OCAddiction Gives ABIT Siluro FX 5900 Card and Editor's Choice Award

Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. August 19^th, 2003 - Recently OCAddiction recently reviewed the newest NVIDIA card from ABIT and gave it the "Editor's Choice" Award.

"ABIT's included pretty much everything you need, and not a whole lotta stuff ya don't need. They've included all the cabling and the DVI converter which is a must if you plan to run two CRT monitors with the nView. The cable quality used by ABIT is impressive, right down to the shielding cover on their Molex power cord, very nice touches by ABIT.

The packaging was definitely pro all the way, but opening the box left me damn near in awe. This thing was a monster! I had flashbacks to when I first opened my 3dfx V5500 for the first time, which was a dual GPU beast, we're talking about an impressive looking card. With the FX5900's dual slot design and massive OTES cooler strapped to the top of the not exactly small heat sink, this card was ready to be used as a weapon in a Murder One case.

After looking a little closer I noticed some of the small things that can make or break a card. There was a heat sink on the back to handle to rear of the GPU and memory, which several manufacturers have been overlooking lately. The heat sink appeared to be a well thought out design that provided good contact area to the spots that count, the memory and the GPU itself. The inclusion of both CRT analog out, DVI, and S-Video showed me that they covered all of their bases. Not that this is awe inspiring within itself, but it is an indication that ABIT didn't cut any corners when delivering what they surely hope to be a contender.

What's becoming more and more common place on cards now-a-days is the additional power connector on the card. This additional power connector is required for operation of the card and provides clean power to the GPU. Simply put, as powerful as high end video cards have become it's just not possible to feed them with enough power thru the AGP slot and this additional connection is necessary.

ABIT has a unique cooling design that they have affectionately (ok, maybe not affectionately but when talking to an ABIT engineer it's clear that they love this thing!) named "OTES".
OTES stands for "Outside Thermal exhaust System" and that describes it pretty well. What is basically is is a duct system that routes the cooling fans exhaust of hot air outside the case instead of leaving it in your case and raising the temperatures of all of your devices. It utilizes a double PCI slot design and with the extra slot they've mounted an exhaust port that acts as an outlet for the hot air. Here's a few close up images to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about.

It's small things that make a difference in a product, and ABIT is known to pay attention to the small things. One of them is the blue LED fan on the OTES cooling.

The FX5900 impressed me on more than a few occasions and really didn't leave a great deal of room for disappointment.

Considering that this card DID perform so well, and even though it IS priced comparably to a 9800 Pro, there are several considerations to make. For starters, this is an ABIT card. You are getting a card from a manufacturer that you know you can trust and has a history of good customer support. (Look no further than their eRMA program). You are also getting a card that is rumored to be the cats meow when it comes to Doom3 performance, though those are very preliminary results. If you are already an nVidia owner you're also getting a card with a driver set your familiar with, and one that you can tweak in your sleep.

When it comes to this particular card I would have to say that ABIT has their graphics program whipped into shape and their OTES cooling system tweaked. The card performed well and the sound level from the fan was more than bearable. I straight up could not hear it over my relatively quiet PC. ABIT has delivered a quality card and gotten the most from the FX 5900 nVidia chipset.

PROS:
Stellar GPU cooling via it's OTES cooling system
Solid performance
Compatibility and more compatibility

I can quite comfortably award this the OCA Editors Choice. I can do so because when compared against like products in it's field it packs a punch and a rock solid manufacturer behind it. I can do it more importantly because I went into this review with a preconceived notion (a no-no in review writing) and this card actually turned me around. I expected average at best, and was pleasantly surprised with a card I'd be more than happy to run in my personal box for the foreseeable future. Props to you ABIT..."

For the full review please go here:
http://www.ocaddiction.com/reviews/video/abit_fx5900/

Thanks for you vote
Top News