Gigabyte GV-N595U-GT (NVIDIA FX 5950 Ultra)
Tests
To compare the performance of Gigabyte GV-N595U-GT, we used the following video cards:
We have already tested the first board. It was chosen as an ordinary board built on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra chip with default frequencies to estimate the performance of Gigabyte GV-N595U-GT relative to a regular board based on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra.
Sapphire Radeon 9800XT was selected as a direct competitor to NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. So, in today's review we'll be comparing ATI's and NVIDIA's flagship solutions, as well as, in view of the release of the new Catalyst 4.2, estimating its performance versus Catalyst 4.1. Among the essential in Catalyst 4.2, the following is worth mentioning:
Versions of the components:
- Radeon display driver 7.98.
- Multimedia Center 8.9:
- HydraVision 3.25.0006.
- HydraVision Basic Edition 3.25.9006.
- Remote Wonder 2.3.
- WDM version 3.11.
Some amendments and improvements:
- Improved performance of DirectX 8 video cards (Radeon 8500, 9000, 9200):
- Unreal Tournament 2003: performance increased by up to 15%.
- Aquamark3: performance increased by up to 5-10%.
- ShaderMark: performance increased by up to 2-3%.
- Halo: performance increased by up to 3-4%.
- Tomb Raider: performance increased by 2%.
- Improved Direct3D settings: the driver no longer needs to disable the monitor for some time while applying Direct3D settings (Radeon 9500 and higher).
- Improved Component Video outputs for HDTV displays (Windows ME/2000/XP, and Radeon 8500 and higher).
You can view a complete list of improvements, amendments and limitations of the new driver available from here.
The increase of performance hasn't concerned DirectX 9.0 cards, so tests of the new driver version actually promises nothing interesting. But that the screen doesn't die away any more when changing the D3D settings - that's a really useful improvement, and it works excellent, I must admit.
Test configuration:
We have finally upgraded our AMD-based test configuration. Now it is a quite powerful system based on AMD Athlon XP 3200+ Barton (200x11 = 2200 MHz).
We remove all the decorative "niceties" out of the Windows GUI and set the operating system to maximum performance.
Disable the Vsync forcedly via the drivers both in OpenGL and in Direct3D applications. The S3TC texture compression was also disabled.
Test software:
- Future Mark 3DMark2003 v340;;
- ToMMTi-Systems ShaderMark v2.0 (a synthetic DirectX 9 HLSL benchmark for pixel shaders);
- CodeCult Codecreatures v1.0.0 (DirectX 8.1 application, shaders, Hardware T&L);
- Digital Extreme/Epic Games Unreal Tournament 2003 v2225 (Direct3D, Hardware T&L, vertex shaders, Dot3, cube texturing. "Antalus Flyby" demo);
- Yeti studious Gun Metal Benchmark 2 v1.20s (DirectX 9.0 benchmark , Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1, Hardware T&L);
- Egosoft X2: The Threat (Direct3D, multitexturing, Dot3, the benchmark mode embedded in the demo version);
- Square-Enix Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 2 (a benchmark to assess the performance of the future Final Fantasy XI game. Unfortunately, the developers haven't presented any data on the gaming engine);
- Microsoft HALO: Combat Evolved 1.3 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Hardware T&L, the quality is set to the maximum possible);
- Massive Development AquaMark 3 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Hardware T&L, AquaMark3 Triscore mode);
- Valve Software/Vivendi Universal Games Half-life 2 leaked beta (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, default quality, our own recorded demo benchmarks "3Dnews001" and "3Dnews005");
- Legend Ent./Epic Games Unreal II: The Awakening v1403 (Direct3D, vertex shaders, Hardware T&L, Dot3, cube texturing, the quality set to that suggested by BenchemAll).
- Activision Call of Duty 1.1 (OpenGL, multitexturing. The image quality was set to the maximum. Used was one of our own recorded demo reels "3Dnews002" (flying on a rocket in the mp_rocket level));
- GSC GameWorld / Russobit Ì FireStarter (DirectX 8.1/DirectX 9.0, pixel and vertex shaders, particle system, dynamic lights, projected textures);
- Core Design / Eidos Interactive Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness v49 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, defaults quality, "Paris5_4 Demo", "Paris1c Demo" and "Paris2g Demo" were used as the demos);
- Digital Extreme/Epic Games Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo (Direct3D, Hardware T&L, vertex shaders, Dot3, cube texturing. A pack of test demos was used: Botmatch Torlan, Botmatch Rankin, Botmatch Convoy, Botmatch Colossus, Botmatch Bridgeoffate);
- Demo Crytek / UbiSoft FarCry (DirectX 9.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, quality set to the maximum, "3Dnews004" was used as a demo ).
As you can see from the list of our benchmarks used, we have changed their qualitative selection as well as upgraded some benchmarks to the most recent versions. Unreal II has also been upgraded to version 1403: The Awakening in which along with the purely gameplay-related corrections and bugfixes, a performance boost was attained due to solving artless issues of illumination and other fine revisions to the engine.
HALO: Combat Evolved was upgraded to version 1.3. As per the information in the readme-files to the patch, the game does not offer any amendments to the performance boost, nevertheless, the tests will be run with the latest version of the game.
We also recorded our own demos for Half-Life 2. Yes, that's an alpha version that leaked to the Internet, it's rather raw, and it's still premature to make conclusions on the base of this version of the gaming engine, but as the practice shows, such tests are of really keen interest.
Among the new benchmarks, there is Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, a shader game of the DirectX 9.0 generation that uses version 2.0 pixel shaders to the full. We'll tell more details during the tests of the boards.
Besides, we switched to testing in X2: The Threat from the demo to a full version of the game.
Also, in today's review that will be the first time we try a demo version of Unreal Tournament 2004. The demo appeared in the Internet not so long ago, but in the opinion of gamers is of exciting interest to the gaming community. That is, the transition from Unreal Tournament 2003 to Unreal Tournament 2004 is merely a matter of time, so it would be interesting for us to find out about the alignment of forces among the top-end ATI's and NVIDIA's accelerators in this game. We'll give more details about the game and the amendments to the graphics component during the test itself.
Overclocking
The video card was overclocked with the RivaTuner utility. The operational stability during overclocking was measured with Future Mark's 3DMark2003 v330 and MadOnion's 3DMark2001SE benchmarks. In the first of them, the third scene from Trolls' Lair in the "cycled" mode was played to reveal the overclocking potentials of the boards. On finding the critical frequencies we ran 3DMark2001SE benchmark three times. Once distortions appeared on the screen ("broken" pixels, stripes, lines etc.), then we pushed the memory frequency down by a few megahertz. If the computer hanged, we reduced the clock speed of the graphic chip. If the tests ran successfully, the overclocking was regarded as successful. We did not apply additional cooling.
Therefore, we were able to overclock the Gigabyte GV-N595U-GT video card to the following clock speeds:
| Video card |
Core/memory Max |
| Gigabyte GV-N595U-GT |
560 MHz / 1035 MHz |
| MSI FX5950 Ultra VTD256 |
535 MHz / 1060 MHz |
To compare the overclocking potentials of boards on the base of NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, we're bringing in the overclocking results for the already tested MSI FX5950 Ultra VTD256. As we see, the overclocking potential of the chip in Gigabyte GV-N595U-GT is at a much higher level than in MSI FX5950 Ultra VTD256. This is explained easily enough: the chips that come to the manufacture of Gigabyte's GT-models undergo a thorough quality assurance when run at increased speeds, so it's no wonder that Gigabyte GV-N595U-GT offered much higher chip overclock than the MSI's board. But the memory overclock is not so high relative to the MSI's board.
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