RX600XT and GeForce PCX5750: two pearls in MSI's crown

Introduction

NVIDIA and ATI. The two giants struggling against each other in every sector, in every niche and pricing category of the market of video accelerators, on every retail shelf and at every hardware related conference. The topic is endless, and both companies are invariably throwing in new and new materials for theoretical reasoning, empirical research, practical debriefings and sometimes heated arguments.

This "global confrontation" of two titans is course preserved with the release of PCI-Express solutions as well, which we are going to witness in our review.

We have already covered the specifics of PCI-Express technical implementation in ATI and NVIDIA in our previous reviews, but now we'd better concentrate on the "heroes of the day".

So, meet the wrestlers on the carpet - RX600XT and GeForce PCX5750.

MSI RX600XT-PCIE and GeForce PCX5750

What adds to the intrigue is that the manufacturer of both boards is MSI, eminent for its abundant package bundles, smartly implemented and easily recognizable cooling system for its video cards, as well as for the superb product quality which by right deserves the name "brand", which brought the company a renowned reputation on the market.

The third participant of our today's contest is ATI's RX600 PRO video cards of reference design, with its rated frequency 400 MHz/300 MHz (600 MHz DDR).

ATI RX600 PRO

We included just this specimen in the contest on purpose.

If we look at the table of positioning PCI-E solutions by ATI and NVIDIA and closely analyze the results our past tests as well as price characteristics of the boards, it becomes clear that X600XT can hardly be regarded as "absolute" middle-end solution. It is positioned right between the two "fires" of NVIDIA - PCX5900 and PCX5750.

It's just this X600 PRO that can be regarded as direct competitor of the latter, with the frequencies downgraded relative to X600XT and thus reduced price tag.

I presume you have already been aware of the character of today's contest, so we are moving on to the most interesting and detailed examination of our participants.

MSI RX600XT

As it is traditional for MSI, the abundance of the package bundle is truly royal.

1. Video card MSI RX600XT;
2. 15-pin D-Sub/ DVI adapter;
3. S-Video/RCA adapter;
4. A couple of detailed manuals;
5. A really huge (14 altogether) collection of CDs, including
   à) drivers;
   b) software (SuperPack Adobe Photoshop AlbumSE+ 3D Album; FarStone VirtualDrive + FarStone RestoreIT!; InterVideo WinDVD 5.1 Channel + Supreme Foreign Language Learning Machine; 3D Desk Top; MSI Media Center Deluxe II)
   c) games (Prince of Persia; Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow; URU; X III; 14 in 1 Games Collection);
6. 6. MSI corporate logo sticker.

Design and layout

How can we distinguish an MSI video card from cards by other manufacturers without taking a close look at the board?

Right you are! The bright red textolyte and peculiar design of the cooling system.

The design of the board is an absolute replica of ATI reference design and is very similar to the design of practically all RADEON 9600XT and some RADEON 9600 PRO boards.

There is 128 Mb DDR memory onboard with the 128-bit data transfer bus which are presented on board as eight Hynix memory chips marked as HY5DU283222 AF-25 and made in the BGA form factor, offering 2.5 ns access time, but in the BIOS the memory is set to 330MHz (660 MHz DDR). Remember that on ABIT RX600XT-PCIE the same memory is set to 365MHz (730 MHz DDR).

Again, drawing your attention at the similarity of the board in question with most boards based on RV360 (9600XT) where the memory chips are located in an absolutely similar way - 4 chips on the front side and 4 on the rear side.

The above mentioned "representative" MSI cooling system is presented here in a more modest version than, for example, on GeForce FX5900 or 5950 where, as we remember, there was a quite massive fan-like radiator installed.

This time, the material (aluminum painted to look like copper) and the general style has preserved. Only the sizes have changed. The round radiator closes only the GPU leaving the job of cooling the memory chips to future owners of the card.

The board offers a standard set of outputs: analogous, digital, and TV-Out.

Completing the examination of the board, let's look at the GPU (ATI's RV380 core) whose rated frequency is 500 MHz.

On the core, the "right" paste like KPT-8 is applied.

MSI GeForce PCX5750

The package bundle of PCX5750 makes no difference from the above described bundle of RX600XT except the board itself and drivers.

Now let's look at the card itself.
It goes without saying that the color of the textolyte and the cooling system are traditional for MSI products.

There is 128 Mb DDR memory onboard with the 128-bit data transfer bus which are presented on board as eight Samsung memory chips marked K4D261638F - TC36 in the TSOP package, of 3.6 ns access time, which is equivalent to 275 MHz (550 MHz DDR) operating frequency. But in this particular specimen the rated operating frequency of the video memory proved to be a bit downstated and amounted to 500 MHz DDR.

The location of memory chips on the board is identical to what we are used to see on GeForce FX5700 (GPU NV36) - 4 chips on the front side, with the other four on the rear side.

The onboard cooling is implemented in absolutely the same way as in the RX600XT examined above. The radiator is round-shaped, made of aluminum, copper-styled, closes the GPU and memory chips without heat-spreaders.

But, besides the memory package, there is another distinction these two MSI boards can be easily told apart even with the naked eye.
This is the AGP-PCI Express bridge dubbed HSI.

MSI provided cooling also for the bridge and is made of the same material as the radiator for the GPU.

The board offers a standard set of outputs: analogous, digital, and TV-Out.

Now let's look at the GPU. The rated operating frequency of NV36 core is 425 MHz.
Note the "GEFORCE FX5700" sticker.

Our description would have been incomplete without mention of MSI's novelty called DOT (Dynamic Express Overclocking Technology).

In fact, this technology does not bear any practical benefit and is more likely just a nice and stylish addendum.

Now it's high time to switch from the exterior examination to practice and get round to comparative tests.

Test configuration

For today's tests we used our testing configuration described in detail in the previous review.

CPU	P4 3.4Mhz Extreme Edition 800FSB LGA
Mb	Intel D925XCV (i925X)
Memory	PC2-4300 (533MHz DDR2) 2x256Mb in the dual-channel-mode Memory latency timings - 4:4:4
VGA	MSI RX600XT-PCIE MSI GeForce PCX5750 ATI RX600Pro-PCIE
HDD	Matrox MaxlineIII SATA, 2x250Gb Matrix RAID
CD-ROM	MSI XA52P COMBO Writer SATA
OS	WinXP + SP1 + DirectX 9.0b
Drivers	ForceWare 61.11 Catalyst 4,7

Test software:

Synthetic benchmarks:

1. 3DMark2003 Patch 340;
2. 3DMark2001SE Patch 330;
3. Codecreatures v1.0.0 (a DirectX 8.1 application, shaders on, Hardware T&L);

   Gaming benchmarks:
   

4. Unreal Tournament 2003 (Direct3D, Hardware T&L, vertex shaders, Dot3, cube texturing.);
5. Unreal Tournament 2004
6. 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);
7. HALO: Combat Evolved 1.2 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1/1.4/2.0, Hardware T&L, quality set to the maximum possible);
8. Gun Metal Benchmark 2 v1.20s (a DirectX 9.0 benchmark, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 1.1, Hardware T&L);
9. Final Fantasy XI Official Benchmark 2 (a benchmark for assessing the performance in Final Fantasy XI. The developers haven't presented any data on the gaming engine);
10. Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness v49 (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0);
11. Half-life 2 leaked beta (DirectX 9.0, Vertex Shaders 2.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0);
12. FireStarter (DirectX 8.1/DirectX 9.0, pixel and vertex shaders, particle system, dynamic lights, projected textures);
13. FarCry ver1.1 (DirectX 9.0, Pixel Shaders 2.0, our own demo "3Dnews001" was used).
14. Comanche4 (DirectX 7.1).

Tests of MSI RX600XT, MSI GeForce PCX5750 and ATI RX600 PRO

We have examined both cards above in detail. Now - "Let the numbers speak".

First look at the synthetic results.

Now move on to the gaming applications.

Final Words

So, what was found out in the end? There is nothing of surprise, though. RX600XT once again proved the proud name of the leader on the market of PCI-Express solutions available to date which has won at absolutely all the items, sometimes leaving the competitors well behind. Anyway, this fact could be easily foreseen without examining any figures.

As regards the "GeForce PCX5750 versus ATI RX600 PRO" confrontation, we can only guess if the failure of PCX5750 is a consequence of "raw" drivers, or is it the technical implementation of PCI-Express that played its part in that. Or probably all these factors together somehow affected the final result? But that is a fact.

To date, PCX5750 looks a bit weak among its Canadian rivals and falls almost within the low-end.

Hopefully, NVIDIA will please us also in the middle-end sector of PCI-Express solutions like in today's high-end where cards of the GeForce 6 Series show superb standing, and we are looking forward to watching the contest between the PCI-Express cards by both companies already at the high-end level.

But we'll talk about that in detail as these cards start arriving at our test lab. For now, we are saying good-bye to you until the further material telling about a number of modifications made to one of the cards in question and then present the results for your judgment.

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