MSI are one of the best computer component manufacturers in my opinion. I do prefer Gigabyte for motherboards out of sentimentality, but when it comes to graphics cards I either choose PNY (for their amazing after sales service) or, if it's performance I want, then I go for MSI.
The MSI FX5900 was in my PC until very recently. I've now upgraded to a 6800 - also made by MSI. My husband has two PCI-express graphics cards in his machine - the height of performance and power, but not everyone has the ability to use PCI-express cards, myself included. For those of us with slightly older machines, AGP cards are the only really viable option.
The MSI FX5900 is a nice graphics card. It fits into the AGP slot, which most computers made in the past few years should have. It has an absolutely massive heat sink and fan on it, and some smaller heat sinks covering the memory modules. This card does get very hot, and if you are putting it into your computer you may want to check that there are no cards in the slot next to it to allow more space for ventilation.
The card needs a four pin power connector from the power supply plugged into it for the fan to operate. In theory if you forget to do this, then the computer will not boot at all, although I have seen a computer boot once without this connector plugged in. It was however very unstable and rebooted itself after a couple of minutes. All I can say is be careful and make absolutely sure that you connect the power cable up otherwise you risk melting an expensive card!
MSI, in their usual generous and wise manner provide you with a power splitter, so if your power supply is an older model with very few connectors then you can always unplug one, plug the splitter in, then reconnect everything back up.
That said, if your power supply is old, it might be worth checking first to make sure it can run this card - I would recommend a 350 Watt or above. According to the manual you can run it on less, but from experience I disagree with the manual on that one. The card is now in a spare machine and the 300 Watt power supply in that one didn't like having this card along with multiple drives and a AMD 2400 processor.
This is really a card for gamers. The 128Mb of graphics memory isn't amazing - I would prefer to have 256Mb to allow more for textures for certain games, but it was running everything from Doom 3 to Farcry to Half Life 2 at more than acceptable framerates.
NVidia produced the Dawn and Dusk demos - interactive 'videos' of Pixies that you can tweak, zoom in and out of, and alter the expressions and skin tones of, to show off the power of the 5900 cards. They are absolutely gorgeous and have made many of my non-nVidia owning friends jealous.
For any geeks that are interested, the last benchmark done with this card, which wasn't on a freshly installed system so may be a little low because of all the junk running in the backround, scored about 5000 3DMarks in the 2003 benchmark. The 6800 that has replaced this card got around 8300 on the same system, so while this card was close to state of the art when it came out, it is slipping a bit now.
Again, for the geeks, the core clock runs at 400Mhz - which is actually slower than the 5800, although I'm not sure why and the memory clock runs at a meaty 425Mhz - the memory is DDR 850Mhz. The card is DirectX 9 compatible which is great news for modern games, and it supports up to 8X Anti-Aliasing. If you were playing a game that really strains graphics cards, such as Half Life 2, I wouldn't recommend turning the anti-aliasing on, because it does have some stability problems with the current batch of drivers, and it will create a massive drop in performance. It is nice to see the option supported even so.
This card also has a TV-out connection, although I have never used it.
You get a lot of free software and game samples with this card - including a '3D desktop' which is fun to mess around with but not all that useful, and some DVD software. It all comes in a nice wallet style set so it's easy to keep all the drivers and everything together.
Speaking of drivers, thats one really good thing about MSI. I have their Live Monitor and update software installed because it came with my motherboard. You can use this to automatically update your drivers. MSI are slightly behind nVidia in their releases but their drivers are always stable and I have never had any problems with them. Hassle free updates appeal to me too.
You get some overclocking software with the card - it allows you to overclock the processor of the graphics card, and also the memory. It works in small increments, and you can either set it yourself, or allow the program to push the card to its limits. If the computer crashes, it will restore the card to its default settings so that the machine will work properly. I'm not a fan of overclocking myself so didn't really use this much, although I did try it out once and saw a slight improvement and no drop in stability.
This card is AGP 8X, which means it will be nice and fast in very modern motherboards, although it will work in older ones. As I said it is now in a spare machine, and that machine is a rather old one that only has a 4X AGP port - it worked straight away, and although it isn't as amazing in games it can still run pretty much everything at an acceptable rate.
The biggest problem with this card is its age. We are now up to the 6000 range, and although this card should beat the lower range ones like the 6600 any day, it is not as good as a normal 6800 or even an Ultra. For those who are not a fan of nVidia, I will also concede that the rival graphics manufacturer, ATI have superior cards out now, although the prices may be higher.
If you have any problems, there is a decent manual, and also tech support from the MSI web site. Sometimes the site is busy and you get an error message accessing it, but the knowledge base is very good. I haven't had cause to contact tech support about this card, but have for a motherboard and they were fairly helpful - not quite up to the standard of PNY , but they solved the problem promptly which is all that matters.
I went to check the current price of this card on scan.co.uk and found that it was still retailing for around 200 pounds. A check of eBuyer found one for 109 pounds which is more realistic.
If you are on a budget but want some decent power, I would recommend this card over the newer budget cards like the 6600. To simplify, from benchmarks at least it seems like the top end older cards outperform the low end newer cards.
I've had my card for a long time now - almost a year I think, and it is still going strong. I would probably recommend anyone who could afford it opt for a higher end card than this - perhaps its big brother the 6800, but if you need power at a low price this is a great card too.
I'm recommending it - just remember this isn't the newest, and it isn't the best, but it's still a great option.
