What a
difference a week can make. Just a week ago
yesterday, when the NDA lifted on the ATi Radeon 9600 XT,
we had nothing but praise for the great performance that
ATi was offering with their new mainstream solution.
Our tests compared the 9600 XT to the previous model, the
9600 Pro, and a card from NVIDIA's camp, the GeForce FX
5600. A quick recap of that review, had the Radeon
9600 XT winning all of the benchmarks, easily capturing
the lead in the mainstream video card business - at least
for the time being. We told you, however, to keep
your eyes out for a response from Santa Clara.
Today,
NVIDIA comes at you with a double-pronged launch,
releasing a new card for both the hard-core gamer,
the
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, and one for the rest of us, the
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. The 5700 Ultra, previously
known as the NV36, has just about everything one could
hope for in a mainstream video solution, including the
latest high-speed DDR2 memory, AGP8X, and
NVIDIA's CineFX 2 and Intellisample technologies.
Building on the strengths of the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra
(NV31), NVIDIA has found some more headroom in their 0.13
micron GPUs, and have raised the clock speed from 400MHz
for the 5600 Ultra all the way up to 475MHz. The rest of the architecture remains
relatively unchanged, although
128MB of DDR2 memory has been added to the board,
something one wouldn't normally expect to find on a
"value" card. With similar specs to the ATi Radeon
9600 XT, we expect that the battle between these two
mainstream cards will be fast and
furious, so let's take a quick peek at the card itself,
and then move onto the benchmarks.
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Specifications & Features of the 128MB NVIDIA
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra |
The
NV36 is finally revealed |
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NVIDIA
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GPU
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CineFX 2.0 Engine
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Intellisample Technology HCT
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High-Precision Graphics
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nView Multi-display Technology
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Digital Vibrance Control (DVC)
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Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
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AGP
8X including Fast Writes and sideband addressing
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0.13 Micron Process Technology from IBM
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Copper vias and
wiring
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400MHz RAMDACs
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Graphics Core: 256-bit
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Engine clock: 475 MHz
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Memory Interface: 128-bit DDR2
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Memory Bandwidth: 14.4GB/sec
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Fill Rate: 1.9 billion pixels/sec
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Vertices/sec. 356 million
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Memory Clock:
450MHz
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Memory Data Rate: 900MHz
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Maximum Memory:
256MB
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Pixels per Clock: 4
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Textures per Rendering Pass: 16
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Thermal solution:
Silent, single-slot heatsink/fan
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Architected for Cg
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Microsoft® DirectX®9.0 Optimizations and Support
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New
64-phase Video Scaler
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OpenGL®1.4 Optimizations and Support
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Video Mixing Renderer (VMR)
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High-performance, high-precision 3D rendering engine
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On-board DVI support up to 1600x1200 resolution
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On-board TV-out support up to 1024x768 resolution
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Integrated Full Hardware MPEG-2 Decoder
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Vivid NTSC/PAL TV-out support with flicker filter
CLICK TO ENLARGE
THE
GEFORCE FX 5700 ULTRA
CORE CLOCK: 475MHz
MEMORY CLOCK: 450MHz
FILLRATE: 1.9B pixels/sec
MEMORY BANDWIDTH: 14.4 GB/s
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CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
ENLARGED VIEW
The sample we
received came by the way of eVGA, one of NVIDIA's product
launch partners.
Although the card is somewhat longer than other recent
entries, it really has a lean, mean look to it. When
we say lean, we would like to point out that the 5700
Ultra has a single-slot thermal solution, but more on that
later. As eVGA points out on their box, a power
connection is necessary, and in this case a 4-pin MOLEX
connector will be used. Most modern power supply
units have multiple power connections, so this shouldn't
be an issue. As is standard, the ports on the
bracket consisted of DVI-out, 15-pin VGA, and S-Video out.
Incidentally, the 0.13 micron die process for the GPU is
handled this time around by IBM, in East Fishkill, NY, not
too far from our testing labs.
The GPU
and DDR2 RAM are running at pretty high speeds, generating
a bit of heat, but are cooled using a one-piece, slim-line
heatsink/fan manufactured by AVC. Unlike the larger
fans found on the 5900 and 5950 Ultra card, this solution
only requires one slot, and it is relatively quiet. We
also found an oversized heatsink over the memory chips on
the back of the card along with the NVIDIA logo on a
separate tab attached by screws from the front. eVGA
has even adorned the front of the fan with one of NVIDIA's
demo-dwellers, Vulcan. Other manufacturer's models
will invariably use other cooling solutions, however,
there is little room for personalizing the card since
NVIDIA has strict control over the manufacturing process.
The heatsink is seated on top of the RAM and GPU using
copious amounts of thermal paste, quite evident in our
photo.
eVGA's
packaging of the e-GeForce FX 5700 Ultra consisted of a
vibrant box that boldly points out the major selling
points of the card, although the actual speeds of the core
and memory are curiously absent. The bundled
software and accessories are somewhat less thrilling.
There was an S-video cable and a DVI-to-VGA converter,
handy for setting up dual monitors. The User's Guide
was scant on information, offering only the basics for setting up the card, without further
explanation of its capabilities. The Installation CD
contained a set of Detonator drivers, which can be
automatically installed using eVGA's ADM software, short
for Automated Driver Management. The ADM first checks for
the system chipset, and will install the correct AGP GART
driver if needed. It then checks for pre-existing
video drivers, and removes them before installing the
newer ones. It takes away any of the complexity that
a new user might run into when installing an upgrade.
The other CDs included NVDVD 2.0, a demo disc, and a full
version of Ghost Recon. Unfortunately, Ghost Recon
was released in 2001, and really won't whet gamer's
appetites like ATi's inclusion of Half-Life2 with the 9600
and 9800 XTs.
The
Drivers & Some
Screenshots
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