Best performing video card under $200.
Written: Jan 31 '04 (Updated Dec 08 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Memory heat sinks, great graphics driver, and best price solution.
Cons: Very large card may not fit in all machines. Check the dimensions!
The Bottom Line: This is the best performing video card out there for under $200 as of first quarter 2004. Read the review for benchmarks!
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| ivplay's Full Review: eVGA GeForce FX 5900SE, (128 MB) AGP Video Card |
I am writing this review due to the fact that as of this date (1/31/04) I believe that the eVGA.com 5900SE is the best bang for the buck in video cards. This assumes that you have committed yourself to purchasing a midline video card and therefore have narrowed your choices down to a card up to $200. Note, I said up to, not below, $200. This is due to the fact that there are obviously other cards out there that are cheaper, if that is the route you want to go. However, if you want to get the best card you can while staying under $200, this is the card for me, and I think it should be for you too.
Why did I buy this graphics card?
I have owned an assortment of video cards ranging from a Ti4200, FX 5200, FX 5600Ultra and several other onboard graphics chips. Recently I had upgraded from the 5200 to the 5600Ultra, and with both of those cards I did not see a great improvement over the Ti4200. Oh sure, if you are playing DirectX 9 you needed to bounce out of the Ti4200, but other than that, the performance boosts I expected were not there. The Ti4200 overclocked very well, and in 3dMark2001SE benchmarks it actually outperformed the 5200 and almost as well as the 5600Ultra. I wanted to make the next step, and originally I thought this was to an ATI Radeon 9600XT or a GeForce FX 5700Ultra. After some research, I decided that the 5900SE was the best bang for the buck, on paper anyway. Was I correct? Let’s look at some specifications first.
Specifications
The specifications of the 5900SE include the following(taken from the box):
NVIDIA CineFX engine
128-Bit, Studio precision color
AGP 8X/4X
Optimized for DirectX 9.0
Optimized for OpenGL 1.4 support
Dual 400MHz RAMDACs
The minimum system requirements from the box are:
Intel Pentium III/AMD Athlon or above CPU
128MB system memory(RAM)
300W or greater Power Supply Unit(PSU)
Available hard drive power connector (Molex)
Available AGP 2.0 or above slot
CD ROM drive
Windows 98SE, ME, NT 4.0 SP6, 2000, and XP
What does all of this mean, and is it correct?
Processor requirement
I would say based on my experiences that you need to have a P4, non-celeron chip or higher end AMD chip to make this purchase worthwhile. Wouldn’t you hate to buy a video card for your system expecting great results only to find out that your CPU was holding it back? That is the reasoning behind my statement.
RAM requirement
Realistically, you should also have at least a minimum of 512MB and potentially upwards of 1GB (1024MB) of RAM in your system to get the most from this card. That is not due to the requirements of the card, but rather the fact that the reasoning behind buying a card of this caliber. More than likely you are buying this card to get top performance from newer game platforms or video rendering, or a combination of the two. These programs will be memory hogs, and without the additional installed memory, your bottleneck will be your RAM and you will once again not be able to utilize the card’s full potential.
PSU
300W power supply is a minimum, and it needs to be a good one. Not only does the card require the power supplied by the AGP slot, it also requires a Molex plug like what you insert into your hard drives. It will run without the additional power, but it does remind you that it is reducing the performance of the card if you forget. If you have a cheaper 300W or even less in your PSU, you will probably hang your system or it will sporadically shut off in the middle of an important part of a game.
AGP slot
In regards to the AGP note in minimum requirements, do not make the mistake that APG 2.0 or above means that you can run AGP 2X cards. AGP 2.0 is actually the revision for AGP 4X! You motherboard needs to be compatible with either 4X or 8X for this card! That being said, in my experience NVIDIA cards that are optimized for 8X AGP can run at 4X, but it is not recommended (by me). My 5600Ultra had issues with the 4X slot on my original motherboard, and often flaked out on me. I upgraded to a new motherboard that was 8X compliant and the problem went away.
For this reason, I would recommend having a motherboard with 8X support, as even if it does perform at 4X, you are cheating the system by bottlenecking the card at the AGP slot as far as data transfer. You see, AGP 4X can transfer data from the video card to the bus at the rate of 1.06 GB/s, while 8X doubles that bandwidth to 2.1GB/s. If you run 4X, you theoretically cut your bandwidth in half. You will only notice this on higher end games and whatnot, but then that is why you bought the card, right?
Purchase
As I said, I purchased this to replace my relatively new 5600Ultra card that I felt was not performing as highly as I wanted. I wanted the best bang for the buck, and as I stated before I thought this would end up being an ATI Radeon 9600XT or 5700Ultra by NVIDIA. These cards produce respectably higher results on benchmarks than my 5600Ultra and are based on the newer technologies from both companies. Results in the 4000’s for 3dMark2003 for both is fairly good, and I was going to choose simply based on the best pricing and software packages. However, then I found the eVGA.com GeForce FX5900 SE! I bought this from Newegg.com for $188, which is actually less than the Asus Radeon 9600XT and Gainward GeForce FX 5700 Ultra at $199 each on newegg.com!
What’s in the box?
The box arrived in the mail two short days after placing the order. I opened it up along with my computer, took out the old graphics card and replaced it with the 5900 SE. I then started the computer to ensure I had gotten the card seated correctly, and finally looked in the box to see what it came with.
In the box, besides the card is an S-video cable, a DVI/Analog adapter, and a full version of Call of Duty and Ghost Recon, together which would cost you over $50 if you bought them separate. Heck of a deal right there! In addition to this there was a driver CD and CD containing ‘valuable’ utilities from eVGA. To tell you the truth I did not load the utilities, as I have no need to clutter up my hard drive. I need the space for games, mp3’s benchmarking utilities, etc.
NOTE: I am not going to review the games in this review, but I understand that this may be a selling point for you. Therefore I am recommending you read the following reviews:
zlmajors has a great review on Call Of Duty right here. I really enjoy this game, and am about halfway through it.
search66 has a very helpful review for Ghost Recon right here. I have two copies of this now, as I had already bought the gold edition prior to this card.
The card itself has a DVI and analog output as well as S-video out. I only use the analog output, as my LCD monitor does not have a DVI input. I have never looked into using the TV with the S-video output, but it is theoretically possible. I could use my wireless keyboard and mouse to control games, and play them through my television. To tell you truth, I may do that in the future, but right now just call me lazy, as I have not invested the time to do this.
The card is visually appealing, with a bright green board and a nice big HSF fan over the RAMDACs, but not touching the memory modules. To tell you the truth, this has typically been a pet peave of mine, as by not sinking the heat of the memory modules through a fan, the manufacturer almost guarantees that the card will heat up under intense usage to the point where it will hang or fragment the graphics. However, eVGA is not on my complaint list as they added individual heat sinks to the memory modules. Not only does this make it look cool, it dissipates heat from the memory and allows you to run the card/memory modules higher in performance. Epinions does not have the picture posted yet, so I have found one for you at the site below:
http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?Part_Number=128-A8-N321-TX
This is a big, big card. If you have not upgraded recently you will be surprised by how large this card really is. However, for performance you need real estate, and that is what this card has. In only takes up one slot unlike some of the other performance cards out there, thus leaving your expansion slot right below the AGP, typically a PCI slot, open for other cards.
The cards RAMDAC’s, or processors, run at a speed of 400MHz as stated earlier. The memory, on the other had, is DDR350, which double pumped means that it runs at a speed of 700MHz. This was a surprise to me, as the 5600Ultra I had before came stock at 400/800, and I mistakenly thought speed equated to performance!
My experiences
Like any good overclocker, I first ran the card at stock speeds. Running at stock speeds, I achieved great benchmarks of roughly 14,000 on the 3dMark2001SE and 5500 on 3dMark2003. My best with processor and graphics card overclocked with my 5600Ultra was 13,104 and 3,273, respectively. I then overclocked the card using the coolbits registry downloadable off the internet. I took the core processor clock to 446MHz and left the memory at 700MHz, as that seemed the only way it was stable. I scored 14,500 and 5750 respectively. I then backed down the card to stock speed and OC’d my processor to 3.25GHz and reran the tests. I was able to achieve 16,500 and over 6000 on 2003 and 2001SE. Those are phenomenal scores for a card under $200, and much higher than I would expect with the 5700Ultra and the 9600XT!
If you are unfamiliar with benchmarks and rely more on visual, this card will give you everything that you want. I have read that frame rates higher than 15-30 Frames Per Second (FPS) are not distinguishable to the human eye. This card may be overkill on most games then, as it performs between 80 and 300 FPS typically. On some of the newer games which really stress the graphics card, it performs very admirably at 25-30 FPS, so your eye doesn’t catch any hitches. The graphics on Call Of Duty are amazing. You can see tracers going into the air after bombers, distinct fire pattern exiting gun barrels, and facial features like I have never seen on your fellow troops. I think that you will be very happy with the graphics that this card can produce, and I know that I am!
Is this the best out there?
As I stated above, I believe that this is the best bang for the buck. If you have up to $500 to spend on a video card, you can obviously move up to a 5950 from NVIDIA or a 9800XT from ATI, but then you probably aren’t reading this review! If your price range tops out at $200, I would recommend this card highly for gamers, video editors, and anyone interested in getting the most out of their system. Take into the consideration the free games and great benchmarks, and you have a wonderful card that will last you a while!
Conclusion
I researched high and low, and I believe that this is the best card out there. I would recommend this in the under $200 range for anyone that has a higher end computer taking into consideration my system requirements above.
Benchmarks, for those that are interested
Interested in knowing how your CPU stacks up in benchmarks? Here are some links to benchmarks I use:
Pifast: Pi Fast is a program that tests your CPU by loading it. It will calculate the value of Pi to as many digits as you want and then report to you the time it takes to do so. The lower the better. My current best score is 43 seconds to calculate to 10,000,000 digits.
http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/PiProgram/pifast.html
3dMark benchmarks: There are four, to be exact, that I use from 3dMark. 3dMark2001SE and 3d2003 are graphics engine benchmarks, while PCMark2002 and PCMark2004 are benchmarks for the CPU, Memory and Harddrive.
http://www.futuremark.com/
Aquamark: This is simply one that will benchmark your graphics engine.
http://www.aquamark3.com/
UT2003: Unreal Tournament 2003 is a graphics engine test as well. It is also a fee downloadable game that is pretty awesome.
http://www.unrealtournament.com/
Finally, Prime95: Prime 95 is not a benchmark, but a test for stability of your system. You run this program for an extended period of time, and it will torture your CPU and RAM. If you are at all unstable, this will find it before anything else.
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
Other reviews of interest
My Motherboard, the IS7-E, based on the I865-PE chipset:
http://www.epinions.com/content_124412268164
My processor, Intel 2.6c @ 800MHz FSB:
http://www.epinions.com/content_125282586244
My previous processor, the P4 2.66GHz @533MHz FSB:
http://www.epinions.com/content_126990126724
My memory, Corsair PC4000PRO XMS series:
http://www.epinions.com/content_124563984004
My LCD monitor, the NEC MultiSync LCD1760V:
http://www.epinions.com/content_119510109828
My PDA, the Palm Tungsten C:
http://www.epinions.com/content_118730559108
My keyboard/mouse combo:
http://www.epinions.com/content_93652094596
My best friend, Newegg.com:
http://www.epinions.com/content_124769439364
I hope this helps you to make your decision, and please rate or leave a comment. Feel free to write as well!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 188
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