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For our last set
of benchmark scores, we used Massive Development's Aquamark
3. We ran the same demo using the same in game
settings, putting both graphics card on level playing field.
Here's what we found.
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Aquamark 3 |
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More DirectX 9 |
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The Radeon 9000
Pro manages to beat out Albatron's FX 5200 Ultra at all
three settings, and by a decent margin in some instances.
With AA and AF turned on, however, the powered by NVIDIA
card pulled off a small performance improvement over the
R9000 Pro.
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Overclocking This Beast |
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Getting some extra bang for the buck! |
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To see if we
could increase some of these frame rates we are getting, we
set out to overclocking the Albatron FX 5200 Ultra card.
The default settings on this card are a core clock of 325MHz
with the DDR memory clocked at 325MHz (effective 650MHz).
We slowly started upping the memory and clock frequencies,
running numerous demos after each jump to ensure the
stability of the card and picture quality. We finally
settled in at a core clock speed of 400MHz and memory
timings of 750MHz. From the chart above you can see we
gained more than 10 frames per second in Serious Sam: TSE at
1024x768 with 4X AA enabled. That's a pretty
impressive 18.6% gain in performance. The extra
cooling on the GPU and RAM help keep this card cool even
when this card is pushed far beyond factory settings.
The
aesthetically pleasing Albatron Gigi - GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
proved to be stable and quiet throughout our testing.
When it comes to performance, the Albatron GeForce FX 5200
Ultra card leaves a little to be desired, however. On
various search engines, the Albatron card comes in at almost
twice the price as its competitor, the Radeon 9000 Pro or
even 9200 Pros for that matter. Obviously the FX 5200U
has more memory and goes a little farther in the cooling
department, but are the minor performance gains we saw from
the 5200 Ultra worth the extra cost? Adding more
question marks about this card, is its ability to perform
well in the latest DirectX 9 games, since there are quite a
few DirectX 9 titles just around the corner. Please
understand that Albatron has manufactured a quality product,
but as the saying goes, you can only be as good as your
surrounding cast and NVIDIA's GeForce FX5200 GPU doesn't
quite step up to the plate with much force. If you
want a quality product from Albatron that can run today's
games and not break your bank, then this is a decent card.
If you're in the market for a card that will take you into
the future of gaming, then you'll probably want to look
elsewhere. Perhaps a new GeForce FX 5700 is waiting in
the wings at Albatron?
There are a ton of folks just like you in HotHardware's PC
Hardware Forum...
Go
There Now!
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