Albatron GeForce FX5900XTV Review

Two years ago, the NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti4200 was the mainstream card of choice, and it was easy to see why. It was inexpensive compared to its big brother, the Ti4600, but it used the same NV25 chipset and memory bus. In fact, the only differences between the two were the clock speeds and the price. Since the arrival of chipsets that support DirectX 9, though, no mainstream card has achieved the success of the Ti4200. Mainstream cards have been coupled with smaller memory buses or fewer pipeliens than their enthusiast-level counterparts. However, in recent months, add-in board manufacturers have introduced a new line of cards, labeled the GeForce FX 5900XT, that has the same 256-bit memory bus and the same 4x2 pipeline configuration as the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. Today, we'll be examining Albatron's 5900XT offering, the FX5900XTV, and we'll see if it is the heir to the Ti4200's mainstream throne.