The Card and Installation:

The new revision 1600XP has completely changed from the first review sample we received. Here are a couple of pictures of the original card:

And now the new card:

What are the benefits/issues resulting from the new design?

The first benefit is immediately obvious, the Gainward Geforce FX 5900 Ultra 1600 XP Golden Sample now uses a cooler that requires the use of 1 slot meaning you are free to add whichever PCI device you wish to your 1st PCI slot. Additionally decision to use 2 smaller fans rather than 1 large fan has greatly reduced the noise created by the card. Again regarding the cooling, the new single slot design allows all of the motherboard components between the AGP and PCI slots to be used without concern

In our original review we noted the length of the card as an issue. The image below shows our concern:

Firstly the card was so long that the power connector and the ABIT Serillel ATA converter were almost touching. Additionally the IDE sockets were underneath the end of the card.

Finally the space between the rear of the card and the DIMM clips was very small and could lead to card damage when installing/uninstalling the card.

With the new revision these concerns are still evident however the MOLEX connector has been changed slightly and this does improve the situation. The power cord now runs parallel to the card and hard drive providing slightly more room.

The Noise Bug

From a hardware perspective there was one further issue that concerned us with our original Gainward Geforce FX 5900 Ultra 1600 XP Golden Sample. This was the hardware bug that caused the inductors on the board to resonate when the card was under 3D load or when the user scrolled using the mouse wheel in 2D mode. The resulting sound was like static crackling from inside the case.

We were originally informed by Nvidia that this issue did not affect all FX 5900 cards and had high hopes for this new revision Gainward. Unfortunately upon installing the card the scroll bug was still evident. We were then informed by Gainward that the 45.33 drivers should assist in resolving this issue. When we installed these drivers and they did reduce/dull the noise however it was still audible – to give you an idea of the severity it sounds most like an additional 2 hard drives ticking away under heavy load.

Next: 3dmark