NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5950 Ultra GPU

TODAY NVIDIA IS refreshing its GeForce FX line at the top end and in the mid range. The new mid-range GeForce FX 5700 Ultra is arguably the biggest news, but the burden of spending time with the $499 graphics cards has fallen to me this time out. (Geoff gets to play with the $199 cards.) NVIDIA's new flagship card is the top-of-the-line GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, which packs quite a wallop with 475MHz clock speeds and over 30GB/s of memory bandwidth. This upper-middle-class playtoy is the pinnacle of NVIDIA's accomplishments in graphics. But is it fast enough to knock off ATI's brand-new Radeon 9800 XT? We're about to find out.