After many delays from NVIDIA attributed to a number of different problems, NVIDIA is finally ready to release its latest and greatest video card called the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra based on the new GeForce FX architecture. While I'm still working to try and get a sample of the card from either NVIDIA or one of its partners to review, this article present preliminary information based upon the information available on the Internet about the prerelease boards. So without further delay, here is the information I'm sure you are looking for.

Card Specs

There will be two cards released based on the GeForce FX processors, the 5800 and the 5800 Ultra. The main difference between the two is in their base clock rates for the processor and the memory. Below are some of the relevant specs that are known compared to the ATI 9700 Pro:

Some of the key things to note from this it is the first graphics processor to use a .13 micron chip design which is the primary cause for its delay to market. NVIDIA originally planned for this product to be available in November of 2002, but production delays allowed for ATI to release its ATI Radeon 9700 Pro that stole the speed crown away from NVIDIA.

While the GeForce FX card uses the newest DDR2 memory to double the amount of data that can be processed through the memory at the chips clock speed, it still has a lower memory bandwidth because it uses the 128-bit memory bus compared to the Radeon 9700 Pro's 256-bit memory bus. This could hamper the FX board's performance in some games that require high video memory bandwidth.

Big, Loud and Hot

One of the biggest problems plaguing video processors now is the same as desktop CPUs, heat. In order to try and cool the card to an acceptable level, NVIDIA has developed the FX Flow design that essentially doubles the cards size to take up a PCI slot in addition to the AGP clot in a computer system. This is caused from the high-speed fan, cooling elements and air intakes that are required to cool down the processor. Don't expect this card to fit in any of the small form factor cases due to this double slot design.

When the processor is running at full speed, many people commented upon the noise that this solution generated. Initial tests and impressions put the noise levels equivalent to the sound levels produced by small vacuums. This is of course based on prerelease boards, so it is possible that NVIDIA or its partners will be correcting this.

To try and prevent this from distracting the user too much, they also implemented a fan speed control based on the temperature and a variable speed scaling. When the card is not being used for 3D graphics, the card scales back its speed to roughly half the clock speed. This reduces the power consumption of the processor and also lowers the amount of heat it generates. Similarly, the fan will run at a lower speed to reduce the amount of noise produced by the card.

Speeds

From the testing from the various sites that have prerelease cards, it appears that the GeForce FX cards will pull ahead of the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro cards in most of the tests but only by the slimmest of margins. NVIDIA is well known for their ability to gain additional performance improvements through driver releases. They will most likely be able to get some additional speed from the GeForce FX processor through driver optimization. Of course, coming just one month after the release by NVIDIA will be ATI's release of the R350 processor boards that should have improved performance over the Radeon 9700 Pro cards based on the R300 processor.

Anti-alias Performance

One of the greatest benefits of the high-end graphics processors right now is the ability to use full screen anti-alias (FSAA) to improve the quality of the picture. This blends colors between pixels to give polygon edges a more fluid looking edge instead of the standard stair-step effect. Enabling FSAA features on boards tends to reduce the frame rates that the cards can produce, but the current high-end graphics cards have enough power to spare when these functions are enabled. NVIDIA claims that the new GeForce FX should provide loss-less FSAA performance at the lower settings.

A big controversy has been created from initial test of the boards about the quality of the FSAA settings on the boards. In particular the quality of the 2x settings seem to be the greatest area of contention. Many sites took screen shots comparing the picture quality between the Radeon 9700 and GeForce FX boards at this low settings and it appears as if they GeForce FX does not seem to be doing any effects at these settings. Some believe this may be a problem with drivers and NVIDIA also claimed that the effects are done after the frame buffer where the screen captures were taken from. This issue will likely be cleared up by the time the production cards are available.

Conclusions

Is now the time to go out and place a pre-order on a new GeForce FX card? I would be hard pressed to recommend it. The speed and performance gains over the ATI boards are minimal and the drawbacks of the noise, heat and size of the card definitely don't make it attractive to most buyers. This card will appeal to those people who must have the fastest card on the market and the money to purchase it. Of course, that title of fastest card will likely be very short-lived due to the quick release of the R350 based boards by ATI just 1 to 2 months after the GeForce FX comes to market.

There is one good thing to come from its release. Expect to see prices on the current Radeon boards and GeForce4 boards to drop in price from anywhere from $50 to $100. This has the effect of making cards that perform well in all of today's games being that much more affordable for the masses.

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