The Geforce fx range increases as the Geforce fx 5700 ultra takes the stage. Aimed at the mid-range or mainstream market the 5700 ultra offers performance greater than that of the previous fx 5600 ultra card. It is based on the NV36 core that this version features a higher memory clock speed and so a higher memory bandwidth. The NV36 core also supports DDR-II and GDDR3 memory to give manufacturers a choice on how to build there cards.

As a mid range card the price is very appealing and will suit the majority of price/performance buyers. Decent speeds are hard to come buy at this price and just shows how quickly the market is moving in terms of graphics.

Geforce FX Card comparison

Theory and practice only come together in a perfect world. And as this world is a way off perfect you expect the same from the theory of peak fill rates. For a mid range card the fx 5700 ultra possesses absolutely massive potential. the 900Mhz DDR memory clock and 475Mhz core clock give the card a peak fill rate of 1.9 Billion pixels/s. Also the 14.5Gb/s memory bandwidth knocks the socks off ATI's Radeon 9600 Pro and XT versions.

looking at 3Dmarks results it seems that in single texturing mode the Geforce fx is well ahead of the Radeon 9600. This proves the fill rate and raw power of the Geforce. ATI has always claimed to be the manufacturer for the person who wants better quality. If we go to multi texturing the Radeon shows its colours. While the fx 5700 ultra keeps up with the Radeon 9600 Pro the Radeon 9600 XT version still holds that crown.

Improved Shaders

Nvidia informed the potential buyers of the Geforce fx 5700 ultra of the improved shaders the NV36 has. The NV36 and fx 5700 ultra boasts 3 vertex units that achieves around double the vertex shader performance of the NV31. This shows in benchmarks as well as the fx 5700 ultra almost doubles the performance of the fx5600 ultra. Something that Nvidia didn't claim was an increase in the pixel shader performance, even so this also seems to have around double the performance of the fx 5600 ultra. They must have done some tinkering in there.

The card sports a fetching heatsink and fan cooler. It looks like the one found on the high-end Geforce fx 5900 and 5900 ultra cards. The only difference is that this cooling unit seems to be a little bit lighter and a little bit smaller overall. It is possible it seems to use the first PCI slot with this card in the AGP slot however its still tight (as with most graphics cards these days) so we recommend that unless you need all your PCI slots,  then leave the first one open for better airflow and therefore better cooling of the GPU.

Variations of the Geforce FX5700

Currently there are 4 variations of the FX5700 on the market. These are the FX5700, FX5700LE, and 2 versions of the FX5700 Ultra. Lets have a quick look at the differences in these cards.

The LE version of the card is significantly slower than the others in both memory and core speeds. As such lower grade chips can be used and these cards should be relatively cheap on the market. The standard FX5700 has only a slightly slower core speed however to keep the costs down again the memory chips are relatively slow. The differences between the two ultra cards are that the latest one released by Nvidia users the new GDDR3 memory type and has been increased in speed by 50Mhz. GDDR3 was created by ATI as a open standard for anyone to use. Nvidia has since been ready to launch its high end cards with this memory type. They have decided however to pre launch it so to speak on an existing platform. In this case the FX5700.

As a mainstream card this is up there with the best, however the market is changing very rapidly at the moment and it probably wont be around in that market forever. The Radeon 9600 XT does give this card a good race and certain aspects of real world performance the Radeon offering is slightly better.

Not a great deal to say differently on this version of the Geforce FX line of cards except that the price on this one compared to the performance is the thing to look for.

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