X-bit labs

New Family of Low-Cost NVIDIA Chips: GeForce FX 5600/5200 Review

Category: Video

by Tim Tscheblockov

[ 04/16/2003 | 11:50 PM ]

We reviewed NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra and GeForce FX 5200 Ultra reference graphics cards from NVIDIA and the first mass GeForce FX 5200 based graphics card from Albatron. New optimizations in Detonator drivers, new chips performance and image quality analysis, performance against the predecessors (GeForce4 Ti4200-8x and GeForce4 MX440-8x) and immediate rivals (ATI RADEON 9500 pro and RADEON 9000 Pro). And even more!

Table of contents:

• Closer Look: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra and GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
  
• Closer Look: Albatron GeForce FX 5200
  
• Drivers
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Performance: Synthetic Benchmarks
  
• Fillrate
  
• Pixel Shaders
  
• T&L and Vertex Shaders
  
• Performance: Anisotropic Filtering and Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing: Speed and Quality
  
• Performance: Gaming Tests
  
• Quake3 Arena
  
• Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
  
• Unreal Tournament 2003
  
• Codecult Codecreatures
  
• 3DMark2001 SE Gaming Benchmarks
  
• Conclusion
  

It is no secret that the graphics chip and graphics card manufacturers receive the biggest revenue not from the most expensive and high-performance solutions, but from the Value and mainstream products. This is not at all surprising, I should say: only dedicated enthusiasts would make up their mind to purchase the fastest and most expensive graphics accelerator. All other users will weigh all cons and pros and finally decide on a better value solution, no doubt.

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The most powerful today’s chips offered by the industry leaders, ATI and NVIDIA, are R300/R350 (or ATI RADEON 9700 Pro/9800 Pro) and NV30 (or GeForce FX 5800/5800 Ultra). Graphics cards based on these chips are very expensive that is why the majority of users are not very much interested in them.

A little less expensive DirectX9-compliant solutions used to be offered only by ATI for a while: these were the products based on the cut-down version of R300 chips aka RADEON 9500 and 9500 Pro. They didn’t cost as much as the “fully-fledged” RADEON 9700/9700 Pro solutions, but they are still stably above the sacred “$100-bar”.

The recent announcement of the new NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600/5200 family is expected to change this situation drastically. The GeForce FX 5600 Ultra based graphics cards are expected to cost around $199. However, the solutions based on the most inexpensive FX chip, on GeForce FX 5200, should overcome the remarkable $100-limit and settle around $79.

There will be 4 graphics card modifications altogether:

• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra. This solution will be based on NV31 graphics core. The chip and the graphics memory will work at 350MHz and 700MHz (350MHz DDR) respectively. The chip will support 128bit DDR SDRAM memory bus. This is the fastest and most expensive solution of the four newcomers, which is positioned as a replacement to the GeForce4 Titanium family.
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600. This product will be built on NV31 core working at a lower frequency than that of the previously described chip. The graphics memory will be also somewhat slower than in the previous case, but the exact values haven’t been disclosed yet. The chip will support 128bit DDR SDRAM memory bus. NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 are expected to replace NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4200 and Ti4200-8x solutions.
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra. The card is built on NV34 graphics core working at 325MHz. The memory will support 650MHz frequency (325MHz DDR) and 128bit DDR SDRAM bus.
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200. Here the same NV34 graphics core is used. The working frequencies make 250MHz for the core and 400MHz (200MHz DDR) for the memory. The memory bus is the same 128bit DDR SDRAM. NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 and GeForce FX 5200 Ultra will replace NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440-8x.

So, the new FX’s from NVIDIA started their invasion into the mass market. But what do the new chips actually look like?

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600/5200, or NV31/NV34 according to NVIDIA’s internal marking, inherit the NV30 ideology and architecture, but feature lower performance than the predecessor. In other words, they feature fewer functional units or are simply “cut down”.

We summed up the major characteristics of GeForce FX 5600/5200 chips in a table below. To give you a clearer picture, we also compared them with the features of the GeForce FX 5800 model: