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As 2003 comes
to a close, we have to wonder if NVIDIA is looking to 2004
with eager anticipation. The last year has been
tough for them, to say the least, with a number of nagging
issues plaguing the embattled graphics giant. The
once king of the graphics market is still struggling to
set the record straight on the whole "optimization" topic,
as ATi has strengthened their position in the market with
a number of very successful product releases, solidly
challenging the GeForce FX line. To top it off,
there has been a number of OEMs jumping ship on NVIDIA,
unable to weather the current storm of negative press.
Nonetheless, all of these trials and tribulations didn't
keep many OEMs, from allying with NVIDIA, since they
obviously are still very much a dominant force in 3D
Graphics.
BFG is a
relatively new graphics card company that has opted to
offer NVIDIA based video cards. "Built by gamers"
and with former team members from Visiontek, the company
is taking a different approach to the market, offering
lifetime warranties and free 24x7 technical support for
all of their products. Instead of focusing on overly
flashy packaging, with countless copies of yesterday's
gaming titles, the company aims to win new customers over
by letting them know that they stand behind their products
100%. This may prove to be a worthy tactic that
gives users confidence they are buying the right product.
Today, we are going to take a look at the first BFG
product to grace the HotHardware labs, the BFG Asylum
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra 128. Let's take a look and
see what BFG brings to the game.
CLICK
IMAGE FOR AN ENLARGED VIEW
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Specifications & Features of the BFG Asylum
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra 128 |
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NVIDIA's newest partner |
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Specifications
? GPU NVIDIA® GeForce? FX 5700 Ultra
? Bus Type AGP
? Memory 128MB
? Core Clock 475MHz
? Memory Clock 900MHz (effective)
? RAMDAC Dual 400MHz
? API Support Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0, OpenGL
for Microsoft® Windows®
? Connectors VGA, DVI, S-Video out
? 356 million vertices/sec.
? 14.4GB/sec. memory bandwidth
Minimum System
Requirements
? Intel Pentium®III, AMD® Duron? or Athlon? class
processor or higher
? 128MB of RAM
? A minimum 250W system power supply
? An available hard disk drive power dongle (smaller
floppy disk drive connector is not sufficient)
? CD or DVD-ROM Drive
? 10MB available hard disk space (50MB for full
installation)
? Microsoft® Windows® 95 OSR2, 98 or higher, ME,
2000, XP, NT4.0 with service pack 5 or 6 |
Features at a Glance
? AGP 8X (compatible with 4X and 2X AGP 2.0
compliant slots)
? Up to 4 pixels per clock rendering engine
? Up to 16 textures per pass
? NVIDIA® CineFX? 2.0 engine, NVIDIA® nView? multi-
display technology and NVIDIA® Forceware? unified
software environment (USE)
? NVIDIA® UltraShadow? technology enhances
performance of bleeding-edge games that use
complex shadows Included in Box
? Asylum? GeForce? FX 5700 Ultra graphics card
? Quick install manual
? DVI to VGA connector
Driver CD,
which includes;
? NVIDIA® ForceWare? graphics driver
? NVIDIA® GeForce? FX and GeForce?4 demos
? Full installation manual .pdf
? NVIDIA® NVDVD? 2.0 multimedia software
? Windowblinds? BFG / Asylum Windows XP skins
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The BFG 5700
Ultra's package includes a Quick Installation Guide that
covers the details of setting up the card, while the Setup
CD provides all the necessary drivers and software to get
the job done. The package also included a Y Molex
connector. For those looking to run more than one
VGA monitor with the Asylum 5700 Ultra, a DVI to VGA
adapter is provided as well to convert the cards DVI
output to a standard VGA connection.
The menu of
the install CD is clean and clear, offering one-click
links to the entire contents of the disk. The
package is streamlined, and not loaded with the "fluff"
commonly found with other products, although for a company
that is built by gamers, a newer gaming title would have
been a nice bonus. The disk did include drivers, a
copy of Adobe Acrobat, NVIDIA's NVDVD, DX9 and some 3D
demos. Along with that, we found a copy of
Windowblinds with several custom BFG and NVIDIA skins that
lets you change the look of your desktop.
While this
could be classified as "fluff", we found the skins sharp,
adding a style of their own to the Windows desktop.
Included was a subdued BFG skin and the more radical BFG
Asylum skin that adds more color and attitude to the
layout. Lastly, was an NVIDIA skin that was
appealing in its own right. If skinning Windows is
your thing, this little gem might get you tweaked.
The Card & In-Game
Screenshots
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