Setup and notes
Hardware
- Gainward GeForce FX 5700 Ultra Golden Sample Ultra/960 Dual-DVI, 128MB, AGP 8X, 500/1000
- Reference GeForce FX 5700 Ultra, 128MB, 8X AGP, 475/906
- ATI Radeon 9800SE All-In-Wonder, 128MB, 8x AGP, 380/680
- AMD Athlon 64 Model 3400+, 2200MHz
- EPoX 8HDA3+ S754 VIA K8T800 Motherboard (12/12 BIOS)
- Corsair XMS3500C2, 2 x 256MB, 2-2-2-6 @ DDR400
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- AMD reference cooler
- IBM 120GXP 40GB Hard Drive
- Dell P991 19" flat-faced CRT monitor
Software
- Windows XP Professional SP1
- ATI CATALYST 4.1
- NVIDIA ForceWare 53.03
- VIA Hyperion v4.51 chipset drivers
- DirectX 9.0b Runtime
- FRAPS 2.0.0
- 3DMark 2001SE v330
- 3DMark03 v340
- AquaMark3
- Splinter Cell (Beyond3D Demo)
- Unreal Tournament 2003 Retail - patched up to 2225 - HEXUS custom benchmark)
- X2: The Threat
- Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 - HEXUS Custom Benchmark with FRAPS
Notes
The Gainward card installed correctly and booted first time. Running two DVI monitors proved to be impossible. The reason, as I later learned, was that evaluation cards didn't have both ports working correctly. Rather, the right-hand port, as you look from the back of the card, worked correctly. The left-hand one would refuse to boot a TFT driven by a DVI cable. Retail examples do, naturally.
2D quality
Pretty good at 1600x1200 75Hz. Nothing untoward to report here. We believe that NVIDIA and its partners have upped the quality of their cards' 2D. Rys reckons the AOpen Aeolus GeForce FX 5950 Ultra had the most vivid 2D of any card to grace HEXUS' labs. There's little or no difference between NVIDIA and ATI cards' visual output.
Noise
Compared to the Radeon 9800 AIW the Gainward fan's noise was more noticeable in a quiet system. The user of a high RPM fan doesn't help. Gainward has stuck to a certain cooler and fan belief for a while. We feel it's time that a larger heatsink and fan combination was used. Larger fans can spin at slower speeds and still deliver comparable airflow. The larger deadspot is perhaps of more concern to GPU and card designers. This Gainward card also employs dual GPU clocks for 2D and 3D work. 2D speeds are set to 300MHz GPU, 3D work bolsters it up to 500MHz.
Testing
Benchmarking was undertaken at 1024x768 and 1600x1200. Both resolutions were set to 32-bit quality. Vertical sync was disabled. We also tested with 4x AntiAliasing and 8x Anisotropic Filtering. Midrange cards should do well at 1024x768 with 4x AA and 8x AF, but increasing the resolution and graphical hurt to 1600x1200 4x / 8x will force the cards' memory bandwidth to stall.
Benchmarks were run three times. The highest and lowest results were discarded.
