ForceWare 52.16: NVIDIA's retaliation
ASUS V9950 (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900)
Package bundle:
The colorful package, a de facto standard for ASUS FX product line, included the following:
- The graphics board itself;
- a DVI-to-D-Sub adapter;
- a S-Video->RCA cable;
- a User's Manual (in English);
- A drivers installation manual (in 14 languages, including Russian);
- 3 CD with games (Gunmetal, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, Battle Engine);
- 1 CD with demo versions of games (WarcrAFt III, Splinter Cell, Big Mutha Truckers, BREED, Colin McRae Rally 3 and TOCA Race Driver);
- 2 CD with various ASUS proprietary software.
Once again we see a marvelous package bundle by ASUS, for which the company has always been notable for.
Design and board layout
The board's PCB design is completely identical to NVIDIA's reference board. There aren't any differences in either the component layout nor even in the positioning of capacitors.
The board itself proved to be quite massive. This is most likely due to the heavy cooling system (read below, for more details) with copper radiators.
The video card offers a classical dark green PCB and 128 MB DDR onboard with a 256-bit data transmission bus (8 chips, 32 bit each, positioned over the front side of the PCB). As we see, the board offers twice as less of memory capacity than its elder sister GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, which is achieved through under-equipment of the card with 8 memory chips so the contact pads on the board's reverse side remain vacant. The video card offers the AGP 2x/4x/8x interface and a standard set of outputs: one DVI-I, one analogous, and one TV-OUT. The signal for digital monitors is formed by the Sil164CT64 TMDS-transmitter made by Silicon Image.
 There is also a contact pad for a VIVO chip which is not installed (available on the Ultra version of the board). On the front side of the PCB, there is also a connector for additional power necessary for the resource-hungry GeForce FX 5900. You don't have to apply the additional power to the board, but in this case the card will run at reduced frequencies (250 MHz core, 500 MHz memory). The shortcoming of the additional power connector on ASUS V9950 is its vertical positioning. First, it's quite difficult to apply power with an AGP video card already in place. Secondly, the fastening of the connector leaves much to be desired.
For memory chips positioned only on the front side, there is an advanced BGA packaging. The access time of memory chips is 2.2 ns, which is equivalent to 454 MHz (908 MHz), but the memory runs at 425 MHz (850 MHz) as per NVIDIA's specifications. The GPU operating speed is 400 MHz, which also meets the frequency recommended by NVIDIA.
The cooling of ASUS V9950 is made quite well, and during the tests there was nothing to complain about the overheating. In its overclocked state, the card was running properly despite the outstanding overclocking settings. The cooling system appears to be a continuous structure made up of a quite massive copper radiator that covers both the chip itself and the memory chips (for which there are some hollows, which improves the tightness of their attachment to the radiator), two fans (whose blades gleam in the ultraviolet, so ASUS V9950 is a real nicety for a modding fancier =) ) that blow around both the graphics chip and the memory chips.
On top of it all, I'd like to add that despite its massive bulk and seeming awkwardness of the cooling system the adjoining PCI slot is not blocked; anyway, it's better not to torture any device through installing it into the first slot because that will be a real trial for video card either since the air flow would be restricted. Among the advantages of this cooling system is the very low noise level (let alone the Flow FX =) ) which is very hard to distinguish behind the noise coming from the processor cooler and the hard disk.
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MoBo:
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VGA Card:
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CPU & Memory:
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