BFG GeForce FX 5900XT OC Review

Now that graphics cards have become a staple in the marketplace, more and more end users are finding them within computers at home and at work and are beginning to associate 3d graphics capabilities with ordinary computers. This means that 3d graphics are no longer new (and most of us have known that for years now), and that people expect modern software and games to work on their computers. While the “software-side” of modern computers may have proven less than capable of truly pushing computer hardware to the limit, lately we have begun seeing the introduction of a “new breed” of software (and especially games). This latest evolution of software design and capability has been spurred and kicked into high gear by hardware programmability, feature-rich programming APIs like DirectX (especially the 9.0 generation) and OpenGL, and raw graphics power that enables content developers to push the very limits of virtual reality.

Buyers of recent games like Crytek’s Far Cry and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell are finding that although the spectacles witnessed are pure wonders to behold and interact with, the frame rate and playability have diminished rapidly. They will soon be reminded with the introduction of games like i.d. software’s Doom3 and Valve’s Half-Life 2 that this issue will only become dramatically worse and in the worst case a cause to not even try the newest games and entertainment.

What is the culprit in the vast majority of these cases? An inferior and aged graphics card. In a market where computers contain far more power than even the most advanced word processors and web sites, the graphics cards are improving in amazing leaps and bounds. Games and 3d development software have pushed system hardware to the point that developers can no longer rely on a fast CPU; they rely on the graphics card within your computer. Complex graphical calculations that are performed on a modern graphics card are highly specialized and far more demanding than any ordinary Microsoft Word.

If you are in the market for value, performance, and an easy and stable upgrade from your current graphics card, look no further than BFG Technologies’ new GeForce FX 5900XT OC. After many long days of testing, I can confidently and happily pat BFG Tech on the back for a job well done. They have delivered a card that performs excellently, offers excellent capability and compatibility with today’s latest games, and still offers a value that would make one lose sleep at night if it were ignored.

When I received the package, I first noticed that it was lighter than it appeared. Upon opening it, I immediately discovered why: BFG opted to not include any extras and went straight for raw utility. All that was included was the GeForce FX 5900XT board, a software install CD, a "Y" power cable splitter, a DVI-to-VGA converter, and a quick install manual - not too much, but enough to get up and running moments after picture-taking was complete.

The card itself has an attractive blue PCB and a sleek heatsink. At first glance, the sink doesn't seem like it would cool well...but during operation, that first glance is for naught. The heatsink and ram sinks are all located on the same side of the board, as are all 128MB of memory chips. This allows for better cooling, as there doesn't have to be a separate cooling medium on the other side of the card.

There are a few nice things to be found on the software CD: a copy of nVidia NVDVD 2.0, the usual collection of nVidia product demos, drivers, and an installation manual. I especially liked how BFG included the power "Y" adapter and the DVI-to-VGA converter; these will help many buyers overcome tight situations (literally tight situations...what if you had no more free power connectors within your case, and were forced to purchase a new power supply and/or "Y" adapter?) and use the product's dual-monitor feature out of the box. Last but certainly not least, BFG included a bunch of stickers. I am still deciding what exactly to do with them, but I'm sure an opportunity will present itself!

This is an area that many people may either fear or approach doubtfully. Fortunately, both nVidia and 3rd-party developers have you covered! I used DriverHeaven's Driver Cleaner and Cab Cleaner software to remove all remaining driver/registry residue from my previous Hercules Radeon 8500 128MB installation, and installation of the new BFG card was a dream. I experienced no hardware crashes, game/software compatibility problems or glitches, or any issues whatsoever on my Athlon 2200+/ECS K7S5A/Windows 2000 Professional test system. After testing the card for awhile in my main system for compatibility issues, I installed it in my new benchmarking system with a fresh Windows 2000 Professional install and once again had absolutely no complaints.

After installation, it is always a good idea to grab the latest and greatest drivers for your graphics card to achieve maximum performance, fix bugs, and (maybe) introduce new features. This is why I downloaded and installed nVidia's 56.72 WHQL certified driver set. Read on to see the headline features offered by nVidia's drivers!

First off, there are several standard options that need to be covered. The Performance & Quality Settings contain image quality options, allow you to modify Antialiasing and Anisotropic filtering settings, and basically give you control over more "gaming specific" things. Read the captions below each image for specific descriptions.

nVidia includes many options for adjusting/tweaking the color and brightness of your display. Within the "Color Correction" settings you will find nVidia's Digital Vibrance control which "boosts" colors and can improve color quality. Beyond the more standard Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma settings, you will find nVidia's Image sharpening slider which helps emphasize individual pixels to allow for a "sharper" picture (if you push the slider all the way over to the maximum, however, things will look a bit strange!).

Application profiles are one of nVidia's latest features for their ForceWare driver set. Profiles allow you to set different Antialiasing, Anisotropic filtering, etc. settings per application. For example, you could enable 4x Antialiasing and 8x Anisotropic filtering for Quake3, but have a different profile that will disable them for Far Cry. This allows you to tweak the settings for each game/application so you won't have to enter the nVidia control panel before each game.

Overclocking features aren't enabled by default, but thankfully the easy-to-install Coolbits registry hack grants you access to nVidia's hidden but powerful overclocking features. The first step to installing Coolbits is of course downloading it at the link in the previous sentence. After installation, you will see a new screen like below in your nVidia control panel, and a "Clock Frequencies" entry in the menu. Simply toggle Manual overclocking, say "yes" to the warning that pops up :-) and begin your overclocking adventures! nVidia helps make sure that you won't burn out your card by providing newcomers with an "Auto Detect" button that will automatically find and test new clock and memory speed values.

If you are really feeling adventurous, nVidia makes it easy to get the most out of your graphics card purchase...and BFG Technologies helps you along with their "OC" moniker that offers further encouragement. In my testing, the best overclocking speed I attained using Coolbits was 471MHz for the core clock speed and 795MHz for the memory clock.

Overall, I am very pleased with nVidia's ForceWare driver package and nothing comes to mind that is reason for complaint. Mature drivers are definitely a very big plus for nVidia cards, and this card is no exception.

Testing Platform

Before we go into any performance analysis, it is first critical that the testing platform be presented:

• AMD Athlon XP 2500+ "Barton" CPU
• 512MB DDR-RAM running at 333MHz DDR
• ASRock K7S8XE+ Motherboard
• SiS 748 Northbridge Chipset
• SiS 964 Southbridge Chipset
• WD 310100 5400RPM HD
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional w' Service Pack 4
• nVidia ForceWare 56.72 WHQL Drivers
• Microsoft DirectX 9.0b
• All Microsoft patches up to 4/15/2004

Look for a motherboard review on the ASRock K7S8XE+ in the future here at Bjorn3D.

Just as important as the hardware used during the benchmarking process, the software is what we use as an accurate gauge of performance. Below are the software packages I used to review the BFG GeForce FX 5900XT OC:

Real World:

• Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo
• Quake 3 v1.32 NV15Demo*
• AquaMark 3 Commercial
• Gunmetal Benchmark 2
• X-2: The Threat Rolling Demo

Synthetic:

• CodeCreatures Benchmark
• ChameleonMark
• 3dMark2001 SE build330

* "This is a high polygon demonstration Level built specificlly for Nvidia.
It has been built completely from scratch, and was built with a 5 week deadline to be ready for GDC 2000 (March 8th, 2000)."

The benchmarks on this page are a arranged for easy viewing and quick gathering of data. The next two pages contain more detailed looks at each graph, and comparisons with the BFG 5900XT OC running at different clock speeds: both the maximum attained clock speed during testing (476MHz core/795MHz memory) and "underclocked" to standard GeForce FX 5900XT speeds (390MHz core/700MHz memory). The in-depth benchmarks are very bandwidth-intensive and a broadband connection is recommended for those with a less patient soul. Don't forget that if you wish to skip the "In-Depth Benchmarks", at the bottom of each page is a link that will take you the conclusion of this article.

Just as a quick note on the graphs, the "filled" section of the graph (red or blue) represents the BFG board. The other graphs either represent a "reference clocked" BFG 5900XT OC or the max overclock attained during the review process. A green dashed or dotted line across a graph shows where the stock BFG 5900XT has reached its highest FPS point, and a red dashed or dotted line its lowest FPS point. If the filled graph shows as red, that means that the card's performance has crossed below the "playability threshold" of 30FPS. Hopefully this will clear things up :-).

First, let's start off with a few "overview" benchmarks. Let me introduce X2: The Threat:

X2: The Threat is a 3d space shooter simulator, complete with an advanced graphics engine and a huge universe to explore and change. This makes it a perfect candidate for benchmarking. Bjorn3D has a review of it here.

3dmark2001 SE, a synthetic benchmark, is a standard part of any benchmarking suite.

Aquamark is another staple benchmark; it is full featured and makes heavy use of Directx 8.x class hardware shaders.

The GunMetal benchmark is another game that makes heavy use of shaders and is an excellent test for modern hardware.

ChameleonMark is an nVidia-produced synthetic benchmark that tests shader performance.

Unreal Tournament 2004 is a new game that contains complex geometry and advanced AI.

Unreal Tournament 2004 Benchmarks
Botmatch - 1024x768 - No AA/AF
BR Colossus	84.91 fps	AS Convoy	50.98 fps	DM Rankin	125.13 fps
Botmatch - 1024x768 - 4xAA/8xAF
BR Colossus	80.34 fps	AS Convoy	49.53 fps	DM Rankin	104.81 fps

Unreal Tournament 2004 Benchmarks
Botmatch - 1280x1024 - No AA/AF
BR Colossus	89.10 fps	AS Convoy	50.70 fps	DM Rankin	120.42 fps
Botmatch - 1280x1024 - 4xAA/8xAF
BR Colossus	67.70 fps	AS Convoy	47.52 fps	DM Rankin	78.90 fps

Unreal Tournament 2004 Benchmarks
Botmatch - 1600x1024 - No AA/AF
BR Colossus	84.04 fps	AS Convoy	48.55 fps	DM Rankin	107.87 fps
Botmatch - 1600x1024 - 4xAA/8xAF
BR Colossus	53.97 fps	AS Convoy	39.13 fps	DM Rankin	61.09 fps

CodeCreatures is a synthetic benchmark designed to stress DirectX 8.x class hardware.

CodeCreatures Benchmarks
No AA/AF
1024x768	45.3 fps	1280x1024	36.0 fps	1600x1200	28.5 fps
4xAA/8xAF
1024x768	23.5 fps	1280x1024	15.2 fps	1600x1200	11.7 fps

Quake 3 has been the industry standard since its release in late 1999. What makes this game so long-lived is its OpenGL graphics engine and easy modification capabilities, which have been proven time and again in countless games and modifications.

Quake 3 Benchmarks
NV15Demo - No AA/AF
1024x768	63.1 fps	1280x1024	62.9 fps	1600x1200	62.9 fps
NV15Demo - 4xAA/8xAF
1024x768	62.0 fps	1280x1024	59.7 fps	1600x1200	49.6 fps