Review: ASUS V9950 GeForceFX 5900 Ultra 256MB

by Ryszard Sommefeldt on 27 September 2003, 00:00

Tags: ASUSTeK (TPE:2357), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qatm

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Conclusions

As with all recent GeForceFX articles, there's been a slightly foggy conclusion to be drawn. With drivers under scrutiny like never before, the 44.03 set we used to use wasn't fair in terms of rating any FX board. With the 45.23's doing much better and the 50 set just around the corner (indeed, I have them installed as I type this), it's easier to rate the performance these days.

There are die hard fanATIcs and NVIDIOT's aplenty on the hardware and technical forums of this world. Each faction eager to scream from the rooftops to support their chosen wallet munching favourite.

It's nice to take a step back with a new driver set, some new tests and a new graphing method and reevaluate past conclusions. I've said before numerous times that NV35 is a great accelerator in terms of performance. I'll say that again now, even after a fresh look at things with a newly sceptical eye. It might have slower shader performance than ATI's R350 in some circumstances, but unless bitching about your card on forums is your favourite pastime, those that like to play their games instead of talk about them will enjoy an FX 5900.

And of course, 9800 Pro is slower than NV35 sometimes too.

So with excellent performance (yes, even in upcoming 'proper' DX9 class titles like HL2 and DooM3), ASUS have done a good job wrapping it up with as much copper as they could, giving you a decent, if slightly dated, game bundle, and finally selling it at a decent price.

With noise levels at a minimum, cost was always going to be pretty much the only sticking point with any 256MB Ultra FX 5900 board. At £400 at one of my favourite retailers, Komplett, it's not cheap. Radeon 9800 Pro's are easily under £300 now, with only the 256MB model doing business over that figure.

Hmm, hard to recommend when you're forced to take a £400 hit in the wallet. But, 256MB of memory does make a difference on NV35 boards when pushed, plus £200 of that £400 surely goes towards the cooling solution (I'll keep making jokes about that until I run out of word count).

The non-Ultra boards are more like in terms of value for money, you'd be wise to invest in one of those instead. This is a nice Ultra example if you do want to step up into the realms of madness however, recommended if you do. Guess that means yet another 8/10 from me. Superlative but eventually flawed products don't make for much score variation. Yes, computer hardware really is this good just now.


Pro's

Performance
Cooling solution
Decent software bundle
Quiet
Excellent TV-out like all recent NVIDIA solutions

Con's

Expensive
Expensive
Expensive



Buy these products :: ATi 9800 Pro Cards :: NVIDIA Graphics Cards :: NVIDIA 5900 Cards :: ATi Graphics Cards ::


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Posted by deleted - Sun 28 Sep 2003 01:07
There are few things I'd like to discuss about the review, thanks.

Page 13:

So with excellent performance (yes, even in upcoming ‘proper’ DX9 class titles like HL2 and DooM3), ASUS have done a good job wrapping it up with as much copper as they could, … .

HL2 is a complete disaster for Nvidia and Doom3 code is still in production and won't be out until early 2004 at least, which makes it impossible to ensure all codepaths are working properly. Carmack mentioned Nvidia hardware won't perform very well without lower quality Nvidia specific path is being used. Is there something I missed?

Page 13:

It might have slower shader performance than ATI's R350 in some circumstances, but unless *****ing about your card on forums is your favourite pastime, those that like to play their games instead of talk about them will enjoy an FX 5900

I can't see how this judgement might be connected to Asus V9950's review. The reviewer should use the conclusion page to summarize his thoughts about the card, not the readers. The fact that Hexus.net's own forum software censors words from the review should tell something.

Page 13: Hmm, hard to recommend when you're forced to take a £400 hit in the wallet. But, 256MB of memory does make a difference on NV35 boards when pushed, … .

How? There's no argument to back this up in benchmarks. I can't see any benchmarks done with 128MB card working at same frequencies so that this conclusion may be drawn.

Page 10:

Gun Metal 2 is a new benchmark at HEXUS, testing PixelShader 1.1 and VertexShader 2.0 from the DirectX 9 specification

DirectX 9 specifications are PS2.0 and VS2.0 not PS1.1 and VS2.0 Gun Metal uses only portions of DX9, if the reviewer felt the need to mention the VS2.0 was from DX9, the fact that PS1.1 is from DX8 should have been mentioned not to misguide uninformed readers.

Page 9:

Given an accepted baseline of driver quality from ATI just now, the ASUS draws UT2003 just fine.

IQ tests without screenshots are like performance tests without numbers.

Page 9:

What's nice to see, from an “is this a good driver?” perspective, is almost the same line gradient from each card, indicating similar methods of IQ being applied on both sets of hardware.

I can't see why the reviewer doesn't mention the bilinear filtering “bug” in Detonators, and what has the performance drop gradient has to do with image quality comparison anyway? This is something done with high quality images, and they aren't provided in review. The reviewer also failed to notice performance quality differences in absence of trilinear filtering which makes his observations about image quality very questionable.

It's certainly not earth shattering, but a win nonetheless. It's nice to see some parity in performance at the end of testing, in a real world DX9 game engine, to restore some waning faith in NVIDIA.

Is that so? Atrocious image quality of Detonator 50 drivers used in review are proven by THG with screenshots in Aquamark3 benchmark. 45.23 drivers already introduced image quality lowering cheats. What did the reviewer do to ensure no image quality degrading cheats and/or no shader replacement instructions were executed to claim waning faith in Nvidia is being restored ?
Posted by deleted - Sun 28 Sep 2003 12:45
Originally posted by Deleted
There are few things I'd like to discuss about the review, thanks.

Thanks for taking the time to do so :)

Originally posted by Deleted
HL2 is a complete disaster for Nvidia and Doom3 code is still in production and won't be out until early 2004 at least, which makes it impossible to ensure all codepaths are working properly. Carmack mentioned Nvidia hardware won't perform very well without lower quality Nvidia specific path is being used. Is there something I missed?

Complete disaster? Can't really see that happening and I'm assured it will run just fine on NVIDIA hardware. It's too early to make a conclusion, nobody can run the game yet, but I base the statement on confidence that NVIDIA can sort out the problems. Doom3 comments are even less relevant, that's even further away.

Originally posted by Deleted
I can't see how this judgement might be connected to Asus V9950's review. The reviewer should use the conclusion page to summarize his thoughts about the card, not the readers. The fact that Hexus.net's own forum software censors words from the review should tell something.

The forum software is over zealous, the word isn't inappropriate to use, since bitching is exactly what goes on :) I wasn't commenting on HEXUS readers either, rather forum users with a vendetta. The statement makes that clear.

Originally posted by Deleted
How? There's no argument to back this up in benchmarks. I can't see any benchmarks done with 128MB card working at same frequencies so that this conclusion may be drawn.

We've covered 128MB vs 256MB FX5900 performance at HEXUS many times before, the statement is correct. Go look at other reviews for that. Even versus the Radeon on the graphs, you can see the advantage of 256MB on an FX5900, it generally has more performance at the 1600x1200x32 4AA 8AF point, where the memory is being used the most.

Originally posted by Deleted
DirectX 9 specifications are PS2.0 and VS2.0 not PS1.1 and VS2.0 Gun Metal uses only portions of DX9, if the reviewer felt the need to mention the VS2.0 was from DX9, the fact that PS1.1 is from DX8 should have been mentioned not to misguide uninformed readers.

Good point, I'll correct the article

Originally posted by Deleted
IQ tests without screenshots are like performance tests without numbers.

Not really. The reader can rely on the reviewer to give them accurate information without empirical evidence. We usally don't have the time to compare IQ explicitly, but I'll make the effort to do so in the future. To my eyes, 45.23 is a nice driver set in terms of IQ.

Originally posted by Deleted
I can't see why the reviewer doesn't mention the bilinear filtering “bug” in Detonators, and what has the performance drop gradient has to do with image quality comparison anyway? This is something done with high quality images, and they aren't provided in review. The reviewer also failed to notice performance quality differences in absence of trilinear filtering which makes his observations about image quality very questionable.

See above, we generally have no time to explicitly cover IQ. The bilinear bug isn't driver wide, it's applied on some apps and tests. And the fact I didn't notice it suggests that it had little effect on IQ on the tests I ran, otherwise I'd definitely have said so. I mention the driver drawing incorrectly in Comanche 4, why wouldn't I do so in other tests I notice being drawn badly?

Originally posted by Deleted
Is that so? Atrocious image quality of Detonator 50 drivers used in review are proven by THG with screenshots in Aquamark3 benchmark. 45.23 drivers already introduced image quality lowering cheats. What did the reviewer do to ensure no image quality degrading cheats and/or no shader replacement instructions were executed to claim waning faith in Nvidia is being restored ?

45.23 on the whole is a good driver for IQ. No driver is perfect, I hope you understand that. ATI's drivers have IQ bugs, and unless everyone tests screenshots against the refrast all the time, it's not pertinent to tar an entire driver with a “bad IQ” brush, since that's clearly not the case.

Thanks for your comments, at least you took the time to read everything, many don't :) The very state of drivers, industry wide, makes performance evaluation of cards a risky business these days. I stand by all my conclusions and statements however, despite that.

Cheers,

Rys