Review: GeForce FX5600 Ultra rev2

3DMark 2001SE v330

First up, lets see where performance of the FX5600 Ultra sits in relation to the other two boards on test, as an indicator, before moving on to more strenuous image quality tests.

A nice start for the NVIDIA board over its direct ATI rival, a near 15% lead in 3DMark 2001SE performance. Given the cards have the same pixel pushing power, the NVIDIA puts its 33% memory bandwidth advantage to good use. Now we turn on IQ features.

The gap widens in favour of the new FX5600 Ultra here, nearly 27% more over its rival. The performance drop graph at the bottom will show why. Now we increase resolution.

9700 Pro has over three times the horsepower with these settings than its midrange sibling, with FX5600 Ultra sitting in between. Memory bandwidth advantage put to good use again, all other things being equal. Here's the performance drop graph.

As you can see, in 3DMark 2001SE at least, the FX5600 Ultra is losing less of its performance as we switch on IQ enhancing settings. Will this initial sample of performance carry on to another test?