Review By John Grabski - June 11, 2004 Edited By Ed Piotrowski
INTRODUCTION
Building a reputation for top-notch product quality and customer support can, for most businesses, take at least five years to develop. In the fast-paced and ever-changing technology sector, five years can be a lifetime. This is why a company has to push hard to build a solid reputation. BFG Technologies has done just that and in less than two years since its inception, the Lake Bluff, Ill.-based firm has become one of the largest and most respected names in the business.
BFG stands for "Built for Gamers." While BFG markets other products such as the Sniper Boomslang 2100, their main focus is on NVIDIA-based graphics cards. The graphics card we are reviewing today is the FX5900XT OC, which is targeted at the value-enthusiast.
The name FX5900XT OC appears to be somewhat of a contradiction. As expected, the "OC" stands for overclocked. However, the XT model has the lowest clock speeds in NVIDIA's GeForce FX 59xx lineup with a core of 400MHz and memory speed of 350MHz (700MHz effective). However, combined with a 256-bit wide memory bus, the XT packs a powerful punch.
Enter The Card
FEATURES
BFG has one-upped the specifications with the OC model and shipped a GeForce FX 5900 XT clocked at 430MHz/735MHz. Why? Because BFG feels that the increased core and memory speeds will outperform the competition. Just how much extra performance do the higher clock speeds provide? In most cases only a few frames per second, which is enough of an improvement to say that there was one.
Up Close and Personal
The NV35 chipset is a year old already, so I'll just do the quick and dirty on the specs of the card:
NVIDIA CineFX 2.0 Engine
430MHz Core Clock
735MHz Memory Clock (Effective)
128MB 2.8ns DDR Memory
23.5 GB/s Memory Bandwidth
AGP 8X Bus (4X and 2X Compatible)
DirectX and OpenGL Compliant
VGA, DVI, and S-Video Out
ForceWare Graphics Drivers
A unique attribute of BFG, which is explained by Clay Angelly in his BFG GeForce FX 5900 Ultra review, is their true lifetime warranty and free 24/7/365 technical support. These features give BFG products an edge against the competition, who only offer shelf life warranties and/or poorly supported technical support lines. Obviously the folks at BFG know what gamers want. And they also what gamers don't want.
Toll Free and Lovin' It
The BFG 5900XT OC comes with the bare essentials - power adapter, DVI to VGA adapter, quick start guide, and driver CD with demos and NVDVD 2.0. Personally, this is the type of package I prefer because when I buy a graphics card, I buy GRAPHICS CARD! If I want games, I buy them myself.
