Review: Gainward FX5200 Ultra Pro/760 XP

3DMark 2001SE first. It'll be interesting to see how the 4x1 unoptimised version of the GeForce FX GPU does, versus the 9600 Pro, it's nearest contender in the graphs. Will it be as 'budget' as its specifications suggest?

Only 700 points shy of the midrange board, I'd have expected a bigger gap. Given the loss of 35 million transistors implementing optimisation for the GPU, the board should do worse when we turn on AA and AF. Here goes.

Just what we expected, as the increase in image quality is enabled. The GPU in Ultra form can hold its own without IQ features, but as soon as we switch them on, in 3DMark 2001 SE at least, performance drops off fairly sharply. The increase to 1600x1200 wont help things.

It comes close to 9600 Pro, but it looks like both are running out of steam at this point. The PD graph will show us what's happening.

It's the worst board in the group when it comes to turning on IQ, but that was certainly to be expected. It does a little better as we bump up the resolution, and keeps a good pace with the 9600 Pro. Closer than I'd anticipated, before benchmarking began. With EXPERTool boosting the clocks, there was another ~1.5% of performance to be had in the base test, boosting the score to just over 11300. With IQ enabled, the clock boost is all but swallowed up and performance is virtually identical.

Let's try another test, something a bit different to 3DMark 2001 in terms of render setup.