Page 3 - Introducing GeForce FX 5950 Ultra

GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
The other product being reviewed today was developed under codename NV38, the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. The 5950 Ultra is a slightly higher clocked product compared to the (NV35) GeForce FX 5900 Ultra. It still has the same NV35 architecture, it still has CineFX 2.0, IntelliSample HCT and UltraShadow techiques, but nothing new here feature wise. The most important change is the fact that the product has a new cooling solution. On first sight a lot of you will get goosebumps and flashbacks to GeForce FX 5800 Ultra (often referred to as the leaf blower).

Where NVIDIA flat-out goofed with the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra (NV30) active cooling, this time they did something truly good. A cooling system that takes the air from the inside of the case, uses that air to cool the GPU and then exhaust that air outside the PC. It's exactly the same principle that FlowFX on the 5800 Ultra is based on, yet this time they did it right. Although still on the big side you will not hear/notice this fan compared to your average active fan. In our photoshoot, you'll be able to see the dynamics of this thing.

Next to that, in idle for example, the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra is about ten degrees cooler then the previous product, NV35. We noticed an idle temperature of 36 degrees Celcius which is downright good and says something about it's ability to overclock. When we look at the clock and memory frequency of this product we can see that the NV38 - GeForce FX 5950 is now running at 475 for it's core and 2x475MHz on the memory (still DDR1). That's only a tiny boost at 5% for the core and roughly 10% more memory bandwidth. This product will bump the 5900 Ultra from it's current recommended price and will become the new 499 USD product.

It'll be available this month already.