Leadtek 5950 Ultra

Av
Anton Nilsson
-
0

The card found for this purpose is well suited for this kind of review, as it brings along functionality beyond the usual. Advanbced Video In functionality, good overclocking, nice cooling and a software package that stands out from the rest. It’s time to take a closer look at Leadtek WinFast A380 Ultra TDH MyViVO edition or (plain and simple) Leadtek GeForce FX 5950.

It’s been a while
since we published a standalone review of a videocard card here at NordicHardware. When
the amount of people reading our reviews increases, so do the amount of our
reviews and products in them. But today, it’s time for a standalone review.


The card found
for this purpose is well suited for this kind of review, as it brings along
functionality beyond the usual. Advanbced Video In functionality, good
overclocking, nice cooling and a software package that stands out from
the rest. It’s time to take a closer look at Leadtek WinFast A380 Ultra TDH
MyViVO edition or (plain and simple) Leadtek GeForce FX 5950.


Let’s begin with the specifications.

Leadtek’s box brings my thoughts to the Lord of the Rings. One
Board To Rule Them All perhaps? Let’s find out…










































































Leadtek WinFast A380 Ultra TDH MyViVO Edition

Chip:
NV38

Manufacturing process:
0.13-micron
Transistors:
~125 mil.
GPU
speed:
475 MHz

Memory speed:

950 MHz / 29.7 GB/s

Pixel Shader:

2.0

Vertex Shader:

2.0

Pixel
Pipelines/Pixel Fillrate:

4 / 1900 MP/s

TMU’s/Texel Fillrate:

1
/ 3800 MT/s

RAMDAC:
(2) 400 MHz

Amount of memory:
256 MB

Type of memory and interface::
256-bit, DDR
In and
outputs:
DVI-I, VGA, S-Video (S-Video In/Out, Composite In/Out, HDTV Out)

Extra
accessories:

DVI-VGA-adapter, ATX-Y
cable, ViVo dongle, S-Video cable, composite cable



Software:
WinFox II, 3Deep, Coloreal, Colorific, Cult 3D

Fullversion
software:
WinFastDVD, WinFast PVR, Big Motha Truckers, Gun Metal, VideoStudio 7 SE DVD, DVD MovieFactory 2.5 SE, Cool 3D SE


Estimated
price:

I can doubtlessly
say that Leadtek’s bundle for their 5950 Ultra is the most impressive I have
ever seen. Here you find hardware and software with a value far beyond that
which we are used too. Over 100 Euros is not exaggregating
actually, considering the two games, DVD software, three programs for video
editing/capturing and all the accessories in form of cables and adapters you
can imagine are enclosed.
Despite all this, Leadtek’s 5950 Ultra does not seem to be more expensive
than any other 5950 Ultra, which is incredibly impressive. Another thing that, if not
impresses it at least surprises, is that Leadtek has bundled a cable for HDTV
output (composite). Nice news for those with expensive projectors or TVs that
has support for such input.

We will have a
closer look on all the accessories on the next page.
















Front view









Rear view

The cooling reminds
me of a speaker. The net which covers the fan is supposed to keep
the level of noise down according to Leadtek. There are two modes which
it chooses from and in the lower position it is as quiet as it can be. The
fast mode is somewhat worse, not that the level of noise is directly loud
but the fan creates a high frequency whining noise which I personally find
a bit disturbing.
















The "speaker"










Copper heatsink

The heatsink
is as you can see made of aluminum on the rear side but on the front side
it is copper. Worth mentioning is also that it is quite unique since it is
fastened over the side of the board with "staples". This massive cooling
gives the cards a whole lot of weight (almost a kilo) but fact is that it
still only occupies one slot. In other words, no nearby PCI slot is in the
way.
















Fittings










In and outputs

The only thing
that doesn’t impress us is that the manufacturer has used nVidia’s reference
PCB to the full extent. Leadtek haven’t even borthered changing the color of it. On the
other hand, it matter less.

The bundle
package is nothing but amazing and therefore we have dedicated a whole page
for it. Turn the page.

Leadtek ship this board with no less than six CDs, two
manuals, a ViVo/HDTV dongle, two video cables, an ATX-Y cable and a DVI-VGA
adapter. We’ll start by having a look at what’s on the CD’s:
















Software and manuals

WinFast 3D Graphics Series:


• nVidia Detonator 52.14 Win2K/XP, 51.90 WinNT and
52.16 Win9X/ME (Drivers for nVidia-based graphics cards.)
• eColor 3Deep (Colour calibration utility)
• Acrobat Reader 5.1 (Portable Document Format-viewer.)
• AGP-drivers for AMD, Intel, VIA, ALI and SIS based motherboards.
• Coloreal Bright, Embedded and Visual (Colour calibration utility)
• eColor Colorific (Colour calibration utility)
• Cycore Cult 3D (Utility for creating and displaying 3D-objects). DirectX
8.0 and DirectX 9.0 (API’s for Windows)
• Indigo Rose LT (Colour calibration utility)
• Manuals in PDF-format for nView and 3D-settings.
• Tons of colour profiles for different purposes.
• nVidia WDM drivers 2.03 (Drivers for Video In-chip on nVidia-based
graphic cards)
• Leadtek WinFast DVD 3.1 (Intervideo WinDVD-based DVD-software.)
• Drivers for Intel ATA.
• Drivers for Adaptec APSI
• Leadtek WinFast PVR 3.0 (Intervideo WinDVR-based video capture software)
• Leadtek WinFox II ("Tweak-software" with tons of features)
• Leadtek WinFast FM (FM Radio tuner)
















WinFast PVR

The WinFast CD
contain primarilly three applications: WinFast PVR, WinFast DVD and WinFox. With
me being a bit careless, I managed to loose the CD-key for WinFast DVD,
so I don’t have any screenshots from it, although I might say it is a slimmed
version of WinDVD. WinFast PVR (Personal Video Recorder) offers quite some
functionality for video recording. One feature that is quite rare for simple video-in
solutions is Picture in Picture. That is, you can have two video windows running
at the same time. One where you watch that which you have recorded and one
where you see the live capture from a recording source. Another feature that
you often find on AIW/Personal Cinema is time shift, i.e. you can pause live
broadcastings in a smart way. All in all, it’s a competent software package.















WinFox

Above we see
the somewhat unfriendly interface in WinFox. WinFox is Leadtek’s own software
and offers tons of features. Here you may, for example, update the graphics
card’s BIOS in the Windows environment, download and install drivers, software
and even a new BIOS via the Internet. Play small games, overclock your graphics card,
monitor clock frequencies, temperatures and voltages. If you want detailed
information about your graphics card, your PCI-slot cards and so on, then
here’s a large source of information. Shortly, this little application can
do pretty much everything.
What’s annoying is the grotesque user interface, armed with bothering sound
effects, horrible colors and totally unmotivated loading times etc. I cannot
understand why Leadtek didn’t hire a couple of good designers to fix
the mess, since WinFox has the ability to become something extraordinary.
As is, it is unfortunately too limited by its interface and the mess to receive
my full appreciation. That is sad, as this software has more to offer than
any other program operating in the same area.

Cool
3D SE

• Ulead Cool 3D 3.0 SE (Utility for creating 3D graphics.)

• DirectX 6.0 (API’s for Windows.)
• Manuals for Cool 3D im PDF-format
• Acrobat Reader 4.05 (Portable Document Format viewer.)
• QuickTime 4.0 (Apples mediaplayer for Windows.)
• RealPlayer 7.0 (Real Networks mediaplayer for Windows.)
















Cool 3D

In Cool 3D, you
can easily create different types of 3D animations, and from what I gather
the primary purpose with this application is simply to create different types
of effects on texts. It is not in any way an amazing program and for my part
it goes to the pile known as unnecessary frippery.

DVD MovieFactory
2.5 SE

• Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2.5 SE (Utility for creating,
recording and editing DVD- and VCD-videos.)
• Manuals for MovieFactory in PDF-format
• Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 (Portable Document Format-viewer.)
• DirectX 9.0 (API’s for Windows.)
















MovieFactory

MovieFactory
is a utility intended for the creation and editing of DVD videos.
The functionality is pretty limited, but by all means enough for non-professional
purposes. For the more advanced editing tasks, you use…

VideoStudio
7 DVD SE

• Ulead
VideoStudio 7 DVD SE (Utility for advanced video editing.)
• Manuals for VideoStudio in PDF-format
• IndeoVideo 5 (Video codec)
• DirectX 9.0 (API’s for Windows.)
• Windows Media Encoder 9.0 (Codecs and encoders for the Windows Media-formats.)
















VideoStudio

Ulead VideoStudio
7 DVD SE is a pretty simple video editing utility and at first sight it seems
to offer pretty much the same as MovieFactory. The difference here is that
the stress lies more on editing and creation of effects. You shouldn’t expect
a professional utility here, but that isn’t the thought either. For a regular
home user it sufficies more than well and is easy to use. You can apply effects,
edit, combine, capture and burn your videos. It is not the best of it’s kind,
but absolutely not the worst either. Personally, I think that it has got functionality
enough for most people.

GunMetal

  • Yeti Studios
    GunMetal (Shoot ’em up game)
  • DirectX 9.0
    (APIs for Windows.)
  • Manual for
    GunMetal in HTML format















GunMetal

GunMetal is a
frenetic shoot ’em up made in the classic style of the old arcades (you know,
the old horisontally or vertically scrolling games in the arcade halls) in
fully fledged, gretar looking 3D. Personally, I like this game a lot, since the graphics
are beautiful and there are enough enemies to keep your adrenaline at an outrageously
high level. Even though it doesn’t take long to finish it, it is just like those
good old shoot ’em up games in the arcades that makes you come back for seconds again and again.

Big Mutha
Truckers

• Empire
Interactive Big Mutha Truckers (Action racing game)
• Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.1 (Portable Document Format viewer)
• DirectX 8.1 (API’s for Windows)
















Big Mutha Truckers

Big Mutha Truckers
isn’t exactly what I’d call an outstanding game. Shortly, it is based on you
driving around in a large truck competing with other truckers. Most often
its simply a matter of horse racing; finish first from point A to point B.
The graphics are OK, but absolutely not remarkable. The controls are also
descent, but sometimes your truck just slides away uncontrollable in the most
unmotivated moments imaginable. One hour of gaming was enough to make me tired,
but taste differs, so this may very well be something for you.

I presume that
I’m not the only one to be impressed. But it’s not over yet; we’re going to
take a quick look at the accessories too.
















Accessories

ViVo/HDTV
dongle:
This dongle is connected to your graphics card’s S-video connector and gives
you the possibility to get both in and outgoing S-Video and composite signals,
as well as getting sound into the soundcard. What makes this dongle unique
is the fact that Leadtek has equipped it with HDTV support. This makes it
possible to connect your graphics card to a projector or HDTV-device with
superb image quality. Leadtek has marked all cables carefully with tiny notes
that declares the use of the cable. A clever move.

Composite
cabel: 1 meter cable for an in or out image signal. A bit short if
to be of any use for me personally, but of course that depends on what distances
you’ve got between your equipment.

S-Video
Cable: 1.1 meter cable for an in or out image signal. Somewhat higher
quality than composite. In resemblance with the composite cable, it’s a bit
too short, though it is a decimeter longer.

DVI-VGA
adapter: Converts digital image signal to analog so that monitors
without DVI input can take advantage of the second monitor connector.

ATX-Y cable: Cable to extend an ATX connector
and split it into two. The cable is longer than average which is positive.

The acessories
that come with the package are extraordinary considering the HDTV accessibility,
and fact is that it is relatively uncommon to include cables for S-Video and
composite. Before ending this section and starting the tests, I thought I
might say a few words about the manuals for the card.

Quick
Installation Guide: Guide for installing the card. The short version
for those of you that just smacks the card right in and goes straight ahead.
Detailed instructions of how to uninstall old hardware and install the new
hardware and software.

Genereal
Guide: Here comes the first manual that has ever impressed me since
I started reviewing graphics cards. The standard manual for a graphics card
describes how to install the card and e.g. how nView works. Leadtek’s manual
goes farther than that. Here are detailed instructions on hardware installation,
software installation and an additional guide to nVidia’s drivers settings.
What also impresses is that Leadtek also describes its own WinFox II utility
and how it works, as well as how to use its video-in-features. Most manufacturers
usually miss out totally on the description of the video-in features, which
in my opinion is fairly stupid, since it’s less obvious than the installation
of the card itself. Thumbs up! The only thing that might need improvement is the use of the English, that occasionally is a tad too "Engrish".

The package of
acessories is the best I’ve ever seen with a graphics card. Everything from
the manual to the ViVo dongle and MovieFactory is well planned and with high
quality. The only thing that really bothers me in whole is that Leadtek’s
GUI (graphical user interface) in WinFox II is totally miserable and bloated.
It really looks like a preteen student designed it on a lunch break. It is
obvious that Leadtek can do better, of which its WinFast DVD and WinFast PVR
is evidence. The question is why they didn’t spend the same time on WinFox.
But in the end, WinFox still has all of its functionality, so all in all it
really feels like a trifle, albeit an annoying and unnecessary one.

Well then, an unusually in depth review of an unusually large
bundle of acessories, but not everything here speaks for Leadtek. Shall we
then take a look at the performance?

The test system
has not changed since last time.


Test system
Hardware
Processor:
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (400) Mhz
Cooling:
Corsair HydroCool 200
Mainboard:
ABIT NF7S 2.0
(nForce2 400 Ultra)
RAM:
768 MB DDR333 @ 2-5-2-2 Timings:
3x 256 MB Corsair TWINX512-3200LL DDR-SDRAM
Graphics
card:

Leadtek GeForce FX 5900 Ultra (256 MB, 475/950) – €490:-
ATi Radeon 9800 XT (256 MB, 412/730) – €445:-

HDD:
120 GB Western Digital Caviar 7200 RPM Special Edition (8 MB cache)
Sound
card:
Creative
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro
PSU:
Nexus NX-3000 300W
Ethernet:

D-Link DFE-530TX 10/100
Software
Operating system:
Windows XP Professional (Service Pack 1 + updates)
Video
drivers:
nVidia: Forceware 52.16
ATi: Catalyst 3.8
Other
drivers:
nVidia ForceWare UDA Chipset Drivers v3.13
Benchmarking software:

Unreal Tournament 2003 (v2225)
Quake 3: Arena (v1.32)
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (v.49)
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy ("1.0")

Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of World War II (demo "1.0")
Comanche 4 (demo "1.0")
WarCraft 3: Reign of Chaos (demo "1.0")
Counter-Strike (v1.6)
Mafia: City of Lost Heaven (v1.1)
Halo (v1.02)
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (v1.01)

We have chosen
to compare the card’s performance to a Radeon 9800 XT. 9800 XT is about €50
cheaper but has on the other hand not the bundle that Leadtek offers. The
manufacturer of 9800 XT which come the closest is ASUS, but unfortunately they
have got some policy which is to ignore reviewers in general. Therefore, we
can not test it today.


We have used
the two latest official drivers from ATi and nVidia.

In the review,
you will read a couple of different expressions and abbreviations, if you
are not related with them our suggestion is that you take a look at the list
below. The same list explains some other expressions that are used specifically
for this review.

  • AA, FSAA
    (Full Scene Anti-Aliasing) – Edge smoothing (Reduces angularity in 3D
    graphics); all modern graphics cards should handle AA/FSAA in some form.
    AA can be applied in different strengths; 2X, 4X, 6X and so on. The more
    the better.
  • AF,
    Aniso     (Anisotrophic Filtering) – Anisotropic texture filtering
    (Increases the sharpness in texture/surfaces in 3D-Graphics); all modern
    cards should handle AF in some form.
  • App
    (Application Preference) – If something is marked with this suffix it
    means that we have let the game handle the AF instead of setting it in the
    graphics cards control panel.
  • Trilinear
    – Two different types of texture filtering that either is used on their
    own or combined with anisotropic filtering. The highest quality is reached
    by a combination of trilinear and anisotropic filtering. At the time, trilinear
    filtering is the standard in all games released and is seen as a minimum
    for acceptable quality with today’s measurements.
  • Aliasing
    – Graphical artifacts that comes from insufficient information/precision.
    It’s often known of "dancing" pixels on either the polygon edges or
    within textures. By using AA and AF you can reduce Aliasing.

If you find anything
above unclear, feel free to e-mail questions to the address you will find
at the top of the page. (Please remember that we are not a free support
service, hence we recommend you to drop a line in our forums and to the reseller
where you bought the product for support.)

A good deal of information has surfaced about irregularities
concerning image quality in both ATi’s and nVidia’s drivers. One piece of
news in ForceWare 52.16 from nVidia is that they no longer support real trilinear
filtering. Admittedly, we haven’t considered this as a noticeable problem,
but it’s far from a plus. The major problem we have encountered is anisotropic
filtering in combination with pixel shaders. Here, nVidia seems to have done
something weird- maybe it’s a bug, because the combination of these
two named functions cause a lot of aliasing which hasn’t been there
before. ATi, on the other hand, has been accused of cheating in Halo, UT2003
and Aquamark 3. Regarding the latter application, I am uncertain as I haven’t
tested it myself, but in UT2003, certain high-detail textures is told to have
lower quality, which also applies to Halo. Fact is that we haven’t been
able to find these irregularities even though we have dug around in the games
for a couple of hours. None of our colleagues on other hardware sites have
found anything of value either that we’ve heard of.

In all the tests, we use the resolution 1280×1024 with 4x
AA (Full Scene Anti-Aliasing) and 8x AF (Anisotropic Filtering, i.e. advanced
texture filtering) if nothing else is stated. We have chosen the resolution
1280×1024 (or 1280×960 in those games where 1280×1024 isn’t available) because
this is a reasonable setting when it comes to performance but also because
most of our readers probably have monitors which are capable of this resolution.
In those tests where 1280×1024-4xAA/8xAF has showed to be too demanding, we
have first chosen to lower the resolution to 1024×768 and lowered or shut
off AA/AF until a playable level of performance is reached.

After we have made the actual performance tests, we have spent
approximately 30 minutes (in some cases a lot more than that) sitting down
and playing the game seriously to see how it works in practice.
























Quake 3: Arena

We
test the Open GL game Quake 3 to evaluate the performance in somewhat
older titles. A large amount of titles are build on the “Q3”
engine. We use ourselves of the test demo four.dm_67 in the benchmark
tool Q3Bench.

Game
engine:

Open
GL (class DX7)

Pixel Shaders:

No
Vertex Shaders:

No






Quake 3
1280×1024 4xAA/8xAF

   
Leadtek 5950 Ultra

  249.5
 
Radeon 9800 XT

  196.4
 

  0 70 140 210 280 350

Leadtek wipes
the floor with 9800 XT in Quake 3.

Subjective
analysis: Although the performance different isn’t directly noticeable
(with both cards having well over 100 fps), Leadtek is still the obvious choice for
this game. ATi’s superior FSAA quality doesn’t show remarkably in Quake 3’s
dark environments and regarding texture filtering, I can’t distinguish any
major differences either.
























Unreal Tournament 2003

UT2003 is a DirectX 8 game which push the graphics cards
quite hard with large textures and high numbers of polygons etc. A
numer of games are built on this engine. We use the more graphics
demanding flyby test. We test the game on the level Inferno.
Game
engine:

Direct3D (DX8.1)

Pixel Shaders:

Yes
(1.1 and 1.4)

Vertex Shaders:

Yes
(1.1)








UT2003
1280×1024 4xAA/8xAF

   
Radeon 9800 XT

  76.3
 
Leadtek 5950 Ultra

  54.6
 

  0 20 40 60 80 100

In return, Leadtek
can subsequently consider itself as beaten in UT2003.

Subjective
analysis: In my opinion, ATi has both the better performance and
image quality in Unreal Tournament 2003. The UT fanatic should look out for
a 9800 XT card.
























WarCraft 3: Reign of Chaos

WarCraft 3 is one of the years best selling
games which makes it a good test object. Despite that the graphics
lacks extra ordinary technique the game is quite demanding. The performance
tests are done on the first level in the WC3 demo with help from FRAPS.
Game
engine:

Direct3D (DX8.1)

Pixel Shaders:

No
Vertex Shaders:

No







Warcraft 3
1280×1024 4xAA/8xAF

   
Radeon 9800 XT

  68.1
 
Leadtek 5950 Ultra

  61.2
 

  0 20 40 60 80 100

ATi pulls off
the prize again.

Subjective
analysis: The percentual differences are extensive – the experienced
ones are non-existent. What’s decisive for me is quality of FSAA, and that’s
where ATi shows off.

We have not even come
midway with our performance benchmarks, so it’s still too early to draw any
conclusions.

Mafia:
The City of Lost Heaven

Mafia
is based on a self-developed Direct3D engine and utilizes a fair amount
of objects of relatively high quality to create a great wealth of
detail. Similar game engines can be found in e.g. the GTA series.
To measure performance, we’ve run Free Rides’ first level and used
FRAPS.
Game
engine:

Direct3D (DX8.1)

Pixel Shaders:

Yes
(1.1)

Vertex Shaders:

Yes
(1.1)







Mafia
1280×1024 4xAA/8xAF

   
Radeon 9800 XT

  65.4
 
Leadtek 5950 Ultra

  35.9
 

  0 20 40 60 80 100

9800 XT rules in Mafia, while Leadtek’s 5950 doesn’t have
an earthly.

Subjective
analysis: Mafia looks better and runs better with a 9800 XT – no
doubts.
























Comanche 4

Comanche 4 is based on a Direct3D engine
that uses pixel and vertex shaders along with high-definition textures.
The game is one of the few that actually needs a graphics card with
256 MBs of memory. We perform the benchmark with the downloadable
demo’s in-built benchmarking utility.
Game
engine :

Direct3D (DX8.1)

Pixel Shaders:

Yes
(1.1)

Vertex Shaders:

Yes
(1.1)








Comanche 4
1280×1024 4xAA/8xAF

   
Leadtek 5950 Ultra

  48.6
 
Radeon 9800 XT

  47.6
 

  0 15 30 45 60 75

Comanche 4 is
to nVidia’s advantage.

Subjective
analysis: Comanche runs smoothly on both cards. The existing differences
in performance are hard to distinguish and personally, I’m far more concerned
about nVidia’s deficient FSAA that makes itself felt in the high contrast parts of this game.
























Counter-Strike


Counter-Strike doesn’t need a closer presentation, however
the latest version is told to be more arduous than the previous
one, hence the decision to test it. The test consists of a demo
of the level de_aztec with a total of 18 players.

Game
engine:

Open
GL (class DX6)

Pixel Shaders:

No
Vertex Shaders:

No







Counter-Strike
1280×1024 4xAA/8xAF

   
Radeon 9800 XT

  164.8
 
Leadtek 5950 Ultra

  164.1
 

  0 40 80 120 160 200

The difference is non-existent and insignificant.

Subjective
analysis: It does not matter whether CS is played on a 5950 or 9800
XT in regards of performance. Personally, I don’t really notice any image quality difference either; not the least because the game is so instinctive
that I, quite frankly, forget the graphical effects and just play.

Six tests are
finished and there are five to go.

Battlefield 1942:
Secret Weapons of WWII

Battlefield 1942 is still a very popular
online game and because of this it feels even more important to
test it. Once again we use the FRAPS tool and evaluate the downloadable
demo.
Game
engine :

Direct3D (DX8.1)

Pixel Shaders:

No
Vertex Shaders:

No






Battlefield 1942
1280×1024 4xAA/8xAF

   
Radeon 9800 XT

  90.2
 
Leadtek 5950 Ultra

  58.4
 

  0 24 48 72 96 120

Radeon
dominates the Battlefield.

Subjective analysis: ATi has
both superior performance and image quality in this test. If you play
Battlefield there are no doubts that 9800XT is the best choice.
























Tomb Raider:
Angel of Darkness


Tomb Raider is the first commercial game to use 100% of
DirectX 9.0 for its graphics and thereby making it an interesting
test object. The test is run with the integrated tool’s latest
patch. The Prague3a level was selected for this test

Game engine

Direct3D (DX9)

Pixel Shaders:

Yes
(1.1, 1.4 and 2.0)

Vertex Shaders:

Yes

(1.1 and 2.0)








Tomb Raider
1280×1024

   
Radeon 9800 XT

  54.2
 
Leadtek 5950 Ultra

  32.7
 

  0 16 32 48 64 80

Yet another
test where ATi has the lead is Tomb Raider. Leadtek’s monster card has some
difficulties catching up here.

Subjective
analysis: With our test settings the game runs better on a 9800 XT.
First of all, the Radeon card hasn’t got such holes in the framerate as Leadtek
has.
























Star Wars Jedi Knight:
Jedi Academy


Jedi
Academy is the successor of the popular Jedi Knight II. It is
built using the Q3 engine, but it has got among other things very
high-resoluted textures and more light effects. We have tested
a customised recorded demo of the Traspir level where we met 7
enemies.


Game engine:

Open
GL (Class DX8.X?)

Pixel Shaders:

Yes?
(1.x?)

Vertex Shaders:

Yes? (1.x?)








Jedi Academy
1280×1024 4xAA/8xAF

   
Leadtek 5950 Ultra

  49.8
 
Radeon 9800 XT

  44.4
 

  0 15 30 45 60 75

9800 XT has had
the chance to shine in a couple of tests and now it is Leadtek’s turn with
its 5950 Ultra.

Subjective
analysis: Jedi Academy generally runs better on nVidia’s card – that’s
a fact. The quality difference is not that big, thus in the end, the 5950
Ultra is the obvious choice.

Update: Since the article was written a new
patch for Jedi Academy has been released (1.01). This patch contains a couple
of bugfixes which are supposed to increase performance on ATi based graphics
cards. Since demos created with the 1.00 version can’t be run after the patch
is installed, it is difficult to decide how much the performance differ. To
get a clue of what numbers we are talking about, we first loaded a level without
and then with the patch installed, while checking the FPS with FRAPS. We estimate
the performance increase to be somewhat around 10 to 20 % which is not bad.
We have created a new demo which we will use for future reviews, but we did
not manage to squeeze it in in this review due to our deadline.
In short, nVidia’s benefit in Jedi Academy is not that great which we
have seen earlier. The two cards should perform quite equally.

Halo is a game
that has been developed by Bungie/Gearbox. The game was released for Xbox
and "converted" for PC just recently. The PC version uses DirectX
9 functionality in certain aspects and is therefore another game of the so called
"new generation", so to speak.
























Halo: Combat Evolved

You could call Halo the first real DirectX9 game, which
of course makes it very interesting. We test the performance by adding
-timedemo in the command line. That measure the performance in the
game’s cut scenes and gives a pretty decent picture of the card’s
performance in the game.
Game
engine:

Direct3D (DX9)

Pixel Shaders:

Yes
(1.1, 1.4 and 2.0)

Vertex Shaders:

Yes
(1.1)








Halo
1280×1024 8xAF

   
Radeon 9800 XT

  31.9
 
Leadtek 5950 Ultra

  29.4
 

  0 10 20 30 40 50

9800 XT has a
slight advantage in performance but the margins are small.

Subjective
analysis: nVidia has a few problems when it comes to aliasing on
certain surfaces (those that use pixel shaders to be exact) when anisotropic
filtering is activated. Right now, Radeon 9800 XT seems to be the better one
compared to Leadtek 5950 Ultra in performance as well as image quality.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

The sequel to the incredibly popular game Maw Payne created
by Finnish developer Remedy. We do the benchmark with FRAPS in the
game’s cutscenes. The game uses the spectacular physics engine Havok
and Pixel Shaders among other things.

Game
engine:

Direct3D (DX9)

Pixel Shaders:

Yes
(1.1 and 1.4)

Vertex Shaders:

Yes
(1.1)








Max Payne 2
1280×1024 4xAA/8xAF

   
Radeon 9800 XT

  105.9
 
Leadtek 5950 Ultra

  79.6
 

  0 24 48 72 96 120

Leadtek 5950
can not keep up with 9800 XT in Max Payne 2.

Subjective
analysis: Both cards offer a smooth and flexible FPS. The differences
in performance are not that obvious in-game, but in more intense events 9800
XT prevails.






Final thoughts about the game tests

There is not
that much to say really. It is not a secret that 9800 XT in general is a faster
card and that there is nothing Leadtek can do about it.

However, 5950
Ultra is not a slow card, quite the opposite, but ATi still has the advantage.
Leadtek gets beaten in nine out of twelve tests. In those where Leadtek manage
to outrun 9800 XT, there are no vast margins and the results of Jedi Academy
are still uncertain. According to my approximate calculations, these two cards
should perform almost identical (in JA) after the new patch is installed.

Those of you
that find synthetic tests interesting should our article about 3DMark03
Build 340. Despite that we did not have a 9800 XT available and had
to go with a 9800 Pro 128 MB, the 5950 Ultra still is the inferior one in this specific test.

If you are a
performance maniac there is no doubt: Radeon 9800 XT does not need to fear
anyone and will have no problems keeping its position.

Currently, we
have twelve games for testing and as mentioned earlier our goal is fifteen
games. One of the games we will add is Silent Hill 3. The last two will probably
be some kind of role-playing game and a sports game, respectively. If you
have any propositions, you are welcome to contact
me. The requirements are that they should be modern, popular and/or easy
to benchmark.

When this card
was sent to us from Leadtek, they were talking about the great overclocking
possibilities it had. Even though we didn’t reach as far as Leadtek told
us (550/1100) we came quite close.

Compared with
the watercooled 5950 Ultra from Gainward, these results are quite impressive.
Gainward’s card reached 570/1070 at most and Leadtek’s card, which only
has air cooling, reaches 534/1050.

Product
Standard
Overclocked
Percentage
Leadtek 5950
475/950

534/1050

12,4/10,5

The percentage
does not make our eyes pop out but considering it is a 5950 Ultra it looks
really good.

It is is time
to sum up this, hopefully, informative review.


Leadtek 5950 Ultra

Pros:
+ Extremely good accessories and software bundle
+ Extremely feature rich
+ Good overclocking
+ Relatively quiet cooling

Cons:
– Lower 3D performance than the cheaper 9800 XT

I
must of course begin with mentioning that Leadtek has the best bundle I have
ever seen. It has included a lot of software and accessories in the package
and most of it is of high quality. Furthermore, the card’s video-in functionality
reaches a couple steps further than everything else except Personal Cinema
and All-In-Wonder. When you also realize that the card also overclocks well
while its cooling maintains a pretty silent level, one can not be
less than impressed. In addition, it doesn’t hurt that the card looks neat.


Leadtek’s
A380 Ultra is without doubts one of the most impressive nVidia based cards
I have reviewed in a long time. Considering its pricetag isn’t worse than
on any other 5950 Ultra, the whole thing appears to be a real bargain.



What speaks against the card is of course that Radeon 9800 XT still has an
incredible grip of the performance. nVidia’s 5950 Ultra chip is not strong
enough to do anything about it, which we clearly saw in our review of the
"overclocked" Gainward CoolFX 1800XP (a 5950 Ultra with clock frequencies
at 550/1050). The thing with Leadtek’s cards is that they offer a whole lot
more than just 3D performance. All the functionality, all the software and
accessories make it a very interesting choice in my eyes. But, of course,
if you are only after raw performance this card is not the one you want.
For us who want a mixture of performance, features, accessories and software,
Leadtek’s card is one of the most interesting I have seen during this year.
The card which in my opinion comes close to the same striking feeling is All-In-Wonder
Radeon 9800 Pro. To make a long story short, I give the Leadtek A380 Ultra
the editor’s choice award.



Leadtek FX 5950 Ultra


If
you want a graphics card which turns the computer into a multimedia center
at the same time as it delivers good performance and gives a myriad of tweaking
opportunities, this card is a given choice. The question is only when it shows
up in stores and what the final price will be.


Thanks
to Leadtek that made the review possible!