Prolink PixelView GeForce FX 5900XT Golden Limited
The Board's Features
Prolink PixelView GeForce FX 5900XT Golden Limited
Retail bundle
Inside the sizeable box of Prolink's traditional coloring, we found a lot of curiosity items:
- The board itself with a monitoring LCD attached thereto;
- A video cable;
- DVI-to-D-Sub adapter;
- S-video to AV adapter;
- a 4-pin power cable;
- A cap for fastening a LCD monitor in the 5.25" compartment;
- An extension cord to connect the monitor and the board (for operations described in the previous item);
- A lot of varied documentation on both the GeForce FX board and the Prolink produce;
- 2 CDs for drivers, utilities and a licensed copy of PowerDVD.
In view of the specificity of the product - a small LCD monitor - the package bundle proved to be smart enough, however, if you look at the software part of the bundle, we say that it is bottleneck of the Prolink product. No games at all. However, as we already mentioned in our review on the AOpen board built on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT chip, that is not a problem for the Russian market (however sorrowful, the situation is just this).
Design and layout
The exterior of the board immediately catches your eye: its design proved to be very similar to that examined in our review on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Roundup for the Prolink's video card - Prolink PixelView GeForce FX 5700 PDF. Of course, it's not the PCB design, but the design of the cooling system.
However, there are several essential differences. The major one is that in the video card Prolink PixelView GeForce FX 5900XT Golden Limited in question, there is a temperature monitoring system dubbed PDF, but on the already examined Prolink PixelView GeForce FX 5700 PDF board the hardware monitoring system was of version I. We'll tell more about the differences a bit later, but now let's point to the common aspects.
First off, the PCB design in Prolink PixelView GeForce FX 5900XT Golden Limited, like in almost all the video cards based on the NVIDIA GeForce FX5900XT chip, has been substantially simplified relative to NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900/NVIDIA GeForce FX5900 Ultra. We have already noted that in our review of the Albatron and AOpen boards based on this chip. Also, the today's Prolink board in question offers somehow low PCB design to arrange a hardware monitoring.
The video card offers a dark blue PCB and 128 MB DDR onboard with a 256-bit data transmission bus (all the 8 memory chips are on the front side of the PCB). Strange is that the board offers blue PCB design, which is not typical of products of such brand. Normally, all Prolink boards are yellow, but here we see a definite departure from the color of the batch. 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.
It should be noted that there is not VIVO chip on the Prolink board, which makes this board aimed at those who buy it only for active gaming and prefer to save money on those features which they are anyway unlikely to use. But anyway there is a space on the board for a VIVO chip - it's not a problem to install a Philips chip on the board.
The signal shaping on the additional connector for digital monitors is performed not with the customary TMDS-transmitter Sil1162 by Silicon Image, but with the THC63DV164 TMDS-transmitter made by THine.
Along with this, on the front side of the PCB you can see a connector for additional power supply which is necessary for video cards on the base of NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT. You don't have to apply additional power onto the board, but in this case the card will run at reduced speeds, of which it will honestly report on Windows start-up.
There is an advanced BGA-packaging for memory chips made by Hynix (HY5DU283222A). The access time for the memory chip is 2.8 ns, which is equivalent to 350(700) MHz at which the memory runs. The GPU operating frequency amounts to those 390(!) MHz as per the specifications.
If we dismantle the whole cooling system of the board, it would be unfair not to look inside the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT chip. The chip is covered with a lid and, as is seen on the photo, it was manufactured on the 29th week of the year 2003 and has revision A1.
The cooling system for NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT chip on the Prolink PixelView GeForce FX 5900XT Golden Limited board is very well made. The lid with which the whole board is covered (like armory for the card) does nothing for cooling, and does not allow using the adjoining PCI-slot. But it looks very nice and of good quality anyway. The radiator on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT chip is decent enough - together with the superb fine, its efficiency arouses no doubts, but I think many agree it wouldn't be bad if the memory were covered with lids (for instance, take the Albatron).
The difference of the new proprietary PDF II technology is the ability to turn the monitor which displays the core temperatures and rotational speeds of the fan on the corners up to 180 degrees.
The cap for the 5.25" compartment together with the extended wire to connect to the video card - it's simply a miracle for those who have no PC casing with the lateral transparent wall. It's a pleasure to watch the readings on the LCD monitor.
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MoBo:
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VGA Card:
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CPU & Memory:
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