Conclusion

Well people, we now officially have arrived on the last page of this review, welcome ;)

I've never had so much trouble writing a conclusion on an NVIDIA graphics card as ever before. My feelings towards it are bit dualistic. On the one hand we have this awesome new product that really has top notch performance and feature wise is the new king, yet barely. Didn't we all expect it to be a huge Radeon 9700 Pro killer which should have been released a couple of months ago ? Unfortunately it is only slightly faster think in lines of 10 to 20% here and there and when it comes to Anisotropic Filtering and Anti Aliasing .. well Radeon 9700 Pro is just handling that smarter and thus is a tad faster. Does that make the FX a bad graphics card then ? By all means no .. don't even take that word in your mouth, GeForce FX is a new chipset, a new generation graphics card that has been build for upcoming DirectX9 games and it rocks in a lot of ways.

Current games will run absolutely fabulous on it. I mean I just played Splinter Cell with 4x AA and 8x AF enabled while doing framerates that where just amazing, it definitely has the raw power which can handle any game to date. This new generation GeForce FX silicon shows a lot of potential and compared to it's little sister the GeForce4 this new generation is a huge leap forward. In fact in some higher resolutions with quality settings enabled even 50 to 100%

So you see .. there are plenty of good reasons to buy the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra, unfortunately there are also some reasons not that shabby. First of all: the price tag might be something you don't like, I don't like it either but this product was made for the high-end user, the enthusiast and well .. they got to pay if they want to play, it always has been that way and will remain that way also. However 399 is the price an Ultra 5800 FX will cost you, yet Radeon 9700 Pro with nearly the same performance will prolly cost you something in the 300 USD range. This will make the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra a product that is hard to sell, even the biggest nvidiot will scratch behind the back of his/her head while deciding what card he'll buy. Furthermore the fact that we yet have to see the first DirectX 9 game is a bit frustrating and last but not least the noise that FlowFX brings into your living room. Let's talk a little about the cooling that this GeForce FX  5800 Ultra card is equipped with. There's no way denying it, it's loud  .. If you walk to the next room and leave the door open you will be able to hear FlowFX running. Fortunately NVIDIA did something clever, if you are in desktop (2D) mode the FlowFX is pretty much soundless, you will not hear it as it rotates much slower. However when a 3D application like a game starts then the noise begins and since gaming is the sole reason you buy this product for I have to state that NVIDIA made a bad call here, I honestly don't like it at all. To get a mental picture let's go back to Splinter Cell again shall we, you need to hear the environment sounds of the game .. how's that going to happen with a cooling fan making noise louder than the environmental sounds of the game?

I don't know who made the call at NVIDIA to implement it but for the most of you it is and will not be acceptable. A good alternative I would like to make you aware of is to buy a GeForce FX from either Gainward (still 40 DB), Chaintec or ABit as they equip the FX 5800 ultra with their own more silent coolers. Also, if you happen to buy a GeForce FX with loud FlowFX cooler and read this review after you bought it (happens more often than you think)  then have a look at the option that Thermaltake offers right now. They actually sell a heatpiped heatsink. No noise at all !  It's likely that a few other manufacturers will follow this trend so you might want to keep an eye out for that. Oh and people, the reason why FlowFX is on there is to cool down the graphics card and preserve ambient temperature of the inside of your PC.. it's needed because GeForce FX 5800 Ultra runs seriously hot. I think I might be able to fry an egg on it, I'm not kidding ... it might come in useful in a cold winter though.

If you take away the noise or at least can life with it (it's not a dissaster, it just can be annoying for some of you) then the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra definitely is one fine card. FlowFX by itself really is a nice invention. It will dump most of the heat of your graphics card outside the PC.

I know it has a really rough time and is criticized a lot during it's introduction but if I  take a honest look at the results then well let's just say that I'm definitely happy with what I'm seeing right now. It's in most cases the fastest thing available right now, and although it will cost you quite a sum of money I dare to state that if you are such an enthusiast gamer with the means to buy high end and have the dough to spend then you will definitely like this new generation chipset. NVIDIA has proven it in the past and will likely do it again, their products tend to get faster with new Detonator driver releases and it probably won't be long before it passes the Radeon 9700 Pro in most cases performance wise. That by itself is not a fact though, keyword here is 'might' get faster. Next to all this, the product is extremely stable and installation as always with any NVIDIA product went like a breeze. What else do you need to keep in mind ? ATI's R350 product is to be announced in two weeks and that product will likely beat this GeForce FX 5800 Ultra easily at the same price, this is the reality people. Competition has never been so fierce. Rumors also state that NV35 already has taped out. What a crazy year this is going to be.

Be aware of the fact though that not one 100% DirectX 9 game is out yet and that is what this card was made for. Playing games without quality settings ? Forget about it, in every game you'll have Anisotropic Filtering enabled at 8x with Anti Aliasing to at least 4x. So 3D Scene quality is excellent and the GeForce FX is so darn exquisite efficient with these techniques that I actually dare to bet that not matter what you think now 8x with Anti Aliasing and at least 4x AF will become your default setting.  What about 2D then ? Even better, simply awesome ! I have never have had my Sony 19" Multiscan monitor display this sharp. Of course this could differ per brand but really crispy sharp people !

Let's sum it up in a one-liner: excellent product, excellent feature set, really expensive, performance wise fastest thing available right now, the noise is irritating .. choose a non FlowFX version or opt the heatpipe solution from the people at Thermaltake if that is a problem for you.

Product: GeForce FX 5800 Ultra
Manufacturer: NVIDIAPrice: MSRP 399 USD - 599 Euro
Availibity: now