Very nice review. Even if it represents the low point flagship of Nvidia cards, I hope you had some fun testing it out. I'm looking forward to further reviews from you! keep it up 😊
Much appreciated man, so glad you enjoyed. It was fun to make this review and test out a high end GeForce FX for the first time. I greatly appreciate you donating the card and the other parts, there's more to come!
@@faolor6468 Speaking in Ebonics further proves how braindead this audience is. You arent blk and you should focus on inserting mumble rap into your cousins next horrible Mixed CD.
@@CovenantAgentLazarus It was funny as the rest of the FX series wasn't exactly well-received as this video shows. Maybe the lower-tier FX GPUs had at least some modest quality-of-life improvements over the earlier and higher-end models, idk.
Huge ATi fan here and proud owner of a CIB Club3D 9700 Pro, X850XT-PE, X1800XT, X1900XTX, HD3870X2 and it's two successors. A few cards of GeForce remain interesting for me too. This one among them. Most Ultra cards have had a good level of competition for ATi and background stories. Currently own a 3 Ti 500, FX5900 Ultra and a 7800GTX/8800GTX but I would love to add a 6800, FX5950, GF2 Ultra cards add some point. Those cards remind me of my early teen years when I started reading into hardware a lot, building PC's for hobby and work and joining communities.
Nice collection! And yeah the 5950 caught my interest as well, more so than any of the other FX! If you already have a 5900U you may be disappointed by the performance increase (its only +25MHz on the core and +50MHz on memory). I highly recommend picking up a 6800 GT/Ultra if you can find one, its a really neat card!
@@SPNG I know it's not really the performance increase I'm after. I just like how the reference cooler looks. An 6800U would be amazing. Not too mention the 8800. I forgot that one, but that has gotten kinda rare. Unfortunately it's like 4x the price of the GTX. Do you list your collection somewhere?
@@SPNG Good stuff! See some pretty rare cards in there. Can I ask what you paid for that X1900 Crossfire card? That's pretty high on my wantlist as well.
My first ever GPU was a 5600 Ultra. I played FFXI well and it played games better than my Xbox so I was happy. I remember FEAR was the game that absolutely killed it and made me realize it's time was done.
Respectable card for the time! Definitely a big step up against the super cut down 5200. Given the results from this card though I can see FEAR being a huge struggle on 5600 😅
As much as I love the 9000 series, even my 9800se, the high end GeForce FX series coolers do look really neat. Especially the translucent stock blower cooler and the Asus dual fan one with that gold colored shroud over the copper heatsink.
I agree! Love all of the different custom AIB cooling solutions that came on these cards, the 9700 and 9800 series don't have as much variety unless you use an aftermarket Arctic cooler or something.
Was just going to mention artic. That said, the card seemed to pull too much power or something and one molex pin would constantly corrode and need cleaning every so often.
Nice review man! I have all the FX ultra series, including the infamous GeForce FX 5800 ultra, and isn't that worse compared to the Radeon 9700 pro, the biggest problem was the noise of the fan, but on desktop is completely silent. The FX 5900 ultra and the 5950 ultra was great card, but nothing to compare with the Radeon 9800, in DX9 and SM 2.0 it smashed out any FX series from nVidia. Now the FX series is one of the most wanted vga cards for retrogamers because the driver was more compatible with a great range of games insted the Catalyst from ATi.
Nice work, i remember being so exited about my 1st graphics card, i dreamed about a 5800 ultra, knowing nothing about all the drama, but at the end i ended up buying a 5200 because i couldn't afford anything else. Playing at low at 800x600 was the norm but I was still happy because i was playing games anyways 😅
Gotta start somewhere. The 5200 can still do well, just not in games that were new when it came out 😓 At least you didn't blow all your cash on an expensive disappointing card!
My take on this whole thing is that sm2.0 implementation is somehow unfinished in the fx cards. I have nv34B card with 2 vertex shaders and their performance is on par with software sm2.0 shaders as per 3dmark 2005 tests. But if you touch the core a little bit, the performance doubles. I don't doubt nvidia planned 500mhz cards but heating was a problem and nobody did heat pipe cooler designs back then, i believe the cards would benefit a lot in those higher speeds but as it is they run crippled.
It was, FX cards had either 16bits or 32bits mode rendering. DirectX 9 required... 24 bits. So 32bits was able to run DirectX9 but way to slow. And 16bits, well, hello cheating drivers.
I have a similar version of this card. Do you know what thermal pad thickness should be used for the memory chips? I used thermal paste like you did but Im pretty sure it should be thermals pads instead.
@@BurkeSchneider I would just use the thinnest you can find. I heard these cards originally came with putty like pads that were really flexible, but don't quote me on that 😅
never been able to get my hands on 1 of these but did pick up its odd brother the Quadro FX 1300 1/2 the vram but same chip slower clocks, performance is pretty solid especially compared to earlier FX 5 chips
Nice, even with the reduced clocks it sounds like it would be a decent performer, provided you stay within the VRAM limit. Have you had any issues with the Quadro drivers in games?
@@SPNG It was nVidia's slogan around the lounch of the FX series of GPUs. Of course referring to the Dawn demo. But even more the release of Shader Model 2.0 support which would allow for cinematic-like quality rendering. The fact that the FX series were too slow to achieve any near cinematic rendering in real world situations was something we had yet to discover. But the Dawn demo truly showed what SM 2.0 was capable of.
11:4211:42 Oh,pain!! I've got EXACTLY the same one . But, because odf it been fished out of the big pile of electronic junk,it missing a lot of SMT components!! I would deeply appreciate if you would remove the cooller of it,and scan the PS&CS sides of the card!!! I then maybe at least would know, what my 5950 missing.
I have a 5900 Ultra by Winfast, the A350 Ultra. Tested it extensively against a Radeon 9800 XT and they traded blows pretty evenly, but I prefer the cosmetics of the FX.
In my opinion most of the high end FX models at least look better than the 9700/9800 series, most of the Radeons of this era are pretty bare bones looking. I mean, I guess they didn't really need larger coolers that badly because of the lower TDP but still.
@@SPNG Yeah ATI might have created a monster with the 9700/9800 series but they hardly pushed the boat out on cosmetics. Not that this matters much BUT, every single 9700Pro and 9800Pro I've owned or collected had to have the fans replaced, which is telling. The HS+FAN just wasn't made for longevity on those cards. The fact they are interchangable with even the stock Radeon 9500 (non-pro) cooler is dodgy! :D I actually modded a few of mine with FX5500 passive heatsinks, then added a fan. The Winfast 5900Ultra is amazing looking, full aluminumum shroud (both sides) and twin angled fans. Looks like something from 1960's Star Trek.
The FX Series is maybe the ultimate DX8 card, but only for DX8. With the Detonator Driver Series 5x.x they got rid of features like Dithering/ 8 Bit Textures wich resulted in ruining the look of older games running in 16Bit colors. A step that AMD did with the 9xxx series also. Thats why old games look much worse today. (Color banding, missing Objects due to missing 8Bit palettized textures missing) For old games in the DX8 and older Aera you should go for 4xxx Nvidia cards and older (3DFX)
Back _then,_ with all the ongoing driver problems, I _wish_ I had got an FX 5900 instead of a 9800 pro. I was actually _more surprised_ that, when I rebuilt a Windows 98se overkill retro machine, how _good_ the final driver was with beta level support for the X800 series.
@@maniatore2006 Yeah for retro gaming you're much better off getting something like a Radeon 9700 (probably a quarter the price) but this is still a neat piece of GPU history in my opinion.
No, the FX series could barely run half life 2 using dx8 mode. Then the 6800 series couldn't handle sm3 either. Nvidia sold these cards on marketing not capability.
Just buy an ATI. Only card worth using for dx9. X800 is good for the old games, should be cheaper. The dx8 ati cards are also good, 9000 series were cheap and mass produced for OEM builds.
After what I’ve been testing all week I’m jealous of this level of performance.
Oh no... that's worrying 😬 Hey, at least you had that 9700 PRO a month back! Just think back to then 🤣
@@SPNG The only thing that’s keeping me going 😎
hello budget bill
I've just watched your Phantom 3800 video, great content, terrible "graphics card". Keep on the good work!
GeForce FX cards (5700, 5900, 5950, Quadro FX 3000) are fantastic for a Windows 98 rig. This is their only redeeming quality.
A subject after my own heart. 💚
Fantastic video, man.
Very much appreciated, means a lot coming from you 😀
nyc to see a young man reviewing old tech you doing a good job and making us excited to see more old tech hope to see more
💯💯💯
I was raised on old computers and game consoles, it's what made me so interested in this stuff! Much appreciated and there is definitely more to come!
Very nice review. Even if it represents the low point flagship of Nvidia cards, I hope you had some fun testing it out. I'm looking forward to further reviews from you! keep it up 😊
Much appreciated man, so glad you enjoyed. It was fun to make this review and test out a high end GeForce FX for the first time. I greatly appreciate you donating the card and the other parts, there's more to come!
Awesome donation!
Funny enough, the FX5500 was apparently a popular choice with entry-level gaming rigs in the Philippines back in the late 2000s.
Hows that funny? It was popular everywhere. You lose. 👎
i had FX 5700 and even that was a terrible GPU
@@CovenantAgentLazarus what is blud yapping about how was this a competition
@@faolor6468 Speaking in Ebonics further proves how braindead this audience is. You arent blk and you should focus on inserting mumble rap into your cousins next horrible Mixed CD.
@@CovenantAgentLazarus It was funny as the rest of the FX series wasn't exactly well-received as this video shows. Maybe the lower-tier FX GPUs had at least some modest quality-of-life improvements over the earlier and higher-end models, idk.
Huge ATi fan here and proud owner of a CIB Club3D 9700 Pro, X850XT-PE, X1800XT, X1900XTX, HD3870X2 and it's two successors. A few cards of GeForce remain interesting for me too. This one among them. Most Ultra cards have had a good level of competition for ATi and background stories. Currently own a 3 Ti 500, FX5900 Ultra and a 7800GTX/8800GTX but I would love to add a 6800, FX5950, GF2 Ultra cards add some point. Those cards remind me of my early teen years when I started reading into hardware a lot, building PC's for hobby and work and joining communities.
Nice collection! And yeah the 5950 caught my interest as well, more so than any of the other FX! If you already have a 5900U you may be disappointed by the performance increase (its only +25MHz on the core and +50MHz on memory). I highly recommend picking up a 6800 GT/Ultra if you can find one, its a really neat card!
Nice to know you
i am GPU fans too!
@@SPNG I know it's not really the performance increase I'm after. I just like how the reference cooler looks. An 6800U would be amazing. Not too mention the 8800. I forgot that one, but that has gotten kinda rare. Unfortunately it's like 4x the price of the GTX. Do you list your collection somewhere?
@@Romess1 This isn't the entire collection, but just going off of the more notable ones:
ATI/AMD:
Radeon 7500 AIW
Radeon 8500 64MB
Radeon 9700
Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition
Radeon X1800 XT
Radeon X1900 XTX (and CrossFire Edition)
Radeon X1950 XTX CrossFire Edition
Radeon HD 2900 XT
Radeon HD 3870
Radeon HD 3870 X2
Radeon HD 4870
Radeon HD 5870
Radeon HD 6870
NVIDIA:
Quadro2 Pro
GeForce3 Ti 500
GeForce4 Ti 4200
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
GeForce 6800 GT
GeForce 7800 GTX (and 512)
GeForce 7900 GTX
GeForce GTX 280
GeForce GTX 580
@@SPNG Good stuff! See some pretty rare cards in there. Can I ask what you paid for that X1900 Crossfire card? That's pretty high on my wantlist as well.
5900/5950 and 5700 have some architectural improvements. However a GeForce 5800 Ultra at the same clocks will whomp a 5950. It's really interesting.
My first ever GPU was a 5600 Ultra. I played FFXI well and it played games better than my Xbox so I was happy. I remember FEAR was the game that absolutely killed it and made me realize it's time was done.
Respectable card for the time! Definitely a big step up against the super cut down 5200. Given the results from this card though I can see FEAR being a huge struggle on 5600 😅
Good video. I had one of these cards.. and I gave it away to someone who needed a card.
Damn, that's a good deed sir 😮
As much as I love the 9000 series, even my 9800se, the high end GeForce FX series coolers do look really neat. Especially the translucent stock blower cooler and the Asus dual fan one with that gold colored shroud over the copper heatsink.
I agree! Love all of the different custom AIB cooling solutions that came on these cards, the 9700 and 9800 series don't have as much variety unless you use an aftermarket Arctic cooler or something.
Was just going to mention artic. That said, the card seemed to pull too much power or something and one molex pin would constantly corrode and need cleaning every so often.
Nice review man! I have all the FX ultra series, including the infamous GeForce FX 5800 ultra, and isn't that worse compared to the Radeon 9700 pro, the biggest problem was the noise of the fan, but on desktop is completely silent. The FX 5900 ultra and the 5950 ultra was great card, but nothing to compare with the Radeon 9800, in DX9 and SM 2.0 it smashed out any FX series from nVidia. Now the FX series is one of the most wanted vga cards for retrogamers because the driver was more compatible with a great range of games insted the Catalyst from ATi.
and the fact you can unlock pipelines on 9500/9700, those 9xxx cards really did kick ass but the driver support was just very terible
Nice work, i remember being so exited about my 1st graphics card, i dreamed about a 5800 ultra, knowing nothing about all the drama, but at the end i ended up buying a 5200 because i couldn't afford anything else. Playing at low at 800x600 was the norm but I was still happy because i was playing games anyways 😅
Gotta start somewhere. The 5200 can still do well, just not in games that were new when it came out 😓 At least you didn't blow all your cash on an expensive disappointing card!
Loved this card wish I never sold mine even though it wasn't exactly setting the world on fire.
It's a fun card, I loved testing it! Maybe I'll compare it against some popular DX8 cards, it really is a beast in DX8!
r300 for life!!!
I was clamoring for an R300 card in those later DirectX 9 games!
Subscribed!
Much appreciated 🙏 Welcome to the channel
I owned the 5200 Ultra and after that the 5700 Ultra...oh the nostalgia!
Your videos are pure nostalgia distilled. Thanks for these! Just discovered your channel today. Subbed and smashed the f*!# outta that bell lmfao
I deeply regret selling my 5950, it had its flaws but I really liked it at the time.
Its not the fastest thing out there, but I still think its a really neat card, which variant did you have?
@@SPNG A Leadtek version, I’m sure it said Winfast on the cooler.
Rip
nice video !
Much appreciated, I like your content as well 😀
@@SPNG thank you 😊
My take on this whole thing is that sm2.0 implementation is somehow unfinished in the fx cards.
I have nv34B card with 2 vertex shaders and their performance is on par with software sm2.0 shaders as per 3dmark 2005 tests. But if you touch the core a little bit, the performance doubles.
I don't doubt nvidia planned 500mhz cards but heating was a problem and nobody did heat pipe cooler designs back then, i believe the cards would benefit a lot in those higher speeds but as it is they run crippled.
It was, FX cards had either 16bits or 32bits mode rendering. DirectX 9 required... 24 bits.
So 32bits was able to run DirectX9 but way to slow.
And 16bits, well, hello cheating drivers.
When you mentioned low yields I was curious and looked up the going price for these. MY god it's around the $400 mark.
If you think that's bad, look at the 5800 Ultra 😅 You could buy a few of these for the price of one of those
I have a similar version of this card. Do you know what thermal pad thickness should be used for the memory chips? I used thermal paste like you did but Im pretty sure it should be thermals pads instead.
@@BurkeSchneider I would just use the thinnest you can find. I heard these cards originally came with putty like pads that were really flexible, but don't quote me on that 😅
never been able to get my hands on 1 of these but did pick up its odd brother the Quadro FX 1300 1/2 the vram but same chip slower clocks, performance is pretty solid especially compared to earlier FX 5 chips
Nice, even with the reduced clocks it sounds like it would be a decent performer, provided you stay within the VRAM limit. Have you had any issues with the Quadro drivers in games?
This is awesome. Hard to get it though.
BTW what speed does the PCIe has on the mobo?
@@DanielCardei Awesome to see you here DanielC! I'm really glad you enjoyed 😁 It should be a maximum of PCIe x4 due to a chipset limitation
The Dawn of Cinematic Computing.
Reminds me of the Dawn demo produced for the FX series 🧚
@@SPNG It was nVidia's slogan around the lounch of the FX series of GPUs. Of course referring to the Dawn demo. But even more the release of Shader Model 2.0 support which would allow for cinematic-like quality rendering. The fact that the FX series were too slow to achieve any near cinematic rendering in real world situations was something we had yet to discover. But the Dawn demo truly showed what SM 2.0 was capable of.
Remember me of my Fx 5500 256.
That was basically what if NVIDIA salvaged 3DFX's Rampage project and put it into production without refining further.
11:42 11:42 Oh,pain!!
I've got EXACTLY the same one .
But, because odf it been fished out of the big pile of electronic junk,it missing a lot of SMT components!!
I would deeply appreciate if you would remove the cooller of it,and scan the PS&CS sides of the card!!!
I then maybe at least would know, what my 5950 missing.
I have a 5900 Ultra by Winfast, the A350 Ultra. Tested it extensively against a Radeon 9800 XT and they traded blows pretty evenly, but I prefer the cosmetics of the FX.
In my opinion most of the high end FX models at least look better than the 9700/9800 series, most of the Radeons of this era are pretty bare bones looking. I mean, I guess they didn't really need larger coolers that badly because of the lower TDP but still.
@@SPNG Yeah ATI might have created a monster with the 9700/9800 series but they hardly pushed the boat out on cosmetics. Not that this matters much BUT, every single 9700Pro and 9800Pro I've owned or collected had to have the fans replaced, which is telling. The HS+FAN just wasn't made for longevity on those cards. The fact they are interchangable with even the stock Radeon 9500 (non-pro) cooler is dodgy! :D
I actually modded a few of mine with FX5500 passive heatsinks, then added a fan.
The Winfast 5900Ultra is amazing looking, full aluminumum shroud (both sides) and twin angled fans. Looks like something from 1960's Star Trek.
The FX Series is maybe the ultimate DX8 card, but only for DX8. With the Detonator Driver Series 5x.x they got rid of features like Dithering/ 8 Bit Textures wich resulted in ruining the look of older games running in 16Bit colors. A step that AMD did with the 9xxx series also. Thats why old games look much worse today. (Color banding, missing Objects due to missing 8Bit palettized textures missing) For old games in the DX8 and older Aera you should go for 4xxx Nvidia cards and older (3DFX)
Back _then,_ with all the ongoing driver problems, I _wish_ I had got an FX 5900 instead of a 9800 pro. I was actually _more surprised_ that, when I rebuilt a Windows 98se overkill retro machine, how _good_ the final driver was with beta level support for the X800 series.
Even Nvidia made fun of it... I have still respect for them, even if i went for a 9800XT
Wish Nvidia would still make mistakes like the FX series maybe then they would stop scalping GPU prices.
the fx cards are utter trash and not worth the 2k scalping .
The GeForce FX 5950 Ultra: is so Expensive, i could get a brand new card for that Money over 300€
@@maniatore2006 Yeah for retro gaming you're much better off getting something like a Radeon 9700 (probably a quarter the price) but this is still a neat piece of GPU history in my opinion.
But can it run Crysis?
The meme that keeps on giving 😆 I didn't test it myself, the game only requires Shader Model 2.0 but with the kind FX has... 😬
No, the FX series could barely run half life 2 using dx8 mode. Then the 6800 series couldn't handle sm3 either. Nvidia sold these cards on marketing not capability.
I have the Asus version, but it's dying.
That sucks... how so? Artifacting or instability?
Just buy an ATI. Only card worth using for dx9. X800 is good for the old games, should be cheaper. The dx8 ati cards are also good, 9000 series were cheap and mass produced for OEM builds.
Where crysis?
GeForce FX cards can't launch the game 😔