GeForce FX series

Lore & Background

The GeForce FX series was Nvidia's response to the release of DirectX 9.0, which introduced Shader Model 2.0. Manufactured on TSMC's 130 nm process, it supported new memory technologies including DDR2, GDDR2, and GDDR3, and was Nvidia's first implementation of a memory bus wider than 128 bits. The series improved anisotropic filtering quality and anti-aliasing methods over the GeForce 4, and introduced the Video Processing Engine (VPE) with per-pixel video-deinterlacing, first seen in the GeForce 4 MX.

The initial high-end model, the GeForce FX 5800, featured a large dual-slot cooler called 'Flow FX', which was notably noisy and jokingly referred to as the 'Dustbuster'. The series launched near the end of 2002, several months after ATI's competing DirectX 9 architecture. Nvidia's advertising campaign featured the computer-animated character 'Dawn', created by veterans of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and was promoted as 'The Dawn of Cinematic Computing'.

Subsequent models addressed different market segments: the GeForce FX 5200 and 5600 in April 2003, the FX 5900 Ultra in May 2003 (based on the revised NV35 GPU with a 256-bit memory bus), and the FX 5700 and 5950 in October 2003. The FX 5950 used a redesigned, quieter version of the FlowFX cooler. The line later moved to PCI Express in early 2004 using an AGP-to-PCIe bridge chip, and a new member, the FX 5500, joined the 5200/5300 series in 2004.

Reader's Guide

The GeForce FX series holds a complex legacy as Nvidia's first DirectX 9-compliant architecture. Its performance across DirectX 7 and 8 titles was generally competitive with ATI's offerings, and the 5900 and 5950 models were somewhat faster in those scenarios. However, the series struggled significantly with DirectX 9 shader-heavy workloads due to architectural weaknesses: less parallelism and calculation throughput than competitors, a heavy reliance on optimized pixel shader code, and severe performance degradation when using 32-bit shader code (the architecture was optimized for 16-bit, below the 24-bit minimum required by the standard).

The initial high-end FX 5800 was low-volume and disappointing, quickly replaced by the FX 5900 Ultra, which fixed some DirectX 9 shortcomings and was more competitive with ATI's Radeon 9700 and 9800. The mid-range FX 5600 was slower than the Radeon 9600 Pro and sometimes slower than the GeForce 4 Ti series, while the budget FX 5200 underperformed even the older GeForce 4 MX440 in some benchmarks. The later FX 5700 and 5950 provided strong competition for ATI's Radeon 9600 XT and 9800 XT, respectively, but only in games with light use of shader model 2.

Nvidia's driver support for the GeForce FX series has ceased. The final drivers for Windows 9x/Me were version 81.98, and for Windows 2000/XP version 175.19, though the latter was known to break Windows Remote Desktop. The series ultimately demonstrated that compliance with a DirectX specification did not guarantee competitive performance in its advanced features.

Did You Know?

• The GeForce FX 5800's large dual-slot cooler was jokingly called the 'Dustbuster' due to high fan noise.
• The series was Nvidia's first to implement a memory data bus wider than 128 bits.
• The GeForce FX 5900 Ultra used a revised GPU (NV35) with a 256-bit memory bus, fixing some DirectX 9 shortcomings of the NV30.