XFX sent over a GeforceFX 5700 Ultra with dual DVI and VIVO for me to review. I recently reviewed a XFX GeForceFX 5600 Ultra which turned out to be a really good card. This 5700 Ultra is a good amount faster than the 5600 Ultra while also adding some new features like the dual DVI. Though Nvidia has come out with their GeForce 6800 line this card is still a great one and is not by any means obsolete. This 5700 Ultra is right behind the 5900 and 5950 but at a much lower price.
Below is a comparison chart between the GeForceFX 5600, 5600 Ultra, 5700 Ultra, and 5950 Ultra. The major differences between the four cards is the core clock and memory clock. The speeds between the 5700 Ultra and 5950 Ultra are not very major, with the 5950 Ultra only having 50MHz more in the memory clock area. Between the older 5600 Ultra and this 5700 Ultra there is a 75MHz increase in core clock speed and 100MHz increase in the memory clock speed.
| Graphics Engine | FX5600 | FX5600 Ultra | FX5700 Ultra | FX5950 Ultra |
| Process | 130nm | 130nm | 130nm | 130nm |
| Core Clock | 325MHz | 400MHz | 475MHz | 475MHz |
| Memory Clock | 550MHz | 800MHz | 900MHz | 950MHz |
| Memory Interface | 128 bit | 128 bit | 128 bit | 128 bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 8.8 GB/s | 12.8 GB/s | 14.4 GB/s | 30.4 GB/s |
| Fillrate (pix. & tex./sec) | 1.3 billion | 1.6 billion | 1.9 billion | 3.8 billion |
Features and Benefits
CineFX Engine
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 basically the same box that the previous XFX 5600 Ultra came in. The back of the box has some specifications as well as a window that lets you check out the card. The major difference between this box and the older one is that this new one has the OCmodshop Seal of Approval on it which was really cool for me to see. It is very small but so are the other logos that are on there with mine.
The card has the same blue colored PCB that the 5600 ultra used that I liked before. This card has a much larger active heatsink that the previous 5600 Ultra had most likely because it gets hotter and needs more power to cool it. The back of the card also has a much larger passive heatsink to cool the RAM compared to the 5600 Ultra.
From the side of the card you can see that it has dual DVI, and S-Video connection which can be used for VIVO. There is also a Molex connection on the card so that it will have ample power while it is pumping out those intensive graphics.
The card comes with two S-Video cables, a VIVO cable, and two DVI to VGA adapter so you can use two CRTs two LCDs or one of each. There is also a users manual, quick install guide, driver CD, and warranty card for your reference. This 5700 ultra comes with an impressive game bundle which the 5600 Ultra lacked. The games included are: MotoGP, Comanche4, Ghost Recon, Racing Simulation 3, and a games collection CD that has demos of: Ballistics, Delta-Force Black Hawk Down, IL-2 Sturmovik, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, and Vietcong.
Installation was a breeze the card fit into the system without a problem and after plugging in the Molex my system booted up fine.
I downloaded the newest Nvidia drivers at the time which were 53.03. The main screen of the properties screen gives a good amount of video card information. The BIOS on this card is 4.36.20.23 with 128MB and 8x AGP. It also shows that I am using a Athlon 64 3200+ and DirectX 9.0 or better, I am actually using 9.0b. The nView screen of the of the driver lets you choose how to setup your monitors if you are using more than one.
The performance section is where you can set the level of image settings, antialiasing, and anisotropic filtering. I currently have all of the settings to the lowest for benchmarking purposes. Depending on what you want to do with your system you can adjust these settings to suite you best. From the Direct3D section you can configure a few things however since I don’t currently use any Direct3D applications I left things stock.
Like the Direct3D section the OpenGL section allows you to change settings for your applications. The overlay section allows you to zoom into parts of your screen.
After installing these drivers I did not have the clock frequencies to do any overclocking. This was easily corrected by adding this coolbits registry hack to my system. Once I did that I was able to see my clock settings and adjust them as I desired. As you can see the stock settings for this video card are 475 MHz core and 950 MHz memory. The troubleshooting section allows you to put a utility icon in the taskbar to quickly access various features and presets configured in the display properties.
NVRotate allows you to rotate your LCD monitor while having everything displayed correctly. One feature here that I have not seen with any other Nvidia cards is a temperature monitor. It allows you to see the current temperature of the GPU core and ambient temperature. It also gives you the option of enabling a warning for the core threshold, this is a very useful feature especially when overclocking.
The refresh rate overrides section lets you override refresh rates for application that choose to decrease them. This is quite useful when a stubborn application lowers the refresh rate which can be quite annoying. The change resolution section allows you to obviously change the resolution as well as your color quality and monitor refresh rate.
The desktop manager shows you what each file name does and what version it is. The screens menu lets you disable certain screens that you don’t use very much.
I will be using the following benchmarks: 3DMark2001SE, 3DMark03, Quake 3, and Unreal Tournament 2003. I will be benchmarking with the resolutions of 1024×768, 1280×1024, and 1600×1200. Unfortunately during the time of this review I had no other video card to compare against. The best way I could think of to do some comparisons was to overclock the card as much as possible and compare it to the stock speeds. I know this is not the best or optimal methodology however I thought it would be better than simply doing the stock speed testing. When I get another video card to review I should be able to compare it to that and at that time update this review. The stock speeds of tihs video card are 475 MHz core and 950 MHz memory. The best overclock I could get out of this video card was 512 MHz core and 1.02 GHz memory which is really nice.
Test Bed
- Albatron K8X800 Pro II
- AMD Athlon64 3200+
- 60GB Seagate Barracuda IV HDD
- 1024MB PC3200 Corsair TwinX
- XFX GeForceFX 5700 Ultra
- Koolcase’s Panther
- Plextor 708A DVD burner (review to come)
- SilenX 400w PSU
- Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu
3DMark2001SE is a DirectX 8 benchmark and is the predecessor to 3DMark03 however I feel it is still a good benchmarking program. The scores are quite impressive with this video card and the overclocked there is a noticeable amount of increase in score.
3DMark03 is one of the newest synthetic benchmarking programs from Futuremark and widely used for comparison of video cards. To get a good score with 3DMark03 you will need a really fast DirectX 9 video card which this is. The scores are not incredible compared with other faster video cards currently on the market however they are much better than I have seen with many comparable cards. Normally with 3DMark03 you are going to be looking at scores in the hundreds and hoping to get into the thousands. Then again if you are looking to get the highest scores possible from this benchmark you are going to have to pay a lot of money for the newest video card out.
Quake 3 is an obvious choice for a benchmark because it is still used by many sites and users. Using demo001 the scores are 1024×768 are really high. When increasing the resolution to benchmark at the scores dropped quite a bit which normally doesn’t happen. It seems that at 1024×768 the card really isn’t being tested too well. With the higher resolution I think we get a better picture of how the card compares.
Unreal Tournament 2003 is a really good and graphically stressful game. In the flyby section of the benchmark the card does really well even at 1600×1200 which until recently wasn’t able to be done. With the card overclocked there isn’t a huge increase in frames per second however it should be noted.
Unreal Tournament 2003 does has a second half of the benchmark where it dose a botmatch. With this part of the benchmark the frames per second are much lower. The botmatch is going to be a better representation of how actual game play will be because it is of course a first person shooter. The benchmark actually is done from a third person view however it gives you a good idea of what you should expect while actually playing.
I was able to push the 475 MHz core speed to 512 MHz and the memory from 950 MHz and 1.02 GHz which is very impressive. Going any higher would cause the card to display artifacts during testing. The auto-detect function is also a nice feature because all you have to do is click it and it will automatically adjust the card to the highest that it thinks it can handle. From there you can always adjust it higher or lower but it did a good job with my card finding the sweet spot.
Conclusion
I really like this card because of many reasons, the first and most important being that it performs really well. The next best thing to a great video card is giving it two DVI ports to output that performance to DVI ports on two LCDs. The stock speed of this video card makes it a great buy and the overclocking ability makes it even better. One of my complaints with the XFX 5600 Ultra I previously reviewed was that it lacked a game bundle. XFX has addressed that negative aspect by including a pretty good bundle and also includes all of the necessary cables and adapters. I am going to 9/10 and award it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval and would like to thank XFX for sending me this card.
Pros
- Performs really well
- Dual DVI and VIVO
- All cables and adapters included
- Blue PCB
- Really good cooling system
- Overclocks well
- Good software bundle
Cons
- A little loud