GF FX 5900 Ultra

R9800 Pro

Better cooling is essential for newer and faster hardware. Even with a .13 and .15 micron process, these cards are getting hot. Which manufacturer is to be commended for a better cooling system? I would have to say the FX 5900 Ultra. These particular cards are manufactured directly by nVidia to keep strict adherence to their standards, then pieced out to the individual manufacturers for resale. Not only does the FX 5900 Ultra have great GPU cooling, the memory chips are cooled with gargantuan sized sinks that are mounted separately from the GPU cooler. Add to this the fact that you can overclock the 5900 at both the 2D and 3D level, you can keep your card cooler while not running in 3D Apps if your the type to keep your card overclocked day in, day out. Memory chips get hot on the R9800 Pro yet this particular model does not have any sinks on the memory. Fortunately, ATi implemented them on their newer R9800 Pro 256MB model which has DDR II that can get very hot.

Conclusion
Let's break down performance of both cards and see which one comes out on top.

UT2k3 - FX 5900 Ultra - While both cards perform well, the FX 5900 comes out on top

AquaMark - R9800 Pro - The R9800 takes home the gold in this real-world benchmark

Comanche 4 - R9800 Pro - The R9800 also wins out by an edge for this nearly obsolete benchmark

Specviewperf 7.0 - R9800 Pro - This one is really close but the #'s lean to the R9800

Code Creatures - FX 5900 Ultra - The 5900 beats up the R9800 pretty good in this intensive benchmark

Splinter Cell - R9800 Pro - Hands down, the R9800 takes it in this awesome game from UBISoft

ShaderMark - R9800 Pro - While the FX 5900 Ultra makes a good showing, the R9800 wins this one

3DMark 01 SE Build 330 - R9800 Pro - The R9800 takes top honors with this tried and true synthetic benchmark

3DMark 03 Build 320 - FX 5900 Ultra - Should we include this? Possibly not, however the FX 5900 wins with WHQL Det Drivers

3D Visual Quality - R9800 Pro hands down

And the winner is.........The FIC ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. We compared these cards in every category we could think of and in the end, we saw better performance overall from the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Did the FX 5900 fail to impress us? No, not at all. We believe both cards are worthy of any good system but we do have to tip our hats to the excellent performance that the Radeon 9800 Pro has showed us here today.