GeForce FX 5800 is actually quite a good card

[skoprowski]

I recently picked up an Asus FX 5800 (non-ultra). I have 2 systems at home- both with Athlon 2500+, 512 2700 ddr and Nforce2 (Asus and Biostar) motherboards. One system has a Radeon 9800 and the other obviously a 5800. At default settings for both the 9800 and 5800 the 5800 is only a few fps slower than the 9800 in Quake3 and UT2003 benchmarks. I was quite suprised. The 9800 seems to have a edge over the 5800 when paying with AA/AF. I have 17inch monitors and pay all my games at 1024 x 768. The 3dmark2003 scores were 4500 for the 5800 and 5500 for the 9800.

I don't have exact benchmarks with me at the moment, but my point of all of this is that the 5800 really is not a bad card at all. It is smooth in all the games I play. It is too bad the Ultra NV30 gave the standard 5800 a bad rep. I happen to get the 5800 for $299.00- even with the 5900 coming out for $399- I think you can't go wrong if you buy the 5800 now. It will probably get even cheaper soon. Also, the card is quiet too. It is no louder than the case fans I had already.

[Hellbinder]

Actually thats is pretty much exactly the difference between the 5800 and 9800.

The 5800 has a slightly higher core clock, but slightly different single and Multi-texture processing. The 9800pro has more bandwidth and better AA. the difference in performance will get more severe the higher you crank the AA and AF.

But at 1280x1024 with 2xAA and 8x (ballanced) AF the 5800 should do just fine and humm right along.

All this stuff really comes down to personal preference and what settings you like to play games at.

[extreme_dB]

Remember that the only way the newest cards show noticeable speed increases is at high-quality settings (AA/AF) at high resolutions. Even a Ti4600 can hang with the latest cards at 1024 with no AA/AF, unless the CPU is very, very fast.

[Hellbinder]

btw,

One system had a Radeon 9800 and the other obviously a 5800.

What do you mean Had a 9800??? Pro or nonpro.

Dont tell me you got rid of a perfectly good 9800pro for a stock 5800. Did you???

:confused:

[skoprowski]

Thanks guys- I figured I'd get pounded for some reason here about my comments but wanted to post for those who wanted to know how the plain 5800 actually was. Anyone that doesn't want to go with ATI and doesn't want to spend $400.00 on the upcoming 5900 should consider the plain FX 5800. I haven't even tried to overclock the 5800 to the Ultra clock settings yet. Sorry- I have 2 systems- one with a 9800 and one with a 5800.

[extreme_dB]

Well, at $299, I think the 5800 is way overpriced compared to other cards on the market. :)

[Flipper]

i agree. this card has 3 advantages over ultra :
1)much cheaper
2)not noisy
3)easily overclocked to ultra standards and beyond
i think that from the whole fx line this one is the winner for nvidia
5600 is too weak and 5200 shouldn't exist at all as it's performance is ridiculous plus it's dx9 support is useless with this poor performance

[Hellbinder]

3)easily overclocked to ultra standards and beyond

I have seen comments like this posted a couple times now.

If the 500mhz chip required a dustbuster. To the extreme that a bug or overlooked area in the driver caused whole cards to MELT during a 3d screen saver.

How in the *beep* do you suppose that the same chip clocked at 400mhz with normal cooling is "easily overclockable to Ultra and beyond"??? Sorry, not without adding some extreme cooling.

[Dazz]

Me i only really ever use 1024x768 but would like to use AF, never use AA unless playing very old games with limited rez which i heard the R300/R350 has problems doing as they don't support AA in 16bit mode.

[Flipper]

Originally posted by Hellbinder
How in the *beep* do you suppose that the same chip clocked at 400mhz with normal cooling is "easily overclockable to Ultra and beyond"??? Sorry, not without adding some extreme cooling.
if you don't believe me that i've seen it with my eyes maybe you'll believe all those reviews - or not?
anyway, who cares if you believe it or not :p
http://www.octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/compro/poladyne/fx5800/fx5800.html
http://www.vr-zone.com/reviews/Inno3D/FX5800/
http://www.overclockers.co.nz/ocnz/vga/nvidia/fx/fx5800/compro_fx5800/f1.shtml
http://www.nordichardware.com/reviews/graphiccard/2003/Abit_FX5800/

[Richthofen]

Originally posted by Hellbinder
I have seen comments like this posted a couple times now.

If the 500mhz chip required a dustbuster. To the extreme that a bug or overlooked area in the driver caused whole cards to MELT during a 3d screen saver.

How in the *beep* do you suppose that the same chip clocked at 400mhz with normal cooling is "easily overclockable to Ultra and beyond"??? Sorry, not without adding some extreme cooling.

well it is true that the FX5800 has pretty much OC potential. In germany i know some guys who have this card and all get easily over Ultra clock speeds without any extra cooling.
The lage cooler is mostly to guarantee flawless work because their might be pc cases which are not that good cooled like others. Most enthusiast although have pretty good cooled pc cases so that might be one reason why so many people manage to get ultra clock speeds on their FX5800.

[Richthofen]

Originally posted by Flipper
i agree. this card has 3 advantages over ultra :
i think that from the whole fx line this one is the winner for nvidia
5600 is too weak and 5200 shouldn't exist at all as it's performance is ridiculous plus it's dx9 support is useless with this poor performance

Why shouldn't the FX5200 exist? Where is the competition in that segment?
Without a doubt the FX5200 is faster than the low cost offerings from the competition(Rv280 and 250) offers nice office features and in addition to that DX9 for free.
This card is nothing but great for its target market and it helpes that developers jump on the DX9 bandwagon.

[Hellbinder]

Ok hold on. Are you guys tring to rewrite history or something?? It is a KNOWN FACT that even with the dustbuster the 5800U is so hot it will burn your fingers just touching it. It also does not change the fact that without the superfan kicking to high it has actualyl MELTED whole cards in short order. Becuae of a Bug in Nvidias drivers.

The Quadro Got dropped to 300mhz from 400. I am seriously finding it really hard to believe that all these 400mhz Nv30's are suddenly miraculously running cooloer than the exact same chips from 2 months ago at 500mhz.

[Skuzzy]

They may run at Ultra speeds,..but they will not run that way long. Without some extreme cooling solutions, the heat will abruptly shorten the useful life of the chip.

It may not fail immediately, but it will fail much sooner than it should.

[Flipper]

Originally posted by Richthofen
Why shouldn't the FX5200 exist? Where is the competition in that segment?
Without a doubt the FX5200 offers nice office features and in addition to that DX9 for free.
lol, someone that wants a card for office use will go for a much cheaper gf4mx or even a gf2mx.
the dx9 support it's useless at such frames. is this clear or not? i repeat is this clear enough for you???

[Flipper]

Originally posted by Skuzzy
They may run at Ultra speeds,..but they will not run that way long. Without some extreme cooling solutions, the heat will abruptly shorten the useful life of the chip
no sh*t , you kidding me :p

[omv]

Originally posted by Skuzzy
They may run at Ultra speeds,..but they will not run that way long. Without some extreme cooling solutions, the heat will abruptly shorten the useful life of the chip.


Maybe, maybe not. Most designers target EM at 100-110degrees Celsius. Granted, thats junction temp, but you even with a 20 degree drop you're looking at 80-90deg C at the heat sink. Thats really $!@#$# hot.

The other thing to realize is its exponential with temperature - if you're 10 degrees less than the critical temperature, the device will have a long, long lifetime. Of course, 10 degrees over and you won't last long. :)

The bigger reliability danger is usually from overvolting the transistors, and to my knowledge you can't actually do that on a GF FX.

[jAkUp]

according to the control panel on my geforcefx ultra... the unstable temperature for the 5800 ultra is 140c... mine runs at about 50c's gaming and surfing... but yes, the back of the card is VERY hot... thats why i stuck a little orb fan on it... too hot for me to leave it alone imo.

[StealthHawk]

Hellbinder, have you ever considered that the Dustbuster FloxFX was the most horribly designed cooling fan in history and doesn't do that good a job of cooling? What are the temperature figures for the FlowFX gfFX5800Ultra compared to the standard fan gfFX5800? How efficient is the FlowFX? I was under the impression that it wasn't very good.

[5150 Joker]

Originally posted by skoprowski
I recently picked up an Asus FX 5800 (non-ultra). I have 2 systems at home- both with Athlon 2500+, 512 2700 ddr and Nforce2 (Asus and Biostar) motherboards. One system has a Radeon 9800 and the other obviously a 5800. At default settings for both the 9800 and 5800 the 5800 is only a few fps slower than the 9800 in Quake3 and UT2003 benchmarks. I was quite suprised. The 9800 seems to have a edge over the 5800 when paying with AA/AF. I have 17inch monitors and pay all my games at 1024 x 768. The 3dmark2003 scores were 4500 for the 5800 and 5500 for the 9800.

I don't have exact benchmarks with me at the moment, but my point of all of this is that the 5800 really is not a bad card at all. It is smooth in all the games I play. It is too bad the Ultra NV30 gave the standard 5800 a bad rep. I happen to get the 5800 for $299.00- even with the 5900 coming out for $399- I think you can't go wrong if you buy the 5800 now. It will probably get even cheaper soon. Also, the card is quiet too. It is no louder than the case fans I had already.


Why not get a R9700 pro for $299 instead? It's a better buy than a 5800.

[jAkUp]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
Hellbinder, have you ever considered that the Dustbuster FloxFX was the most horribly designed cooling fan in history and doesn't do that good a job of cooling? What are the temperature figures for the FlowFX gfFX5800Ultra compared to the standard fan gfFX5800? How efficient is the FlowFX? I was under the impression that it wasn't very good.

i got the idea that it was pretty efficient... takes cool air from the outside. the air it spat is about 107F... and it sure spits out alot of it too... my card stays at 50-55c's during gaming... maybe someone with a non ultra can compare

[quik_2_win]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
... have you ever considered that the Dustbuster FloxFX was the most horribly designed cooling fan in history and doesn't do that good a job of cooling? What are the temperature figures for the FlowFX gfFX5800Ultra compared to the standard fan gfFX5800? How efficient is the FlowFX? I was under the impression that it wasn't very good.

Flow FX is VERY effective at cooling the GPU and the memory modules on the top of the card. The modules on the bottom are, however, passively cooled. I have seen my 5800Ultra cycle the cooling fan on when the core temperature reaches about 58-60C and drop the temperature down to about 45C in less than 2 minutes- pretty effective it would seem...
As for actual thermal dissipation (numbers) I have no idea, but realize the 5800 core produces something like 72 watts of thermal power- comparable to an Athlon 2.0 Ghz CPU...cooled by a 5CFM fan (albeit a noisy one)...impressive design

[bkswaney]

The 5800 ultra is a kick ass card.
I love mine. :D
With this baby at 560 core/1100 memory nothing
can touch it with no AA/AF.

I cannot wait for the new games coming out. :)

[saturnotaku]

I liked my 5800 Ultra. I love my 9800 Pro, though. Comparing the two is no contest. I can't wait for the next round of video card wars (NV40 vs whatever's next from ATI).

[bkswaney]

Originally posted by saturnotaku
I liked my 5800 Ultra. I love my 9800 Pro, though. Comparing the two is no contest. I can't wait for the next round of video card wars (NV40 vs whatever's next from ATI).

Yep... the 9800 in a Athlon rig is top notch.
In a new intel rig... "well" ;) Not so good.
The 5900 in a intel rig is going to kick butt.