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I'll start with the box first, par for the course for my recent graphics reviews. Is it the same 35 bedroom mansion of a box as with the regular FX5900?
Hmm, looks can be deceiving, let's open that up so you get a proper look.
See that opening in the box near the top? Near enough the entire card pokes through that hole, for you to get blinded by when you open it up. It's a big box for a big card, no doubt.
Opening it up we have much the same as before, as with the regular FX5900. The space for the card, the little DVI-to-VGA adaptor in the top right, the manual hiding under the plastic clamshell, the CD's (of which there are many), plus the cables to hook up the TV output. Also, being the all singing, all dancing, VTD version, you get video capture and input capabilities too. More on that later on. Now a look at the card.
As you can see from the shot of the board in the test rig, you lose a PCI slot due to the fan enclosure, but it's still only a single slot loss on the backplane. A good thing, since it free's up that port on the backplane for something useful. A bracket from one of MSI's bracket happy motherboards perhaps?
It's the same front cooling arrangement as the regular FX5900, with the active memory cooling and the near silent fan. But things are a little different around the back, due to the extra 128MB of memory.
Yes, that's the back of the card. I was berated in the review of the regular card for not showing the back of the board, since it was fan equipped. My apologies, but when looking at it over my shoulder all day, I forgot it was there.
No such failures this time around. The regular version doesn't have the same horseshoe shaped memory heatsink, due to not having any memory chips to cool, but the fan is still there, like with this version.
A conversation with MSI also reveals that you are quite free to remove the rear fan on your board, should it not fit your motherboard or system with it attached. There are a pair of spring loaded push pins that push through from the front of the board, to hold that rear fan in place. A simple squeeze with a pair of needlenose pliers on the part of the pin that pushes through to the back, lets you remove it and pull it through, releasing the fan from the board.
You wont lose any warranty doing that, MSI fully acknowledge that it might not fit all motherboards and systems in the shipping configuration. It doesn't affect operating clock speeds either, if you remove it. All you lose is a little noise, and a little overclocking ability. I'll hopefully show just how much later on, if any at all.
On to the test setup, so we can see how it performs.
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