Digital-Daily : Video : msi-fx5700ultra

MSI GeForce FX 5700 Ultra/NonUltra

Date: 07.05.2004

Real-world gaming applications

From synthetic applications, we are now moving on to analyzing the performance of the graphic boards in real gaming applications.

Unreal Tournament 2003

Well-optimized for the NVIDIA architecture, the game demonstrates an undisputable leadership of the MSI board built on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra chip and the so needed leadership of the board based on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 chip over ATI Radeon 9600 Pro.

The antialiasing mode does not violate the general alignment of forces.

Nor has anisotropy affected the alignment of forces, and the leader is the same - MSI FX 5700 Ultra.

Therefore, AA+AF combined modes show the same alignment of forces, no surprises have been found.

Unreal II: The Awakening

As we remember, the geometric performance of the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra chip for the case of using version 1.1 vertex shaders with the most advanced lighting mode used was higher than the similar parameter in the ATI Radeon 9600XT chip. Looking at the results for Unreal 2, you can clearly see that the synthetic results have been embodied in a real-world gaming application. In this benchmark, much depends just on the geometric performance of the accelerator, and since version 2.0 vertex shaders so unloved by NVIDIA accelerators are little used, the MSI card based on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra chip takes a lead in this test in which similarly ranking ATI boards had traditional leadership.

Call Of Duty

At this OpenGL-application with the revamped engine for Quake 3: Arena, the MSI boards built on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra chip takes a lead, but the MSI board built on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 chips demonstrates a very poor ranking relative to ATI Radeon 9600 Pro.

But "image quality improvement technique" give the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra video card a second wind - at some points, it even shows itself much better in this mode than even a board built on the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro chip.

X2: The Threat

The "Ultra Shadow" technology implemented in NVIDIA chips allow them easily bypassing ATI boards in this test. Due to this technology, stencil shades whose rendering technology is widely used in the game are built faster. Similar effects will be used in the forthcoming DooM III, so make your own conclusions, folks =).

Note that the MSI board shows results on par with ATI Radeon 9600XT, but NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra shows even more superiority margin.

Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 2

Unfortunately, for now we don't have any information on the engine of this benchmark, and can merely ascertain the leadership of MSI board built on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra chip, as well as complete parity of boards on the base of NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 chips versus ATI Radeon 9600 Pro.

AquaMark 3

The benchmark makes active use of version 2.0 shaders, which is seen in the results: ATI boards are leaders at this test.

Gun Metal Benchmark 2

This is a pseudo-DirectX 9.0 test made on the base of the gaming engine. The game uses version 2.0 vertex programs, but 1.1 of pixel programs. At that, NVIDIA boards feel comfortably enough, despite the unforgivably low operation with DirectX 9.0 shaders which albeit are not used to the full, nevertheless play far not the last part here.

HALO: Combat Evolved

The game uses version 2.0 of pixel and vertex programs. Besides, the game offers wonderful features for testers by allowing forced enablement of version 1.1, 1.4 and 2.0 versions of pixel and vertex programs. However, we gave up using shader versions other than 2.0 in this test quite a long ago, because we are interested in mostly the board performance in DirectX 9.0, and also because we have a number of times proven the performance difference for video cards on the base of ATI chips, as well as NVIDIA chips between versions 1.1 and 2.0 of shader programs.

Traditionally, we note a much higher operating speed of ATI boards in DirectX 9.0 applications.

Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness

Tomb Raider engine: Angel of Darkness is a technically advanced DirectX 9.0 solution. The game uses version 2.0 pixel and vertex shaders, which, considering the results of synthetic tests, is not going to bring anything good for NVIDIA boards.

Practice shows quite just this. In scenes that make a most intense use of version 2.0 pixel shaders, the results for NVIDIA boards are simply slashing. All turns better on switching to simpler, non-shader scenes, but nevertheless NVIDIA boards fail to win performance crown.

Half-life 2 Leaked Beta

It is still premature to make conclusions as to a certain accelerator basing on the test results produced with the raw leaked alpha, because much will change by the final release (and we are pretty sure much will be changed). Nevertheless, it won't be a mistake if I say that many readers will be curious indeed to find out about the alignment of forces for graphic chips just in this benchmark.

FireStarter

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 failed to cope with the minimum task and lost to its direct competitor - a board built on the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro chip. And that despite the flexible FireStarter engine able to tune itself to the architecture of a certain accelerator (for details, read our review on the ASUS Radeon 9600XT video card). But the MSI board built on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra chip feels comfortable at it - the greater number of vertex processors and higher operational speeds of the chip and memory make themselves felt. All these impart the board based on the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra chip a leadership in the test that does not use version 2.0 shaders.

In the game scene, the absolute fps values have changed essentially, but the alignment of forces has remained the same.

But the combined AA+AF modes give an radically new alignment of forces. At that, ATI boards are leaders It's hard to say if that is related to the implementation specifics of anisotropy or AA in NVIDIA and ATI or is it something specific to the game, but nevertheless it is a fact that use of image improvement techniques gives more advantages to ATI boards.

FarCry Demo

FarCry is a bright example of what we can expect from Hi-End boards with support for DirectX 9.0. The beauty demonstrated by even the raw demo (despite that it's been officially released) gives food for thought as to whether Middle-End graphic boards are future-proof enough? =)

For now, let's see the results for NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra in this test. Softly speaking, the board is not bright here. This is more like a regularity - with lots of pixel shaders of the DirectX 9.0 generation, GeForce FX boards lag well behind. That is despite the fact that game developers did quite a global work on optimizing the game engine for the architectural specifics of NVIDIA boards, since FarCry is a participant of NVIDIA's "The way it`s meant to be played" initiative.

Final Words

Regarding the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 chip, the findings are not so optimistic as they are for NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. In the current situation that has shaped up by now when prices for boards built on the base of ATI Radeon 9600 Pro and NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 chips are on par, we can safely claim that NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 is not 100% worth of its money. Traditionally, NVIDIA boards demonstrate an unforgivably low performance at games which make active use of version 2.0 shaders and are not playable. Albeit NVIDIA offers advantages at old OpenGL and DirectX 8.1 applications, they are quite minor, and in most of tests we ran there is even a complete parity. So, what do we get? Equal prices, approximately the same performance in old applications and tremendous advantage of graphic boards built on the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro chip at shader applications. Nevertheless, it's better to make conclusions on the necessity to buy a card proceeding from the current market situation on the date of purchase. We don't rule out that prices for boards may change and maybe in the nearest time, but let's make conclusions proceeding from today's state of affairs. Regarding the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra chip, we already made conclusions in the material dealing with tests of NVIDIA reference board. To date, we can only make a reservation that also in the case of this board relative to ATI Radeon 9600XT the prices are not in favor of NVIDIA's offspring, but in this case it is compensated partly by good performance (but again insufficient for applications that make intense use of version 2.0 shaders).

As regards the MSI FX5700-VTD128 video card, we again see an excellent (even non N-Box packages by MSI are above all praises), good overclocking potentials and high manufacturing quality. All this equally applies to the MSI FX5700U-TD128 board. But in the end, all will depend on the price for final products on the market/

VGA Roundup `2003:

VGA Roundup (joint tests)

NVIDIA VGA Roundup `2003

ATI VGA Roundup `2003