Bending over and taking it sweet: GeForce FX

We all perceive time differently. If you’re travelling at the speed of light, it can appear to slow down to Matrix-like speeds; if you’re in the temporal cart from HG Wells (we're talking the book here) The Time Machine, it may seems to thunde

We all perceive time differently. If you're travelling at the speed of light, it can appear to slow down to Matrix-like speeds; if you're in the temporal cart from HG Wells (we're talking the book here) The Time Machine, it may seems to thunder past at a breakneck pace.

If neither circumstance applies to you, then you're like the rest of us – waiting slowly for the launch dates of games, services, and most suspensively, hardware. Without the ability to nip through the space/time continuum, we eat; we sleep; we work; and all the time in deep anticipation for 'the next best thing'.

Without question, the next best thing is NV30: the GeForce FX. Pants-ripping stuff to say the least. Previews tell us it's an absolute scorcher; a meteor of titanic proportions, falling towards the Earth to spurn the next revolution in the quality and speed of 3D graphics. In fact, so focused on quality is NVIDIA that it will mass-produce the top-range card, the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra – the card we've all been hearing about.

After a year or two on the shelf, the 'Ultra' suffix has wriggled its way back into the name of the GeForce line of cards. Not very original, no, but it does make it sound faster than, say, a vanilla GeForce FX.

And there it is. With a 500MHz core, and DDR-II memory clocked at a leg-debilitating 1GHz effective, the Ultra should be the cream of the video card crop. Next will be the plain GeForce FX, which will be equipped with a 400MHz core, and 800MHz effective BGA DDR-RAM memory.

Excruciatingly exciting, isn't it? For those who've pre-ordered a GeForce FX, you'll be receiving the Ultra, rather than the vanilla, version of the card. The Ultra will be manufactured -- HSF and all -- by NVIDIA, while the plain model will be manufacturable by your standard array of video card makers.

Well the time has arrived. Sites have received previews of the card, and guess what?

Canage. Complete; total; arse-whipping. Ok, so not that bad, but extreme.

HardOCP, among others, have benchmarked the shizen out of the GeForce 5800 FX.

As far as being a 9700-killer, don't worry. Your ATI card is almost as good. If not better. We'll be doing out own barrage of tests when we get the card, but at the moment, the FX is looking like the GeForce 3 when it first came out – maybe the FX will get a driver revision to speed things up.

Other than the unsurprising speed, the FX is also one hot mofo, clocking a nice 60+ degrees Celsius when at full pelt. The OTES cooling solution is also fairly loud, and the decibels will give industrial deafness eventually.

The price? Somewhere around $800. You decide.

On a side note, NVIDIA is also refreshing its current line of GeForce4 Ti cards. The GeForce4 Ti4800 will be a Ti4600 with AGP 8x. Unfortunately, it won't be available in Australia. The GeForce4 Ti 4800SE however, which is a Ti4400 with AGP 8x, will be here in Oz to purchase.