X-bit labs

ABIT SILURO FX 5600 Ultra DT 128MB Graphics Card Review

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin

[ 08/07/2003 | 03:04 AM ]

Historically, graphics cards based on GPUs from NVIDIA managed to dominate mainstream and higher-end market segments. But after the introduction of the RADEON 9700 PRO in 2002, the company lost its crown and still cannot fully return it. Meanwhile the battles in the mainstream market segments have never been so fierce. Check out our review of ABIT SILURO GeForce FX U5600 Ultra graphics card to find out who is the strongest mainstream performer nowadays.

Table of contents:

• Closer Look
  
• SiluroIQ and Graphics Max: Useless Tools
  
• Overclocking and 2D Quality
  
• OpenGL Gaming Benchmarks
  
• Direct3D Gaming Benchmarks
  
• Synthetic Benchmarks: 3DMark2001SE, 3DMark03 and Codecreatures
  
• Conclusion
  

Today, there is a new guest in our test lab – welcome the ABIT Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT 128MB graphics card! Its name tells us what is in its heart – the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 graphics processor a.k.a. NV31. Its architecture is much alike to the misfortunate NV30, but this GPU is for mainstream graphics cards. Here’s the list of its characteristics:

• 0.13micron tech process;
• AGP 8x support;
• 1.4 GTexel/sec fill-rate;
• Vertex processing speed: 88 million vertexes per second;
• CineFX technology: pixel and vertex shader 2.0+ support;
• Intellisample technology;
• Multi-display configurations (nView technology);
• NVIDIA Digital Vibrance Control 3.0;
• Two RAMDACs working at 400MHz;
• Rendering of 16 texels from eight textures on a pixel per clock cycle;
• 4 rendering pipelines with 1 TMU per each: 4x1 and 2x2 work modes (pipelines x TMU);
• Optimization for the Cg language;
• New 64-phase video scaling method;
• Video Mixer Renderer (VMR) support;
• MPEG-2 hardware decoding;
• TV-out with an anti-flicker function;
• DVI-I with up to 1600x1200 resolution.

I guess you’re impressed. I am. By the way, we’ve got a card with an older revision of the chip. It works at 350MHz with Hynix memory (2.8ns) clocked at 350(700DDR)MHz. Right now NVIDIA is actively promoting a newer version of GeForce FX 5600 Ultra where the GPU, now FC-PGA-packaged, works at 400MHz with 800MHz memory. Running a little ahead, I can say that our card could also work at these frequencies quite well. We ran a whole bunch of benchmarks for the overclocked card to check out how fast the new revision is.

Closer Look

The ABIT Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT graphics card came to us as a retail product. The box is rather unassuming: blue, black and white colors combined in an obscure picture like those Maya Indians used to draw. Frankly, most other manufacturers take time to paint their packages up more brightly and attractively. The box concealed the following:

• ABIT Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT 128MB;
• User manual;
• CD with drivers and utilities;
• CD with demos of various software;
• Molex splitter (in a blue casing);
• DVI-I -> D-Sub adapter;
• S-Video -> RCA adapter;
• RCA cable;
• S-Video cable.

The graphics card itself is much more nice-looking than the box: the silver color of the cooling system combined with the dark-blue of the PCB appeals to the eye of a true aesthete.

As you can see, the PCB layout is rather simple. There’s unusual emptiness in the left part of the card, although covered by the petal of the cooling system. The free space is for a Philips chip that is responsible for TV-input. But as this model has no TV-input capabilities, the place is left empty. The right part of the card seems to be closely following NVIDIA’s etalon – the placement of all components is the same as in reference-cards. The Molex power connector is girdled by a metal clamp, dead-soldered to the PCB – you’d have a tough time trying to damage such a thing. A curious fact: ABIT engineers must have intended to mount heatsinks on the memory chips as there are mounting holes and marks on the PCB. However, they never did it, although the card with heatsinks installed would be more enticing for an overclocker.

The cooling system is nothing extraordinary, too. An aluminum heat-spreader with relatively thin ribs and a small fan is covered with a protective lattice, which is rather hard to describe – something like a petal with holes in the left part and the “SILURO” engraving in the right. The whole thing is fastened by means of two ordinary plastic spring-clamps. The heatsink sits quite tight on the GPU, there’s thermal paste in-between them. The modding trend hasn’t been omitted: the fan has transparent blades highlighted by a bright blue LED. There’s actually not much sense in this as all AGP cards are installed into standard system cases with the fan down. So, this LED will only illuminate the first PCI card. Well, this is fashion. It doesn’t require any justification or logical explanation.

The cooling system does its job well, although making a lot of fuss and noise about it. The backside of the PCB carries a number of small components. The wiring is neat, although some details are not installed – those responsible for TV-input. Here’s also a black label with the name of the card and some number etched in silver.

The manufacture quality of this product is up to the mark – we couldn’t expect anything less from ABIT.