Albatron may seem like a new manufacturer, but they have actually been around for since 1984, under the name of Chun Yun Electronics in Taiwan. They primarily made wide-screen multimedia montirs and TVs. Almost a year ago, they started a new product line of PC products, primarily video cards using the GeForce series of chips. Albatron’s latest cards use the entire spectrum of nVidia’s latest chips, from the 5200FX to the 5900 Ultra.
Today we are reviewing the Albatron Gigi FX 5200 Ultra, but Albatron makes 2 other flavors of 5200 cards. Listed below is Albatron’s complete FX5200 lineup.
| Product | Memory interface | Core clock |
| GeForceFX 5200EP | 64-bit | 250MHz |
| GeForceFX 5200P | 128-bit | 250MHz |
| GeForceFX 5200 Ultra | 128-bit | 325MHz |
It was easy to distinguish between nVidia’s budget and perfomance products when they used the MX naming suffix, but the FX line chooses to obfuscate these differences. The NV34 chip that powers the FX5200 line uses a 0.15 micron fabricating process; making it cheaper than the NV30 (FX5800), NV31 (FX5600) and NV35 (FX5900), which use a newer 0.13 micron process. The NV34 is targeted for the value enthusiast, which is the largest audience. Any card using the NV34 chip is a value-based card, and is essentially equivilent to a GeForce4 MX.
What’s in the box
To keep costs down, Albatron has only bundled the essentials. The expected manual and drivers CD is included, as well as a copy of WinDVD creator. An S-video to RCA (composite) cable is included for those who have not joined us in the 21st century. Unfortunately, no DVI to VGA converter was not included, which would have been really nice. Most Vidiots will probably have a few of these lying around, anyway.
The manual is nicely written, and should be standard fare to any graphics card enthusiast. It has a handy list of features for Albatron’s entire product line, how to install the card, and even goes so far as to diagram what a VGA port looks like (hey some people might not know…). It has a complete step-by-step guide on how to install the drivers properly, and even a simple troubleshooting section. It is nice to see a physical paper manual, as many companies rely on an electronic copy included with the drivers.
Albatron’s GeForce FX 5200 Ultra uses a 325MHz core clock and 650MHz DDR RAM, being the baby brother of the NV3x architecture. Every major technology feature is still intact, but at a performance cost. The only thing missing is the core elements of the Intellisample technology (mostly color compression and anisotropic filtering). Below is a chart outlining the differences between the FX line of video cards.
| FX 5800 (NV31) | FX 5600 (NV31) | FX 5200 (NV34) | |
| Manufacturing Technology | 0.13 micron | 0.13 micron | 0.15 micron |
| Transistors | 125 million | 75 million | 47 million |
| Chip frequency | 400MHz / 500MHz | 350MHz / 300MHz | 325MHz / 200MHz |
| Memory Controller | 128bit DDR II | 128bit DDR | 128bit or 64bit DDR |
| Memory frequency | 800MHz (DDR 400) | 700MHz (DDR 350) | 650MHz (DDR 325) |
| Max memory | 256 MB | ||
| AGP interface | AGP 3.0 4X/8X | ||
| Pixel pipelines | 4,8 | 2,4 | 2 |
| Max # of textures | 8 | ||
| Texture filtering types | bi-linear anisotropic tri-linear tri-linear + anisotropic |
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| Max anisotropy level | 8 | ||
| Pixel shaders | v.2.0+ | v.2.0+ | v.2.0 |
| FSAA methods | Supersampling Ordered grid multi-sampling |
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| Hidden Surface removal | yes | ||
| Frame-buffer compression | yes | yes | no |
| Z-buffer compression | yes | ||
The 5200 basically uses a lower core clock speed and slower memory, and has less than half of the transistor count of an FX5800! That is gonna cost some performance! Other 5200 cards are can use a 64bit memory architecture, but this Albatron model utilizes the full 128 bit memory controller.
The Board
The board has a layout similar to nVidia’s reference design, but Albatron has made several quality enhancements, such as replacing the default aluminum heatsink with a more efficient copper one. The card’s 128MB of DDR memory is covered with passive aluminum heatsinks, but are anodized to appear copper. The fan on the copper core sink uses an interesting and efficient idea: the fins are bent in such a way as to push air to the side, much like a blower. Not only does this design make the fan quieter, it ensures that air is blown out across the copper fins, and not wasted on the flat bottom. Not many other card owners can say they have a kickass albatross sticker on their fan either, can they? Albatross! Get your albatross here!
The board itself is silkscreened a nice blue color, is nice and thick, and has an overall quality feel to it. The heatsinks make this board rather heavy, which adds to the quality feel. The back of the board sports a standard VGA connector, an S-video connector and DVI (Digital Visual Interface) connector. The S-video jack cannot accept an input signal, as this card is not designed for video capture. The VGA and DVI connector can be used simultaneously for multi-monitor support.
Moving to the other side of the card is a standard 4-pin molex connector. The NV34 chip consumes more power than is safe for an AGP slot, and thus requires this extra voltage to run at full capacity. The card can be used without plugging a power supply in, but will throttle itself down to the point of being unusable as a gaming card. This chip gets very hot, especially considering that other more powerful cards do not have the same steep power requirement.
Since the FX5200 uses an older fabricating process, it is bound to generate more heat, even though it has fewer transistors than its siblings. To test, we used the trusty Radio Shack IR thermometer, capable of reading surface temperatures within 1% accuracy. Before taking a temperature reading, the card was run at full capacity for 5 minutes. The temperature was taken on the back of the card, right behind the chip core, and the memory heatsinks were also monitored. The average high temperature for the ram was 101°, and the core reached an average 132°. This core temperature is actually well within operating limits, and did not fluctuate greatly under a full load. When idle, the chip dropped to a much lower 105°.
Test Setup
The board was tested on the hardware listed below. There was no significant difference running the card at 4X AGP or 8XAGP. Each version of 3dMark was run 3 times and the averages taken from them.
- Pentium 4 2.53GHz
- AOpen AX4PE Max motherboard
- 1GB DDR 333 SDRAM
- Soundblaster Audigy
- 2x120GB Western Digital 1200JB Special Edition HDD
- Chenming Aluminum case
- Liteon 16X DVD-ROM
- Verbatim 2.4X DVD+R recorder
Everyone today still uses 3DMark2001SE to compare the raw performance of their comptuer setups, as it uses software technology still in use in most games today. Much debate surrounds 3dMark 2003, as many argue that the benchmark does not represent real-world use and not very accurate. At best, 3DMark03 is only useful to compare the DirectX 9 capabilities of today’s hardware, which will be utilized in the games coming out the holiday season. We compared the Albatron FX5200 Ultra against a competing product, the MSI FX5200, a GeForce4 Ti4200, and the popular ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. This is a good sampling of the cards available on the market today, and demonstrates the performance differences between a budget card and an expensive behemoth.
The 3DMark2001SE results are pretty much expected: This FX5200 Ultra card performs better than other budget cards of the FX line, but is easily ousted by more powerful cards over a year old! The GeForce 4 and ATI Radeon cards are just more powerful in DirectX 8 games. Benchmarks are fine and good, but no one will really be able to tell the difference if the two were playing side by side. Even the budget FX cards will play today’s games smoothly, which is saying quite a bit considering a GeForce 3 will choke on UT 2003!
The 3DMark03 results are not as straightforward, and require a little explanation. The same GeForce 4 that trumped the Albatron is now the slowest in the bunch. The GeForce4 just does not have any hardware support for DirectX 9. The FX5200 cards did a little better, but watching the benchmark run is not much better than a slideshow; they technically perform better, but no one would have a good gaming experience at these framerates. A card that can achieve around 4000 3dMarks or better should be able to play a complex DX9 game at around 30 fps, and currently the only cards that will do that cost around $500. You better start counting your pennies, boys and girls; or at least be real good for Santa this year. Half Life 2 and Doom 3 are coming…
So how does the card compare at different resolutions? Is this card powerful enough to play today’s games AND have good visuals? To test, we ran Unreal Tournament 2003 through different resolutions and anti-aliasing settings. The results are in the chart below. The results suggest that the game is pretty CPU limited at 640×480, and that QuinCunx anti-aliasing (nVidia’s pseudo-4X AA model) performs as well as the traditional 2X AA setting. If you want to see great visuals without the framerate cost, then QuinCunx(couldn’t they come up with a better name than that?) is your best bet.
If you are buying this card to play the anticipated Doom 3 or Half-Life 2, then you had best save for the GeForce FX 5900 or ATI 9800. The card does have support for DirectX9 visuals, but cannot render them quickly enough to be playable. The Albatron FX 5200 Ultra has a lot of power for the price, and will compete nicely at your local LAN party.
Conclusion
Albatron has done the best it can with the NV34 chipset: the board is the highest quality you will find for an FX5200 card. The card does not break any framerate records, but this is a budget card, and is definitely more powerful than what $100 would buy last year. It has enough power to play today’s games adequately, but will probably require an upgrade once DirectX 9 game hit the shelves. Any consumer looking for an FX5200 based card cannot do much better than the Albatron FX5200 Ultra (if only video capture support was included). This card is competing against the many other FX 5200 cards in the market, and is one of the best quality builds in its class, easily landing a 9.5 out of 10 and the OCmodshop Seal of Approval.
Pros
- Good stock cooling
- Performs better than other FX5200 cards
- Excellent build and component quality
- Quiet fan
- Competitively priced
Cons
- No video capture support