The card is entirely based on the reference design. Plus, it's covered with evaporated gold:

If you remember, Triplex cards are also covered with an evaporated layer, but a silver one. But the quality of evaporation differs: the silver looks thicker and all components are carefully isolated to avoid electrical collisions. The approach in case of Prolink's card is different, but the company assures that it's not a fiction or fake, and this technology should protect the card from pickups and make for better cooling.

But the main aim of such gilding is a marketing one: it's a beautiful product, looks pretty nice and you can boast to your friends about such a golden card. :-)

Have a look at the cooler.

Prolink PixelView GeForce FX 5900 128MB
There is a single copper cooler for the GPU and memory chips. The fan is shifted to the left and serves as a turbine that draws air through the sink. The cooler is a bit noisy. The noise is not unpleasant or too loud but those who prefer quiet PC cases are not going to like it.

Here's the GPU itself:

It's made in May 2003.

Note that the video card supports VIVO via the Philips 7108:

Testbed and drivers

Testbed: 

• Pentium 4 3200 MHz based computer:
• Intel Pentium 4 3200 MHz CPU;
• DFI LANParty Pro875 (i875P) mainboard; 
• 1024 MB DDR SDRAM; 
• Seagate Barracuda IV 40GB HDD; 
• Windows XP SP1; DirectX 9.0a;
• ViewSonic P810 (21") and ViewSonic P817 (21") monitors.
• NVIDIA drivers v51.75.

VSync off, S3TC off in applications. 

Cards used for comparison:

• Hercules 3D Prophet 9800 PRO (RADEON 9800 PRO, 380/340 (680) MHz, 128 MB DDR, driver 6.378).
• Sapphire Atlantis RADEON 9800 (325/290 (580) MHz, 128 MB DDR, driver 6.378).

Test results

Before we start examining 2D quality, I should say there are no complete techniques for objective 2D quality estimation because: 

1. 2D quality much depends on certain samples for almost all modern 3D accelerators; 
2. Besides videocards, 2D quality depends on monitors and cables; 
3. Moreover, certain monitors might not work properly with certain video cards. 

With the ViewSonic P817 monitor and BNC Bargo cable the card showed excellent quality at the following resolutions and clock speeds:

Cards' performance

Test application:

• Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness v.49 (Core Design/Eldos Software) - DirectX 9.0, three demo scenes, test settings shown below.
  
  

If you want to get the demo benchmarks that we use let me know by e-mail.

First the cards were tested with the maximum settings, just Depth of Fields PS20 and PS20 Shadows were turned off (the first one worked with errors on the GeForce FX with patch 49, and in the second case the game failed to start on the GeForce FX again on patch 49). These bugs are fixed on the patch 52, but it's not any case to benchmark with patch 52.

All settings were the same for all the cards tested.

The settings circled were originally changed relative to the default ones. But we got NVIDIA's official respond where they insisted on testing with the default settings:

It should be noted that the the game and patch 49 were reinstalled for testing cards from a different camp to avoid problems with game settings for the RADEON 9800 PRO and GeForce FX 5900. Also note that when the game detected the RADEON 9800 PRO and the GeForce FX 5900 the default settings were also equal and they are shown above.

As you can see, some functions are disabled, and the Cubemaps reflections section sets 16bit color and Z buffer depths.

Paris5_4 DEMO

This scene intensively uses shader technologies.

What can I say about the GeForce FX 5900? Unfortunately, nothing. 

Well, when the DX9 game was released the low pixel shader speed couldn't assure any decent performance. It's due time to cut prices for the FX5900! I hope NVIDIA's price policy will rescue such cards as the number of games that actively use PS 2.0 will be increasing. Note that disabling Glow, FOG and trilinear filtering has almost the same effect on both cards.

Quality (all quality parameters were measured at the maximum settings):

The Depth of Fields PS2.0 (DoF PS2.0) function (PATCH 49 only!) works the wrong way in case of the GeForce FX as it blurs the whole image instead of just background like in case of the RADEONs. When the DoF is disabled the RADEON 9800 and the GeForce FX have the same image quality. Besides, the PS 2.0 Shadows work flawlessly on the RADEON 9800 and buggy on the FX 5900 (the left screenshots show the picture obtained with the RADEON 9800; the FX5900 shows the same picture but without the hero's shadow). Sometimes you can notice bugs in both cases but it's the flaw in the game itself.

Attention! These promblems are only on patch 49. Reader can compare both results.

Paris1c DEMO

Obviously, this picture is still sad for the GeForce FX though the difference is not that big. No shaders can raise the speed if the chip itself is not able of it

This scene uses shader technologies to a less extent. The maximum settings affect the GeForce FX greater than the RADEON 9800 PRO (the latter hardly changes its speed at all, sometimes it works even slower with the default settings).

Quality:

Paris2g DEMO

The scene that doesn't use so many shader technologies doesn't let the FX 5900 lose so awfully (and with the default settings the GFFX and R9800 PRO have equal scores). Well, the more shaders, the weaker the GeForce FX.

Strangely enough, but the RADEON 9800 PRO works faster at the maximum settings in this game than at the default ones. We checked it several times, that is why there must be a flaw in the game itself.

Quality: