GeForce FX 5900 Ultra vs GTX 280

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking	729	not rated
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	0.11	no data
Power efficiency	0.99	no data
Architecture	Tesla 2.0 (2007−2013)	Rankine (2003−2005)
GPU code name	GT200	NV35
Market segment	Desktop	Desktop
Release date	16 June 2008 (16 years ago)	23 October 2003 (21 year ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$649	$499

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	240	no data
Core clock speed	602 MHz	450 MHz
Number of transistors	1,400 million	135 million
Manufacturing process technology	65 nm	130 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	236 Watt	59 Watt
Maximum GPU temperature	105 °C	no data
Texture fill rate	48.16	3.600
Floating-point processing power	0.6221 TFLOPS	no data
ROPs	32	4
TMUs	80	8

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Interface	PCIe 2.0 x16	AGP 8x
Length	267 mm	218 mm
Height	4.376" (111 mm) (11.1 cm)	no data
Width	2-slot	2-slot
Supplementary power connectors	1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin	1x Molex
SLI options	+	-

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR3	DDR
Maximum RAM amount	1 GB	256 MB
Memory bus width	512 Bit	256 Bit
Memory clock speed	1107 MHz	425 MHz
Memory bandwidth	141.7 GB/s	27.2 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors	HDTVDual Link DVI	1x DVI, 1x VGA, 1x S-Video
Multi monitor support	+	no data
Maximum VGA resolution	2048x1536	no data
Audio input for HDMI	S/PDIF	no data

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	11.1 (10_0)	9.0a
Shader Model	4.0	no data
OpenGL	2.1	1.5 (2.1)
OpenCL	1.1	N/A
Vulkan	N/A	N/A
CUDA	+	-

Synthetic benchmark performance

Non-gaming benchmark results comparison. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.

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Pros & cons summary

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Recency	16 June 2008	23 October 2003
Maximum RAM amount	1 GB	256 MB
Chip lithography	65 nm	130 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	236 Watt	59 Watt

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