In the world of high end gaming there are only two
companies who consistently battle it out for 3D chipset supremacy; ATi and
nVIDIA. There have been others, namely S3, Matrox, and SiS who have tried their
luck, but none has succeeded in being of any real threat to the current
forerunners.
There's little doubt that ATi has held the high end
performance crown for a good two years now (since the release of the R300) but
the winds of change may be starting to blow. nVIDIA has been working very hard
and their new mainstream GeForceFX 5700 Ultra just beats the Radeon
9600XT in most benchmarks or applications.
While no one likes to be in second place, it seems
nVIDIA is not very good at playing catch up. Their drivers use to be the envy of
every manufacturer, but the recent scandal surrounding their "optimizations" for
the 3DMark03 have really given them a black eye.
Despite all this, nVIDIA realize that there's very
little brand loyalty out there when it all comes down to price, and the ability
to deliver a superior product to ATi's offering. Meet those two requirements and
consumers will come right back. The FX5900 Ultra gave the Radeon
9800 Pro a good run for its money, but the question we are now
facing is if the revised FX5950 Ultra be able to dethrone the Radeon
9800XT?
We'll get the answer to that question
in a moment as PCstats tests the brand new Albatron GeForceFX 5950 UV
videocard!