Aopen Aeolus FX 5950

The first card in this month's group test comes from Aopen. Based in the Netherlands, the company produces a wide range of cards and sits firmly in the Nvidia camp.With this in mind, it comes as no surprise that its entry uses the Geforce FX 5950 Ultra chipset.

Aopen hasn't made any changes to the bulky Nvidia reference design. A clear plastic cover shields the fan and heatsink combination, and funnels the hot air directly out of the case via an expansion bracket. This means you need to leave the PCI slot next to the AGP slot free, but if you're running an extra-fast graphics card like this you should really make sure there isn't a PCI card right next to your graphics card anyway.

Being one of the more expensive cards in this group test, we had hoped that Aopen would supply a decent selection of software with the Aeolus FX 5950 Ultra. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. All that's included, along with the driver, is a copy ofWinDVD andWin Producer - both Intervideo products. There's nothing wrong with these two applications, but we'd have liked to have seen at least one game in order to show off the card's capabilities.

The hardware bundle is equally slim. The standard DVI-VGA adapter is included, along with a Vivo cable, but it's nothing to write home about.

When compared with the other offerings in this group test, you'll see that there are plenty of both Nvidia and ATI models priced a fair bit lower than this offering from Aopen. What's more, some of them manage to include more in terms of hardware and software. If for some reason you've got a soft spot for Aopen, then you might want to consider this model but, as you'll see by reading the rest of the reviews, there are better deals elsewhere.

Contact: Aopen 08704 293 010 (Dabs.com - sales)
www.aopen.nl