XFX is a division of Pine Technologies that produces high end gaming video cards and motherboards. They sent over a GeForceFX 5600 Ultra for me to review which is about the midline of the GeForceFX family. Below the 5600 Ultra would be the normal 5600, 5200 ultra, and 5200. Above this 5600 Ultra there is the 5800, 5800 Ultra, and 5900. Recently I have reviewed a GeForceFX 5200 Ultra but was not very impressed with it due to the fact that it is a low-end budget card. This 5600 Ultra is not low-end so it should be able to do an impressive job with all the testing it will receive.
Below is a comparison chart between the GeForceFX 5600 and 5600 Ultra. The two main differences between the cards is that the core on the 5600 is 325MHz while the 5600 Ultra is 400MHz. The memory is also running faster on the 5600 at 800MHz while the regular 5600 is at 550MHz. Both the core and memory speeds are quite faster on the 5600 Ultra which will really show a performance difference.
| Graphics Engine | FX5600 | FX5600 Ultra |
| Process | 130nm | 130nm |
| Core Clock | 325MHz | 400MHz |
| Memory Clock | 550MHz | 800MHz |
| Memory Interface | 128 bit | 128 bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 8.8 GB/s | 12.8 GB/s |
| Pipelines x tex. unit | 4 x 1 | 4 x 1 |
| Fillrate (pix. & tex./sec) | 1.3 billion | 1.6 billion |
Features and Benefits:
CineFX Engine
Powers cinematic effects beyond imagination. With advanced vertex and pixel shader capabilities, stunning and complex special effects are possible. In addition, increased horsepower delivers faster and smoother game play. The 2nd-generation CineFX 2.0 engine of the GeForce FX 5900 GPUs powers more advanced pixel shaders.
High-Precision Graphics
By combining the incredible dynamic range of today’s state-of-the-art 3D motion pictures with 128-bit studio-precision color, the GeForce FX GPUs bring you the industry’s best image quality for the most demanding applications.
Intellisample Technology
The industry’s fastest and highest quality antialiasing delivers ultra-realistic visuals, with no jagged edges, at lightning-fast speeds. The 2nd-generation Intellisample HCT, supported in GeForce FX 5900 GPUs, extends performance and quality gains to higher resolutions and antialiasing levels.
nView Multi-display Technology
The nView hardware and software technology combination delivers maximum flexibility for multi-display options, and provides unprecedented end-user control of the desktop experience. NVIDIA GPUs are enabled to support multi-displays, but graphics cards vary. Please varify multi-display support in the graphics card before purchasing.
AGP 8X
Provides double the bandwidth of AGP 4X-2.1GB/sec. vs. 1.1GB/sec. AGP 8X enables more complex models and detailed textures, creating richer and more lifelike environments. Uninterrupted data flow allows for smoother video streaming and faster, more seamless gameplay.
Digital Vibrance Control (DVC)
Allows the user to adjust color controls digitally to compensate for the lighting conditions of their workspace, in order to achieve accurate, bright colors in all conditions. Currently this feature is not available on Mac systems.
Unified Driver Architecture (UDA)
Guarantees forward and backward compatibility with software drivers. Simplifies upgrading to a new NVIDIA product because all NVIDIA products work with the same driver software.
Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Optimizations and Support
Ensures the best performance and application compatibility for all DirectX 9 applications.
OpenGL® 1.4 Optimizations and Support
Ensures the best performance and application compatibility for all OpenGL applications.
400MHz RAMDACs
Industry’s fastest RAMDACs support QXGA displays with ultra-high, ergonomic refresh rates.
DVI Support
Able to drive the industry’s largest and highest resolution flat-panel displays with up to 1600×1200 resolution.
Integrated TV Encoder
Provides best-of-class TV-out functionality for resolutions up to 1024×768.
Integrated Full Hardware MPEG-2 Decoder
Delivers full-frame, full-screen MPEG-2 video on your desktop.
New 64-phase Video Scaler
Highest quality for scaling DVD and other video to full-screen HDTV resolutions.
Architected for Cg
Ensures that the newest, cutting-edge special effects in applications will run flawlessly. Speeds up content creation so game developers can get their new games out to PC users faster than ever before.
The card comes in a box that is shaped like a X for obvious reasons and has a picture of some sort of wild cat. The back of the box has some specifications as well as a window that lets you get a glimpse of the card. I opened up the box to find a smaller box which holds all of the contents.
This 5600 Ultra uses a brilliant blue PCB that I like a lot. The card uses a good sized active heatsink to cool the core and has RAMsinks on both the front and back side. From the side of the card you can see that it has a VGA, DVI, and S-Video connection. This card also needs external power from a 4 pin Molex which is why there is a plug on the top right hand corner of the PCB.
The card comes with two S-Video cables, a VIVO cable, and a DVI to VGA adapter so you can use two CRTs if you choose. There is also a users manual, quick install guide, warranty card, addendum, and driver CD. There is no game bundle at all which is a little disappointing however I like the fact that so many accessories are included.
The heatsink is held on by two clips on each end which are easily taken off with a pair of pliers. After taking the heatsink off the card I found a good amount of thermal compound. The last time I reviewed an XFX video card it was a little lacking when it came to thermal compound. I like the fact that they have since improved and added more.
I cleaned off the core of the GPU to get a picture, as you can see the card is using the GeForceFX 5600 Ultra GPU. I then reapplied thermal compound to the core, replaced the heatsink, and installed the card to my system. The card installed with no problem and did not interfere with anything on the motherboard. I also plugged a 4 pin Molex from my power supply into the card so that it would be properly powered.
I will be using 3DMark2001SE, 3DMark2003, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament 2003, and Serious Sam 2 to benchmark this video card. All of the testing was done with all the settings turned up and everything at it’s highest. I will be benchmarking with the resolutions of 1024×768, 1280×1024, and 1600×1200. With Unreal tournament 2003 I used 1280×960 because the benchmark tool did not have 1280×1024 as an option. I used nVidia’s 43.45 detonator drivers and ran all the tests from my system which was just formatted.
Test Bed:
- Abit NF7-S Rev 2.0 (review to come)
- 1800+ Thoroughbred
- 60GB Seagate Barracuda IV HDD
- 80GB Western Digital HDD
- 1024MB PC3200 Corsair TwinX (review to come)
- XFX GeForceFX 5600 Ultra
- Koolcase’s Panther
- Plextor 40x12x40 CDRW
- Plextor PX-504A DVD+RW (review to come)
- Globalwin Sapphire 520w PSU (review to come)
3DMark2001SE is a DirectX 8 benchmark and is the predecessor to 3DMark03 however I feel it is still a good benchmarking program. In all three tests the Ti4200 did a little better than the 5600 Ultra and 5200 Ultra. The Ti4200 is a DirectX 8 card and the FX cards are DirectX 9. The difference was not much but enough to where you can see a noticeable difference in the scores.
3DMark03 is one of the newest synthetic benchmarking programs from Futuremark and widely used for comparison of video cards. With 3DMark03 to get a good score you will need a really fast DirectX 9 video card. As you can see this 5600 Ultra does much better than both the Ti4200 and 5200 Ultra. The fact that this card is a DirectX 9 card is the reason that it does so much better than the Ti4200. Even the slower 5200 Ultra does better than the Ti4200 but is not even close to this 5600 Ultra.
Quake 3 is probably one of the most used game benchmark around the world and it will be used here as well. I set everything to the best settings then ran demo001 which is what I always use. With this benchmark the 5600 Ultra outperforms the other two cards by fair amount. There isn’t a huge difference between the three cards, none the less this 5600 Ultra does do the best.
Serious Sam 2 is another first person shooter game that is very graphics intensive. I set all of the video options, ran the Yodeler demo, and recorded the results. At 1024×768 this 5600 Ultra does 30.9FPS more than the Ti4200. At 1280×1024 and 1600×1200 there is almost no difference between the Ti4200 and 5600 Ultra. Apparently this 5600 was only able to perform exceptionally well at the lower resolution.
Unreal Tournament 2003 is a really good and graphically stressful game. I used the standard benchmarking tool which was included with the game to do this testing so you would be able to more easily compare with the results. In the flyby section of the benchmark the Ti4200 performs better at 1024×768 and 1280×1024. At 1600×1200 there is no difference between the 5600 Ultra and Ti4200.
With the bot match testing the results are similar to the flyby benchmark. The results from the 5600 Ultra and Ti4200 are very close. At 1280×1024 the Ti4200 does outperform the 5600 Ultra by 9 PSB for some reason. Even at 1600×1200 this card has a high enough frame rate to be very playable.
I did some antialiasing testing to see what the results would be with no AA, 2x AA, 4x AA, and 8x AA. I used the same benchmarks as before but only tested at 1024×768. All of the AA settings were done within the nVidia control panel not within the games.
With 3DMark2001SE the decrease in score is pretty steady with no AA to 4x AA. When testing at 8x AA you can see that there is a drastic drop in score unlike the others. There is really no need to use 8x AA that I can think of unless you just want the best picture possible.
3DMark03 was steady from no AA to 8x AA decreasing in score with each increase in AA. There was not a drastic drop at 8x AA like there was with 3DMark2001SE.
Quake 3 testing was similar to that of 3DMark2001SE because with no AA and at 2x AA the performance loss isn’t much. Switching to 4x AA there is a noticeable drop in frame rate, and at 8x AA there is a drastic drop. Even with 8x AA the frame rate is high enough so when you are playing you would not see any difference.
Serious Sam 2 testing produced the same kind of results that Quake 3 did. The frame rate steadily decreased until 8x AA where the FPS were much lower.
The flyby portion of Unreal Tournament 2003 was also similar to the previous two tests. The frame rate is really high until it gets to 8x AA then it drops to 44.9 which is close to being choppy.
The botmatch part of Unreal Tournament 2003 was a little different than the others. The scores with no AA, 2x AA, and 4x AA are all very close but are all around the mid 40s. At 8x AA the frame rate drops to 29.7 which is probably too low to play the game without getting frustrated.
I slowly overclocked the card little by little so that it would be able to burn in and adjust. After slowly increasing the speed of the card I reached the highest stable speed which was 425MHz core and 835MHz memory. I am pretty impressed with the overclock that this card is capable of and being the Ultra version it is already coming faster than a regular 5600.
As you know this video card requires a Molex to be plugged into it for extra power. While I was testing the card I forgot to plug on in and upon booting into Windows 2000 Professional I was greeted with the following dialog box. I’m glad that nVidia included this feature into the driver because if there was no warning I would not have noticed the problem until I went back into my case or the video card was damaged. I was a little worried when I saw this message that something may have been damaged but after turning off my computer, plugging in a Molex, and rebooting, everything was fine.
Conclusion:
I like this card a lot; it has a lot of features and performs really well. It was a little behind in some of the DirectX 8 testing however it excelled in the DirectX 9 testing. There was a good amount of thermal compound used on the core which I always like. It would have been nice to get a game bundle with this card, especially since these video cards are supposed to be games. I am actually very impressed with this video card and am going to give it a 9/10 and award it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank XFX for sending me this card.
Pros:
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