New NVidia Disappoints

NVidia claims that graphics boards based on its GeForce FX 5800 Ultra are the fastest on the market, which is partly true. Problem is, our reference board with the new chip is also the loudest and biggest graphics card around--and the chip doesn't always outperform the competition, exclusive PC World tests prove.

The 5800's most impressive test result: Our preproduction unit ran Unreal Tournament 2003 at 126 frames per second in 1600-by-1200 resolution and 32-bit color, besting its main competitor--an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro-based board--by 25 fps.

However, at real-world resolutions the 5800 Ultra couldn't always outrun the 9700 Pro. For example, at 1024 by 768 the ATI chip ran Unreal Tournament at 175 fps; the 5800 logged 168. In our 1024-by-768 antialiased Unreal Tournament test, both ran at 154 fps--but testers preferred the image quality of the Radeon. The 5800's inability to significantly outperform the 9700 Pro is notable since boards based on the NVidia chip will sell for about $400, roughly $80 more than comparable 9700 Pro-based cards.

Physically, the NVidia-based graphics card is sure to turn heads, as its cooling system is so big that it blocks the adjacent PCI slot. The complex assembly cools the board's 500-MHz chip and its 128MB of 1-GHz DDR-II memory.

During our tests the 5800 Ultra's fan produced bearable noise when running 2D graphics, but it was unacceptably loud when running 3D graphics. NVidia says shipping cards won't run the fan in 2D, and will run it quieter in 3D mode. Even granting some improvement, I'm still left asking: Who pays a premium for a noisy card that doesn't blow away the competition?

Meanwhile, ATI isn't standing still. The company plans to ship boards based on its new Radeon 9800 Pro chip in March, giving graphics aficionados yet another option.