MSI GeForce FX 5700 Ultra/NonUltra
Tests
In our today's test session, we used 4 cards altogether. We have already touched upon the issue of positioning middle-priced boards in our introduction, but it's high time we came back to this matter.
Proceeding from the current situation on the market, we can safely say that NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 should be positioned versus ATI Radeon 9600 Pro. It's just the prices for boards built on these chips which are on par. NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra is also positioned versus ATI Radeon 9600XT, although the pricing factor is definitely not in favor of the former. And this should be taken into consideration when looking at the results for video cards built on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra chip.
Therefore, today we'll be testing the following video cards:
- MSI FX5700-VTD128
- MSI FX5700U-TD128
- ASUS Radeon 9600XT
- Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro
MSI FX5700-VTD128 vs Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro, MSI FX5700U-TD128 vs ASUS Radeon 9600XT, respectively.
Test configuration:
We have finally upgraded our test configuration. Now it is a quite powerful system based on AMD Athlon XP 3200+ Barton (200x11 = 2200 MHz).
We remove all the decorative "niceties" out of the Windows GUI and set the operating system to maximum performance.
Disable the Vsync forcedly via the drivers both in OpenGL and in Direct3D applications. The S3TC texture compression was also disabled.
Test software:
- Future Mark 3DMark2003 v340;;
- ToMMTi-Systems ShaderMark v2.0 (a synthetic DirectX 9 HLSL benchmark for pixel shaders);
- CodeCult Codecreatures v1.0.0 (DirectX 8.1 application, shaders, Hardware T&L);
- Digital Extreme/Epic Games Unreal Tournament 2003 v2225 (Direct3D, Hardware T&L, vertex shaders, Dot3, cube texturing. "Antalus Flyby" demo);
- Yeti studious Gun Metal Benchmark 2 v1.20s (DirectX 9.0 benchmark , Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1, Hardware T&L);
- Egosoft X2: The Threat (Direct3D, multitexturing, Dot3, the benchmark mode embedded in the demo version);
- Square-Enix Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 2 (a benchmark to assess the performance of the future Final Fantasy XI game. Unfortunately, the developers haven't presented any data on the gaming engine);
- Microsoft HALO: Combat Evolved 1.3 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Hardware T&L, the quality is set to the maximum possible);
- Massive Development AquaMark 3 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Hardware T&L, AquaMark3 Triscore mode);
- Valve Software/Vivendi Universal Games Half-life 2 leaked beta (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, default quality, our own recorded demo benchmarks "3Dnews001" and "3Dnews005");
- Legend Ent./Epic Games Unreal II: The Awakening v1403 (Direct3D, vertex shaders, Hardware T&L, Dot3, cube texturing, the quality set to that suggested by BenchemAll).
- Activision Call of Duty 1.1 (OpenGL, multitexturing. The image quality was set to the maximum. Used was one of our own recorded demo reels "3Dnews002" (flying on a rocket in the mp_rocket level));
- GSC GameWorld / Russobit Ì FireStarter (DirectX 8.1/DirectX 9.0, pixel and vertex shaders, particle system, dynamic lights, projected textures);
- Core Design / Eidos Interactive Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness v49 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, defaults quality, "Paris5_4 Demo", "Paris1c Demo" and "Paris2g Demo" were used as the demos);
- Digital Extreme/Epic Games Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo (Direct3D, Hardware T&L, vertex shaders, Dot3, cube texturing. A pack of test demos was used: Botmatch Torlan, Botmatch Rankin, Botmatch Convoy, Botmatch Colossus, Botmatch Bridgeoffate);
- Demo Crytek / UbiSoft FarCry (DirectX 9.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, quality set to the maximum, "3Dnews004" was used as a demo ).
Overclocking
The video card was overclocked with the RivaTuner utility. The operation stability during overclocking was verified with Future Mark 3DMark2003 v330 and MadOnion 3DMark2001SE benchmarks. In the first of them, the third scene from Trolls' Lair in the "cycled" mode was played to reveal the overclocking potentials of the boards. On finding the critical frequencies we ran 3DMark2001SE benchmark three times. Once distortions appeared on the screen ("broken" pixels, stripes, lines etc.), then we pushed the memory frequency down by a few megahertz. If the computer hanged, we reduced the clock speed of the graphic chip. If the tests ran successfully, the overclocking was regarded as successful. We did not apply additional cooling.
So, we were able to overclock MSI FX5700-VTD128 and MSI FX5700U-TD128 video card up to the following clock speeds:
| Video card |
Core/memory Max |
| MSI FX5700-VTD128 |
480 MHz / 665 MHz |
| MSI FX5700U-TD128 |
545 MHz / 1030 MHz |
| NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra reference |
570 MHz / 1080 MHz |
We can't tell anything regarding the general overclocking potentials of video cards built on the GPU NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700, since it is the first board built on this GPU that we tested. However, the board demonstrated simply fantastic overclocking results relative to the nominal.
But MSI FX5700U-TD128 gave an impermissibly small overclocking margin relative to NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra reference. However, as the practice showed, very few cards are able to compete with NVIDIA reference at that. So there are no reasons to talk about the low overclocking potential of MSI's video cards built on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra chip. We'll be able to tell something specific only after having run a number of tests with production samples of video cards built on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra chip made by various manufacturers. But for now we can only establish quite good overclocking potentials of MSI FX5700U-TD128 relative to the nominal :)
Well, it's good to analyze the overclocking of boards, but we are reminding it for the hundredth time that overclocking is not a compulsory feature of a video card, it may vary from sample to sample, and we can't be responsible for the equipment that went unusable after overclocking.
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