Conclusion and thoughts
We alluded to the fact that midrange components are often the most crucial to a firm's success or failure. Higher volume sales, driven by the more attractive price points, brings in a chunk of both ATi and NVIDIA's revenues. Whereas ATi's midrange line is a reasonably clear, NVIDIA's can be just a little confusing. Take the two ABIT cards in for review today. Both are pukka FX 5600s, yet both have different GPU speeds and RAM clocks. What's more, there's another reference model, dubbed revision 2, that's faster than both cards.
Our benchmarks implied that the FX 5600 GPU is a sound one. Decent pixel-pushing power and decent bandwidth (Ultra models), together with NVIDIA's CineFX engine, that pushes the cards up past DX9 specification means that most gamers will be content with playing at 1024x768x32. However, as is vividly shown by the marked performance differences that exist between the Siluro 256MB FX 5600 (325MHz GPU / 400MHz RAM) and 128MB Ultra (350MHz GPU / 700MHz RAM), one needs to be extremely vigilant when purchasing. An uneducated decision can lead a substantially slower card than expected.
Taking each card in account, the ABIT Siluro FX 5600 DT 256MB card is a sheep in wolf's clothing. It, frankly, flatters to deceive. The 256MB of on-board memory will wow the uninitiated, but any modern card that's only running its RAM at 400MHz is throttling itself needlessly. It seems to be a little inconsistent with ABIT's own spec. sheets. ABIT quotes 8.8GB/s memory bandwidth, which equates to 550MHz memory, so the 400MHz memory clock is doubly confusing. In the context of the slow card RAM, the extra 128MB of memory is almost useless. We'd much rather have seen higher base clocks. The eye-shaped cooler, too, seems to be a design that doesn't carry too much practical purpose, and the bundle is decidedly average. It's pretty damn quiet, but is that enough to rid it of its obvious failings ?.
The ABIT Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT 128MB, however, is much more in tune with the performance one would attribute to a decent FX 5600 Ultra. It's not up to the speed of the reference revision 2, though, but it's more than capable of matching and exceeding those speeds once overclocked, and it provides ample competition for ATi's Radeon 9600 / PRO range of cards. The cooler's a little louder and the bundle is exactly the same as the 256MB's, save for the MOLEX extender. A number of games and quieter cooler would have made it that much nicer.
The FX 5600 / Ultra series is a reasonable stab at attempting to balance features and performance to cost. ABIT has a couple of cards here that are quite different beasts. The 256MB model is a disappointing card, especially in view of its potential. The 128MB Ultra version is worthy of consideration, however. We just wish it was based on the newer revision 2. Both cards appear to be priced at around the £125 mark. You pays your money, you takes your choice.
ABIT Siluro FX 5600 DT 256MB - 
ABIT Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT 128MB - 
