MSI GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
Benchmarking
In this benchmarking session, we were curious about comparing the performances of the new NVIDIA's flagship solution made by MSI versus the old revision of the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra core. For that, an ASUS V9950 video card was overclocked to the frequencies of NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra (475 MHz / 950 MHz, marked on the graph as " GeForce FX 5900 o/c 475/950"), and the reading were taken from the boards in the overclocked mode. Let's see how justified is the statement saying that NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra is merely the overclocking of NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and nothing else.
We also took test readings from an MSI FX5950 Ultra board produced with the two driver versions: ForceWare 52.16 WHQL and the most recent ForceWare 53.03, also WHQL-certified. The results for the latter are the most interesting in the FutureMark 3DMark 2003 benchmark patched with version 340, but let's not ahead - all in good time.
Test configuration:
- Motherboard: JetWay S446 (SiS 645)
- Processor - P4 Northwood GHz (133x16)
- Memory: 256 MB Hynix PC2100 DDR SDRAM (CL=2)
- HDD: Maxtor Diamond Plus 8 40 Gb
- Video cards:
- MSI FX5950 Ultra VTD256 (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra)
- ASUS V9950 (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900)
Operating system:
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; v330 and (!) v340;
- ToMMTi-Systems ShaderMark v2.0 (a synthetic DirectX 9 HLSL benchmark for pixel shaders);
- D3D RightMark 1.0.2.7. (Public Beta 1) (comprehensive DirectX 9.0 synthetic benchmark);
- Unreal Tournament 2003 (Direct3D, Hardware T&L, vertex shaders, Dot3, cube texturing. "Antalus Flyby" demo);
- Codecreatures v1.0.0 (a DirectX 8.1 application, shaders on, Hardware T&L);
- Call of Duty 1.1 (OpenGL, multi-texturing. 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)).
- Gun Metal Benchmark 2 v1.20s (a DirectX 9.0 benchmark, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1, Hardware T&L);
- X2: The Threat Demo (Direct3D, multitexturing, Dot3, running in the benchmark mode embedded in the demo version);
- Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 2 (a benchmark for assessing the performance in the future game Final Fantasy XI. Unfortunately, the developers haven't presented any data on the gaming engine);
- HALO: Combat Evolved 1.2 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Hardware T&L, quality set to the maximum possible);
- 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);
- Half-life 2 leaked beta (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, default quality);
- Unreal II: The Awakening (Direct3D, vertex shaders, Hardware T&L, Dot3, cube texturing, quality offered by the BenchemAll suite).
Overclocking
The video card was overclocked with the RivaTuner utility. The operation stability during overclocking was verified with Future Mark 3DMark2003 v330 and MadOnion 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 used an ordinary 8x8 cm fan as the additional cooling device that blew about the memory chips of the video card first. In our case, blown were the radiators that covered the memory chips, and that was useful considering the intense heating of the latter.
So, we were able to overclock the MSI FX5950 Ultra VTD256 video card to the following clock speeds:
| Video card |
Core/memory Max |
| MSI FX5950 Ultra VTD256 |
535 MHz / 1060 MHz |
The chip was able running at higher speeds - the efficient cooling system makes itself felt, but the performance was then not increasing, but on the contrary - reducing (the so-called excessive overclocking effect), so in the end we stopped at 535 MHz / 1060 MHz. As we see, compared to the nominal 475 MHz / 950 MHz for the core/memory, respectively, the overclocking of the chip proves to be good enough, but the memory brought not so effective results. But anyway even in the nominal values for this card like FX 5950 Ultra the card runs at almost the breaking point, so it's too much demanding more from the board =).
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