I think you're good with the PSU when it comes to the 5900 Ultra;

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/dis … nv-power_6.html

NitroX infinity wrote:

I think you're good with the PSU when it comes to the 5900 Ultra;

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/dis … nv-power_6.html

"...the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra receives most of its power supply from the +12v line that goes through the additional power connector."

That was my guess, too.

But I still think it's better paired with a faster and more efficient CPU, from 2GHz and on (not P4).

I removed the poll. They aren't working properly on this forum.

The Athlon isn't powerful enough to show the Ti4600's full potential either.
I'd say go with the fastest one, which is the 5900U, Ti4600 and 5900U TDP should be a little bit higher on the 5900U.
The 5900U will allow you to enable AntiAliasing with no real performance hit, since you're cpu bounded.

i would prefer titanium gf4 over any fx, even ultra. i am not a fx fan nor aa fan.
i do not know what driver response you have on the gf4 vs the gffx vs the older athlon platform?

is there much difference in loaded vga silence between both, does the ultra have a build in vacuum cleaner?

JaNoZ wrote:

i would prefer titanium gf4 over any fx, even ultra. i am not a fx fan nor aa fan.
i do not know what driver response you have on the gf4 vs the gffx vs the older athlon platform?

is there much difference in loaded vga silence between both, does the ultra have a build in vacuum cleaner?

The 5900 wasn't a "dustbuster" but the 5800 was. Compared to the FX5800 the 5900U is much better noise wise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qspdnAYiiug

Now for the worst of all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYWaUJakMfg

I own this card and it is a loud one! 😎 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfdPzAH1cL0

In situations that are GPU dependent, a 5900 Ultra can be 2-3x faster than a Ti 4600. The compatibility with games is the same in my experience. Even 6800 Ultra is good with old games on 98SE.

Noise level depends entirely on the quality of the particular cooler. Some are loud and some aren't. They don't have to be loud but the designs just weren't often going for quietness back then.

Getting around a noisy heatsink isn't a real problem though. This $4 Chinese Zalman-like knockoff will cool a 5900 Ultra quietly.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/VGA-Video-Card-Wing-C … A-/300509372019

Has it been mentioned yet, that apart from the DX9-compatibility and the theoretical possibility to run such titles, there's one thing that really makes the FX stand out from GF4 Ti: Anisotropic Filtering. This incurs a really heavy performance hit on GF3/4 Ti, but much less so on GFFX which is very accurately tuneable.

Indeed the NV2x generation has great anisotropic quality but it takes a considerable performance hit when using it.

If you run AA + AF, things really get ugly in comparisons between GF4 and FX.

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Re … 900ultra/8.html

Is that all how powerful a 4600Ti is? I remember it being pretty godly... I even played Far Cry, HL2, FEAR, NFS:MW, etc @ 1024x768, at reduced settings of course, but still pretty enough.

Granted these tests are with 4x AA and 8X AF on, which is pretty much a killer combination, memory can be deceiving. I remember playing 3D games smoothly on my Pentium 133 and S3 Virge. 😜 Kind of a far fetched example, but you get my point!

sgt76 wrote:

Is that all how powerful a 4600Ti is? I remember it being pretty godly... I even played Far Cry, HL2, FEAR, NFS:MW, etc @ 1024x768, at reduced settings of course, but still pretty enough.

I remember having tried FEAR on my fx5900(u?) and it barely had any frames per second, it was unplayable even on the lowest settings 😵

Btw, anyone else having problems with getting random server errors?

Tetrium wrote:

sgt76 wrote:

Is that all how powerful a 4600Ti is? I remember it being pretty godly... I even played Far Cry, HL2, FEAR, NFS:MW, etc @ 1024x768, at reduced settings of course, but still pretty enough.

I remember having tried FEAR on my fx5900(u?) and it barely had any frames per second, it was unplayable even on the lowest settings 😵

Btw, anyone else having problems with getting random server errors?

True. Swaaye captured a video of a 5950U : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rlZb6YsJOQ
I also remember the game being unplayable on the lowest settings on my 5600XT (obviously).

F2bnp wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

sgt76 wrote:

Is that all how powerful a 4600Ti is? I remember it being pretty godly... I even played Far Cry, HL2, FEAR, NFS:MW, etc @ 1024x768, at reduced settings of course, but still pretty enough.

I remember having tried FEAR on my fx5900(u?) and it barely had any frames per second, it was unplayable even on the lowest settings 😵

Btw, anyone else having problems with getting random server errors?

True. Swaaye captured a video of a 5950U : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rlZb6YsJOQ
I also remember the game being unplayable on the lowest settings on my 5600XT (obviously).

Lol, I found that exact youtube video months ago when I was trying to figure out why my 5900 was performing so badly in FEAR. Didn't know it was actually Swaayes video 😜

I still find the 5900 an intriguing graphics card though, still looking for a good use for it 😀

I'd skip any FX card and get a GF 6800U instead. It handles both DX9 features and AA/AF without as much of a performance hit as you get with FX based cards. Even a 6600GT outperforms pretty much anything from the FX line.

sgt76 wrote:

Is that all how powerful a 4600Ti is? I remember it being pretty godly... I even played Far Cry, HL2, FEAR, NFS:MW, etc @ 1024x768, at reduced settings of course, but still pretty enough.

Yeah as others said those tests are with anisotropic filtering and anti-aliasing and NV2x takes a major hit with either. Run without those and it speeds up a lot.

sliderider wrote:

I'd skip any FX card and get a GF 6800U instead. It handles both DX9 features and AA/AF without as much of a performance hit as you get with FX based cards. Even a 6600GT outperforms pretty much anything from the FX line.

I was going to say that too but the OP seems to have access to a 5900U without spending money.

Tetrium wrote:

I remember having tried FEAR on my fx5900(u?) and it barely had any frames per second, it was unplayable even on the lowest settings 😵

FEAR is D3D9 unless you go into advanced settings and switch it to the D3D8 shaders mode.

NV3x + Pixel Shader 2.0 = 😢

I have Youtube videos of a 5900U running some games including FEAR.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL995DE4 … 71&feature=plcp

Hi! Thanks for all your replies!

Re: sliderider,
I actually have a spare 6800GT that I've decided not to use. I'm probably going to offload it on eBay sometime quite soon.

Why not use it? I'm going for maximum compatibility and performance for this system. In particular, I like to play a bunch of old flight sims such as European Air War. That title is why I've ruled out the 6800GT. Lots of other flight simmers have reported problems with EAW and the 6800GT. It actually is somewhat notorious for having issues with EAW. From what I can understand, it's because the 6x00 series NVIDIA cards do not support 8-bit textures. The 5x00 series do still support it and allow for a good deal of FSAA too; something I can't do with a Radeon 9800XT (which I also have as a spare). So, for EAW and FSAA, it looks like the 5900 Ultra is my best bet.

Of course, I could be wrong about all this...

sliderider wrote:

I'd skip any FX card and get a GF 6800U instead. It handles both DX9 features and AA/AF without as much of a performance hit as you get with FX based cards. Even a 6600GT outperforms pretty much anything from the FX line.

Budget considerations aside (imagine this was 2022 and that a used GTX 680 would cost us the same as that FX 5900 Ultra back in 2012), I'm under the assumption that I should skip ALL cards released within 2002~2012 for DX9 generation titles, since current gen cards will still be DX9 compatible, more powerful, and more power-efficient (e.g. the 'lowly' HD 7750, compared to an 'oldie' GF 6800U/7800GTX). But correct me if I'm wrong. Or let's just review this again after 2014 when it's time to build that last officially-supported WinXP rig.

KT7AGuy wrote:

I'm going for maximum compatibility and performance for this system. In particular, I like to play a bunch of old flight sims such as European Air War. That title is why I've ruled out the 6800GT. Lots of other flight simmers have reported problems with EAW and the 6800GT. It actually is somewhat notorious for having issues with EAW. From what I can understand, it's because the 6x00 series NVIDIA cards do not support 8-bit textures. The 5x00 series do still support it and allow for a good deal of FSAA too; something I can't do with a Radeon 9800XT (which I also have as a spare). So, for EAW and FSAA, it looks like the 5900 Ultra is my best bet.

Yes the FX series have support for paletted texture though I'm not sure if it's through dedicated hardware pipeline or emulated through shader in the driver (my guess would be the latter). A little background surrounding this issue here and here.

Some older D3D games I have yet to test with the 5900 are FF VII, FF VIII, AvP1, ... (mostly console ports, I think -- which tend to use paletted texture). These games worked great with Voodoo cards. I read that GF 4 Ti runs FF VII/VIII well but a Voodoo3 will still give better quality, though without AA. When it comes to the FX series, there are mixed/confusing reports, but GF 6 series and up definitely have issues. As for Thief 1/2 & SS2, with new patches an old card is no longer needed. 😀

"Budget considerations aside"

I wasn't aware that $40 for a 6800U or $30 for a 6600GT was so high it would put someone in the poor house. 🙄

And, no, your other assumption is wrong. I always recommend the GeForce 6 over the GeForce FX simply because it is a huge step up in performance for not a lot of money over the price of an FX card and because the FX cards are documented to be problematic with DX9 games and with high levels of detail turned on. Also, the GeForce 6 is the last card with a Windows 98 driver, so if you're building a Windows 98 system, go with GeForce6, if you're building a 2K or later system then go with a Radeon X800/X850 because they are faster. It is also very CPU dependent which card to go with. I wouldn't put a x1950 Pro or GF 7950 with a system from the early DX9 time frame simply because it would be bottlenecked by the CPU but it might be appropriate for a later system.