The Nvidia GeForceFX 5800 Ultra

The Nvidia GeForceFX 5800U was the first of Nvidia's fifth-generation accelerated graphics AGP cards. The whole platform including the graphics processor unit itself was codenamed 'NV30'. The card required 2 'slots' ie: the AGP slot plus one PCI slot to accomodate the card's cooling system.

The GeForceFX 5800 first began production in February 2003 with the initial FX 5800 design which had a normal form-factor. When the FX 5800 Ultra came into being, it introduced a 2-slot design, one slot carried the normal video connectors (1xVGA and 1xDVI) and the second slot provided both an air-intake and an exhaust for the card cooling system. The increased power demands of the new NV30 meant that it had a molex connector on the card to provide power directly rather than relying on the AGP socket.

The cards were initially all made to the same specification and design - apparently handed down by NVidia maintaining the same design of cooling system. This cooling system was to bring about the infamy of the FX 5800 Ultra.

FlowFX

The cooling system on the FX 5800 Ultra was known as FlowFX. It consisted of three large copper heatsinks, one on the 'top' of the card and two on the bottom (as mounted in a tower-chassis). The upper heatsink was entirely passive and covered the video ram and the back of the GPU. The first lower heatsink was mounted over the video ram and the face of the GPU and was connected via a 'heat-pipe' to to a second lower heatsink which was mounted within a clear plastic duct.

This duct took the form of an elongated 'horseshoe' or 'magnet'. The apex of the duct was over the GPU heatsink and the inlet and outlet ports were cut into vents on the slot back-panel. The intake side led air directly to a centrifugal fan mounted at the apex of the duct which would then blow the air into the exhaust which contained the heatsink thereby actively cooling the GPU and RAM. This centrifugal fan was notoriously noisy (often noiser than the complete computer system itself) and was often likened to a 'leaf-blower' or an airliner. During normal (2d) desktop applications, the fan would be idling (quietly) and would then accelerate to full RPM when a 3d-accelerated application or game was started. This extra noise lead to the 5800 Ultra being criticised by the press and the eventual release of it's replacement (the 5900) which did not rely on this cooling method.

Technical

The Geforce FX5800U used a 130 nm process GPU coded 'NV30' and a 128-bit memory interface. The memory provided on the cards was 128MB of DDR-II mounted around the GPU. The AGP interface, as with its predecessor the Geforce 4800ti communicated at up to 8x standard AGP rate. The provided video outputs were a VGA connector and a DVI connector (which could also be converted to a second VGA). An S-VIDEO TV-Out port was also provided. The back-panel of the card also housed two vents for the cooling system and 2 screw-points to fasten the card within the computer chassis. A molex connector was provided to allow the connection of the required extra power source.

Code name	NV30
Price	~£300
GPU clockspeed	500Mhz
Memory bus speed	1,000Mhz (2x 500Mhz)
Memory bus	128-bit DDR-II
Memory Size	128MB
Process	125million transistors 130 nm.
Memory Bandwidth	16GB/s 8XAGP
Shaders	Pixel Shader 2.0 Vertex Shader 2.0

Was it any good?

The Geforce FX 5800 Ultra was, in it's day a very powerful card. Indeed, it still continues to perform credibly with the gaming titles in 2005 such as Half-Life and Doom3. In many people's eyes, the thing that let it down was it's noisy FlowFX cooling system. Often, people who used the card took to wearing headphones while gaming to reduce the noise level. NVidia eventually saw the funny side and released a humourous video on the web detailing how the FlowFX was their best marketing move ever ;)

Can you still buy a Geforce FX 5800 Ultra?

It is very unlikely that you will find a FX 5800 Ultra in the shops and they have been out of production for a good while. They still occasionally show up on the used market and ebay and prices still command up to £60. However, more powerful card in the Nvidia 6800 series are approaching a similar price point the price of a 5800 Ultra looks likely to be less in future.

Does the Museum of Interesting Tech have an Nvidia GeforceFX 5800 Ultra in its real-life collection?

Yes, we have a 5800 Ultra in a Linux gaming machine which is used regularly. It provides good performance in Doom3 (at 1024x768) and swallows up all other OpenGL games with ease.