MSI nBOX

Nathan Davis gets n-chanted over this nice play box.

With the advent of NVIDIA's deafening GeForce FX range of cards, the performance of its cards has been somewhat lacking compared to the hound dogs ATI has on the market. The nBOX is MSI’s latest FX endeavour. It’s thrown a video card in a larger than normal box along with other miscellaneous goodies. Hence the quite frankly dull name, ‘nBOX’. The main focus of the nBOX is, of course, the contained GeForce FX 5900 Ultra video card, but what's a surprise is the included bundle of gaming nirvana. Well, it's a start anyhow.

Two neat games come packed with the nBOX: C&C Generals and Battlefield 1942. Though these are great games, they’ve been around a while, with most people who intend on purchasing a card this high in specs already owning them. For the sake of mentioning it, Unreal II is also included.

The nBOX also comes with a mini-mouse. It screams ‘Star Trek’ with its aluminium top and blue glowing scroller. It's one of the most lightweight mice we've used, making us wonder whether there's anything actually in there but the light. Whatever's there it works perfectly, as it packs a lustrously smooth 800dpi -- and it certainly shows. Not all is silky sailing though, with the mouse's rather bold shape edging on uncomfortable and slightly painful after a good use -- for ET hands only. This fact alone outpaces any other and thus would make a great projectile in the local park, though the authorities may disagree.

On the video card, the newer radial-heatsink design on both sides certainly adds to the weight, but this cooling has an immediately obvious advantage. An atmosphere no longer forms around your machine, abruptly storming into a visible funnel of blistering noise -- this is a pretty damn quiet FX 5900 Ultra video card.

The testbench consisted of an Athlon XP 3200+, two sticks of 256MB DDR400 and a KT600 board. We pitted the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra against ATI's top performer, the 256MB RADEON 9800 PRO. The core speed of the 5900 Ultra is 450MHz and the memory runs at an effective 850MHz, with the 9800 PRO core at 380MHz and an effective memory speed of 700MHz. The core of the 9800 PRO may be slower, but it isn’t required to be nearly as fast as the 5900 Ultra, as in many ways, it’s running a more superior architecture.

Regardless, NVIDIA has finally stolen the much vaunted panama of reign from ATI, with the 5900 Ultra consistently outdoing the 9800 PRO in both the Code Creatures and UT2003 bench tests. Like the 9800 PRO, the 5900 Ultra is running on a 256-bit memory bus, boasting 27.2GB of memory bandwidth, as compared to the slower 22.4GB RADEON 9800 PRO. This shows in testing with the 5900 Ultra performing as much as 7.5% faster in Code Creatures and 11% faster in UT2003 -- however in 3DMark2001SE Pro it dropped way off target, with the RADEON pulling ahead with a substantial 29.8% lead. This is all thanks to the RADEON's superior pixel shaders -- only noticeable in games that specifically make use of them, but they're already beginning to arrive. Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, for example.

With MSI trying to exceed the competition by putting better crap in the box, is this really the way of the future? We prefer better cards to more features, do we not?
In the end, with vanilla 5900 Ultra cards available on their own $100+ cheaper, perhaps this is still a good buy, with around $250 worth of goodies. Add the fact it’s a great performer and very quiet, and this is some decent gear. If money is no object and you happen to require a new mouse -- which you'll end up begging your younger brother/sister to take away -- point your n-wallet right this way.