For months now I have seen nothing but ATi based graphics cards from the Radeon 9700 to the 9800. The quick demise of the GeForceFX 5800 based on the NV30 chip left NVIDIA in a very troubled position. Their much hyped about graphics solution featuring DDR-II memory technology was not what it was cracked up to be. The cards were extremely expensive mainly due to the implementation of DDR-II as production was quite limited at the time. The performance was also quite poor partially due to undeveloped drivers for the new FX micro-architecture.

Not to mention the release date of the GeForceFX 5800 was continually pushed back due to TSMC's 0.13-micron. The process was not mature enough for implementation which held the production of the FX5800 off for many months. Perhaps NVIDIAs biggest mistake with the NV30 was that they assumed far too much. Another example of this would be the flip chip packaging technology which was not ready in time for the scheduled launch of the FX5800. This meant that employing the 256-bit memory interface would not be feasible and therefore NVIDIA made the mistake of turning to a 128-bit memory interface.

However, the unsuccessful NV30 (FX5800) chip which has now been discharged did give birth to a new GeForceFX line. This product line is currently based on three chips being the NV31, NV34 and NV35. The GeForceFX 5600/Ultra is based on the NV31 chip which is actually faster than the NV34 as it is designed to replace GeForce4 Ti 4200 graphics cards. The NV34 will be the heart and soul of GeForceFX 5200/Ultra cards and is designed to be the new GeForce4 MX.

At the top of the food chain we have the NV35 chip which will be found on the GeForceFX 5900/Ultra. Today I will be looking at a graphics card from ASUS that utilizes the GeForceFX 5900 chip with 128MB of memory. Known as the V9950, this card operates with a core frequency of 400MHz and an 850MHz memory clock. ASUS has built a very strong reputation for putting together impressive graphic card packages and the V9950 looks to be no exception...