 320%, which shows how well this card does in tests where the CPU is not a limiting factor.  Now however lets look some Direct X 8 and 9 tests.


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