I purchased a Leadtek GeForce FX 5900 Ultra

[AthlonXP1800]

I got the card delivered yesterday from Ebuyer.com for £367 instead of waited to get Albatron 5900 Ultra that wasnt in stock in glasgow shop last week.

I replaced the previous Creative Geforce 4 Ti 4600 card with the new card, it now running with Athlon XP 1800+, 512Mb TwinMOS memory, ASUS A7V333 motherboard, 300 Watt Suntek power supply and 19 inch Sony G420 Trinitron monitor. Also I used the latest leaked Detonator 44.90 driver. The PC is not overclocking and not formatted yet, I need few days to backup important data.

I used Powerstrip to detected the card clock speeds:

2D: Core: 300Mhz Memory: 850Mhz
3D: Core: 450Mhz Memory: 850Mhz

So here my experience

During power on the PC with the new card first time, I was very surprised to find out my PC noise is slient which in all online reviews cant made out the card noise level cos of PC cases fans and CPU fans drowned out the sound, my previous Geforce 4 card is noisy, thank god I finally got rid of it . I tested out ran Nvidia and ATI demos as well as ran 6 games: GTA Vice City, Elite Force 2, Gun Metal, Ghostmaster, Blood 2: The Chosen and Quake 3. I am surprised the card noise when in 3D are slient as in 2D, I felt all the heat flowed out of the case, the core temp is 46 to 49C in both 2D and 3D.

The first thing I ran on 5900 Ultra are Nvidia demos: Dawn Ultra (I am stunned and gobsmacked at it, it ran very smooth), Dusk Ultra (I am very impressive with it, it seem more complex than Dawn Ultra, it ran very smooth too), Gas Station (I am very amazed at it, it ran very smooth), Ogre (I am very impressive with it, it look beautiful with 128bit colour, pity it short demo, I wanted long demo), Time Machine, Toys (it brilliant demo) and Vulcan (very impressive demo).

The second thing I ran are ATI demos: Car Paint (it look wonderful, it just only the best 1 ATI demo ATI made), Bear, Pipe Dream, Chmip (look like ATI spelled it wrong ), Caves, Gargoyle, NPRHatching (graphics problem and then crashed with errors) and DebevedRNL (failed to run with errors).

The third thing I ran are all the games. I am very impressive with huge improved image quality over Geforce 4 Ti 4600, it matched Radeon 9800 Pro image quality in Quake 3 that MikeC had the DIVX files at other graphics card forum. GTA: Vice City and Elite Force 2 are very fast with amazed image quality, it much better than it did on Geforce 4 . Ghostmaster ran fine with incredible brilliant image quality as it were dark on Geforce 4 and also it has no shutter issues that Antep moaned about, definely his user error . I ran Blood 2: The Chosen to see if it has menu flash problem that K.I.L.E.R told me to tried out it on 4600, it had flash menu and a workaround on it is to turned off DirectX VSync. But on 5900 Ultra it do not has flash menu, it run the game perfect, it looked like it 4600 issue that Nvidia did not focus on work on the driver for 4600, Nvidia is now focus on FX cards now just the same way as ATI is focused on 9800 and 9600, not 9700 and 9500 cos it is discontinued.

The last thing I ran are 3D Mark 2003 and 3D Mark 2001 SE, 3D Mark 2003 scored 5193 compared to 1633 on Geforce 4 Ti 4600. When I ran 3D Mark 2001 SE it scored 10819 compared to 9879 on Geforce 4 Ti 4600. I think 3D Mark 2001 SE scored are low, it seem odd, it should gone high as 15000, I guessed it either CPU limited, or it 300 Watt power supply both not enough power to push the Ultra card higher or the PC not formatted yet. It seem very strange that 3D Mark 2003 has very good score and 3D Mark 2001 SE has low score. So anyway I will upgrade to a powerful PC at end of year with probably Athlon 64 3700+ and 350 or 400 Watt power supply with enough power.

5900 Ultra is a very wonderful and brilliant card with matched Radeon 9800 Pro image quality, it noticed has very good job to remove most of jaggies that 4600 cant, I think the card could last me 2 or 1 years time depend on switch from AGP to PCI Express enabled Athlon 64 motherboard.

I rated the card score 10 out of 10

[AthlonXP1800]

Originally posted by Compddd
Sorry but 9800 Pro is betta and about 120$ cheaper

I rate GeForceFX 5900 Ultra 1 out of 10

9800 Pro 256Mb is not $120 cheaper than 5900 Ultra 256Mb, look at pricewatch links.

9800 Pro 256Mb $440 http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/5522-1.htm

5900 Ultra 256Mb $409 http://www.pricewatch.com/1/37/5586-1.htm

[Hanners]

You can get a 128Mb 9800 Pro for about £280 - The 256Mb model is about the same price as a 5900 Ultra in the UK, you really do pay a premium for that extra RAM.

[euan]

Let down by a fellow Glasweigan.

Sigh...

[Shaitan]

"The first thing I ran on 5900 Ultra are Nvidia demos: Dawn Ultra (I am stunned and gobsmacked "

I haven`t run these demos yet, but the nVidia Rep at Fragapalooza had my exact same PC setup, and he was demoing Dusk/the Balrog Vulcun etc. I too was just floored. The screens and vids I have seen didn`t come close to doing the demos justice, when you see them actually running. Even tho bang for buck the ATI 9800 is the shiznit, I am not at all unhappy with my 5900 Ultra.

I just can`t wait till some real games arrive so I can just get on with whats most important, gaming itself. The vid cards wars are never gonna end, so it is all rather pointless to concentrate on the ol` "I got you last ,which vid card is best" critiques. LOL

[AthlonXP1800]

Originally posted by Hanners
You can get a 128Mb 9800 Pro for about £280 - The 256Mb model is about the same price as a 5900 Ultra in the UK, you really do pay a premium for that extra RAM.

Yes dabs.com are selling Gigabyte 128Mb 9800 Pro for £290 that are the lowest price I find but it not cheap than the cheapest Leadtek 128Mb 5900 at Ebuyer for £276. The 256Mb Sapphire 9800 Pro I find cost £389 at Ebuyer and Leadtek 5900 Ultra 256Mb is £367 at Ebuyer too.

[AthlonXP1800]

Originally posted by euan
Let down by a fellow Glasweigan.

Sigh...

Well if you live in glasgow it will be very great to walk to World of Computers shop you can buy the cheapest Albatron 5900 128Mb for £269, Albatron 5900 Ultra 256Mb for £339 or the cheapest ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128Mb for £279 but the problem are either of this are not in stock many time.

2 weeks ago I called the shop to ask is 5900 Ultra in stock yet, the rep told it not in stock, it should be in stock by next thursday or friday. Last week I called again, the rep told the same thing it not in stock but I can order it as it may will be in stock for me on next thursday. This is not good enough for me so I end up ordered Leadtek 5900 Ultra from ebuyer which had 2 in stock for £367.

Don't ever think of order it on World of Computers on internet if you live half hour or 2 hour from glasgow (I live half hour away from glasgow) or even in england, dont bother order it cos it not exactly cheap if order 5900 Ultra from the shop on internet it cost £339 plus £10 delivery and credit card 2.5% surcharge about £8.70 = £357.70 for order that wasn't in stock!

[Ady]

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
...(I am very impressive with it....(I am very impressive with it..

Just a friendly tip that the word you were looking for is "impressed" not "impressive".

[Dark Jedi]

Glad to hear you're happy with your card (That's what important, isn't it?), and hello from a fellow Scot... I didn't realise there were so many of us here.

[Geforce4ti4200]

Nice card, shame you have to severely cripple it on that slow xp1800 of yours. Cant you oc the cpu or spend like $60 on an xp2100 and oc it to 200x11 for 2.2GHz or however high itll go? your 3dmark score of 10800 does not supprise me, I had 8300 on a ti4200 and 8800 on a ti4600 back on a 1GHz thunderbird at 143fsb(slightly oced) so I resold the ti4200 cause games didnt run faster. I have now a 2.14GHz cpu, see my sig and I break 13k marks. I bet games on my ti4200 will run faster than games on yours *without fsaa* and low to medium resolution. I am supprised you spend $450 when your cpu is $45. my cpu costs $76 and my ti4200 costs $71 shipped so there is a balance

[AthlonXP1800]

Originally posted by Geforce4ti4200
Nice card, shame you have to severely cripple it on that slow xp1800 of yours. Cant you oc the cpu or spend like $60 on an xp2100 and oc it to 200x11 for 2.2GHz or however high itll go? your 3dmark score of 10800 does not supprise me, I had 8300 on a ti4200 and 8800 on a ti4600 back on a 1GHz thunderbird at 143fsb(slightly oced) so I resold the ti4200 cause games didnt run faster. I have now a 2.14GHz cpu, see my sig and I break 13k marks. I bet games on my ti4200 will run faster than games on yours *without fsaa* and low to medium resolution. I am supprised you spend $450 when your cpu is $45. my cpu costs $76 and my ti4200 costs $71 shipped so there is a balance

Well I tried overclocked once last year with Geforce 4 Ti 4600, AthlonXP 1800+ default clock 1533Mhz overclocked to 1553Mhz by BIOS CPU Turbo setting, thing went well for a week but after a week I started had a problem with every games I played, it all crashed with Infinite Loop errors. I was very frustrated and searched the forum about the problem and found that infinite loop can caused 3 things: overclocking, not enough power or never been formatted hard drive since install a new card. My problem was the overclocking, I went back to BIOS and changed CPU Turbo setting to default setting and the problem gone forever.

I thing overclocking will need bigger power supply, I read in many forums that Pentium 4 users who overclocked their system use much bigger power supplies like 480 and 550 Watt, I only have 300 Watt power.

I think it will be best to wait a few months to get new Athlon 64 and things will get much better rather than getting new cheap CPU, CPU heatsink fan and a new power supply now for the next 3 months and then upgrade to Athlon 64. I been waited to get Athlon 64 for almost a year now but it was cancelled until this September.

[Geforce4ti4200]

the a64's sound kind of dissapointing, the 1.8GHz a64 will cost like $500 and an xp2100 at 2.4GHz can match a stock 1.8GHz a64. I wouldnt waste on the a64's there far from ready. spend $60 on an xp2100 and a new 450w enermax psu and you are ready to go. do you notice a performance increase from the ti4600 without fsaa?