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From NVIDIA: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500:

Use the links on this page to download the latest version of NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 (Microsoft Corporation) drivers. All drivers available for download have been scanned by antivirus program. Description: WHQL-certified driver for GeForce 6, 7, 8, and 9 series GPUs. Improved 3D performance and load times for GeForce 8 and 9 series GPUs in some DirectX 9 and OpenGL applications as a result an improved shader optimizer..

The GeForce FX 5200 and GeForce PCX 5300 GPUs deliver best-in class performance and features at a great price. With a GeForce FX or PCX mainstream GPU inside your PC, experience cinematic-quality effects, studio-quality color, and the industry-leading performance and rock-solid driver stability expected from NVIDIA.

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GeForce FX Series
Cards
Release date	January 27, 2003; 16 years ago
Codename	NV30, NV31, NV34, NV35, NV36, NV38
Models	GeForce FX Series GeForce FX-VE Series GeForce FX-LE Series GeForce FX-ZT Series GeForce FX-XT Series GeForce FX-Ultra Series GeForce PCX Series
Entry-level	5200, 5300, 5500
Mid-range	5600, 5700, 5750
High-end	5800, 5900, 5950
Enthusiast	5800 Ultra, 5900 Ultra, 5950 Ultra
API support
Direct3D	Direct3D 9.0a Shader Model 2.0a
OpenGL	OpenGL 2.1
History
Predecessor	GeForce 4 series
Successor	GeForce 6 series

The GeForce FX or 'GeForce 5' series (codenamedNV30) is a line of graphics processing units from the manufacturer NVIDIA.

Overview[edit]

NVIDIA's GeForce FX series is the fifth generation of the GeForce line. With GeForce 3, NVIDIA introduced programmable shader functionality into their 3D architecture, in line with the release of Microsoft's DirectX 8.0. The GeForce 4 Ti was an enhancement of the GeForce 3 technology. With real-time 3D graphics technology continually advancing, the release of DirectX 9.0 brought further refinement of programmable pipeline technology with the arrival of Shader Model 2.0. The GeForce FX series is NVIDIA's first generation Direct3D 9-compliant hardware.

The series was manufactured on TSMC's 130 nm fabrication process.^[1] It is compliant with Shader Model 2.0/2.0A, allowing more flexibility in complex shader/fragment programs and much higher arithmetic precision. It supports a number of new memory technologies, including DDR2, GDDR2 and GDDR3 and saw NVIDIA's first implementation of a memory data bus wider than 128 bits.^[2] The anisotropic filtering implementation has potentially higher quality than previous NVIDIA designs.^[1] Anti-aliasing methods have been enhanced and additional modes are available compared to GeForce 4.^[1] Memory bandwidth and fill-rate optimization mechanisms have been improved.^[1] Some members of the series offer double fill-rate in z-buffer/stencil-only passes.^[2]

The series also brought improvements to NVIDIA's video processing hardware, in the form of the Video Processing Engine (VPE), which was first deployed in the GeForce 4 MX.^[3] The primary addition, compared to previous NVIDIA video processors, was per-pixel video-deinterlacing.^[3]

The initial version of the GeForce FX (the 5800) was one of the first cards to come equipped with a large dual-slot cooling solution. Called 'Flow FX', the cooler was very large in comparison to ATI's small, single-slot cooler on the 9700 series.^[4] It was jokingly referred to as the 'Dustbuster', due to a high level of fan noise.^[5]

The advertising campaign for the GeForce FX featured the Dawn, which was the work of several veterans from the computer animation Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.^[6] NVIDIA touted it as 'The Dawn of Cinematic Computing', while critics noted that this was the strongest case of using sex appeal in order to sell graphics cards yet.^[7]

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NVIDIA debuted a new campaign to motivate developers to optimize their titles for NVIDIA hardware at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 2002. In exchange for prominently displaying the NVIDIA logo on the outside of the game packaging, NVIDIA offered free access to a state-of-the-art test lab in Eastern Europe, that tested against 500 different PC configurations for compatibility. Developers also had extensive access to NVIDIA engineers, who helped produce code optimized for NVIDIA products.^[8]

Hardware based on the NV30 project didn't launch until near the end of 2002, several months after ATI had released their competing DirectX 9 architecture.^[9]

Overall performance[edit]

GeForce FX 5200

GeForce FX is an architecture designed with DirectX 7, 8 and 9 software in mind. Its performance for DirectX 7 and 8 was generally equal to ATI's competing products with the mainstream versions of the chips, and somewhat faster in the case of the 5900 and 5950 models, but it is much less competitive across the entire range for software that primarily uses DirectX 9 features.^[10]

Its weak performance in processing Shader Model 2 programs is caused by several factors. The NV3x design has less overall parallelism and calculation throughput than its competitors.^[11] It is more difficult, compared to GeForce 6 and ATI Radeon R300 series, to achieve high efficiency with the architecture due to architectural weaknesses and a resulting heavy reliance on optimized pixel shader code. While the architecture was compliant overall with the DirectX 9 specification, it was optimized for performance with 16-bit shader code, which is less than the 24-bit minimum that the standard requires. When 32-bit shader code is used, the architecture's performance is severely hampered.^[11] Proper instruction ordering and instruction composition of shader code is critical for making the most of the available computational resources.^[11]

Hardware refreshes and diversification[edit]

Personal Cinema FX 5700

Personal Cinema FX 5900 Ultra

GeForce FX 5950 Ultra

NVIDIA's initial release, the GeForce FX 5800, was intended as a high-end part. At the time, there were no GeForce FX products for the other segments of the market. The GeForce 4 MX continued in its role as the budget video card and the older GeForce 4 Ti cards filled in the mid-range.

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In April 2003, NVIDIA introduced the GeForce FX 5600 and the GeForce FX 5200 to address the other market segments. Each had an 'Ultra' variant and a slower, budget-oriented variant and all used conventional single-slot cooling solutions. The 5600 Ultra had respectable performance overall but it was slower than the Radeon 9600 Pro and sometimes slower than the GeForce 4 Ti series.^[12] The FX 5200 did not perform as well as the DirectX 7.0 generation GeForce 4 MX440 or Radeon 9000 Pro in some benchmarks.^[13]

In May 2003, NVIDIA launched the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, a new high-end product to replace the low-volume and disappointing FX 5800. Based upon a revised GPU called NV35, which fixed some of the DirectX 9 shortcomings of the discontinued NV30, this product was more competitive with the Radeon 9700 and 9800.^[14] In addition to redesigning parts of the GPU, NVIDIA moved to a 256-bit memory data bus, allowing for significantly higher memory bandwidth than the 5800 even when utilizing more common DDR SDRAM instead of DDR2.^[14] The 5900 Ultra performed somewhat better than the Radeon 9800 Pro in games not heavily using shader model

Ge Force Fx5500 Driver