Conclusion

So, what could we say about the new NVIDIA GeForce FX graphics chips family?

At first we would like to make a few traditionally pessimistic statements about DirectX9.

Of course, the appearance of low-cost graphics cards supporting DirectX9 should speed up the coming of contemporary 3D technologies into masses. However, most today’s graphics cards used in home systems hardly have even DirectX8 support. And it means that new products with fully-fledged DirectX9 support will come not that soon yet: will you profit a lot from selling a game, which doesn’t run on most of the today’s systems?

However, new GeForce FX family is intended to improve the situation.

First, the performance of graphics cards based on new NVIDIA GeForce FX chips is generally higher compared with the performance of the previous generation graphics solutions. NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra is faster than GeForce4 Ti4200-8x, and GeForce FX 5200 Ultra (even GeForce FX 5200) are faster than GeForce4 MX440-8x.

Second, all new chips inherited optimized anisotropic filtering algorithm from NV30, which allows them to achieve much better  results in those applications where anisotropic filtering is used. Definitely, this is an advantage over their predecessors.

Third, GeForce FX 5600/5600 Ultra chips intended to replace GeForce4 Ti family, support frame buffer compression and better-quality full-screen anti-aliasing methods. GeForce FX 5200/5200 Ultra expected to replace GeForce4 MX family can now support fully-fledged multisampling. These improvements allow the new graphics chips to show their best during full-screen anti-aliasing.

At last, the prices of the new graphics solutions based on the freshly announced NV31 and NV34 chips promise to be very attractive. If GeForce FX 5200/5200 Ultra based graphics cards will sell at about the same or a little higher price than the today’s GeForce4 MX440-8x, then I don’t think you will find it hard to make a decision about the graphics solution. Especially since the competing solution from ATI, RADEON 9000 Pro, is slower than GeForce FX 5200/5200 Ultra in many tests.

No wonder that graphics card makers are especially excited about the low-cost GeForce FX 5200 graphics chips. One of the first mass graphics cards based on NVIDIA GeForce 5200 chip, which we managed to test, a solution from Albatron, is a real proof to the point. This graphics card combines not very high price with very high quality, good performance and contemporary 3D technologies support. Of course, GeForce FX 5200 based graphics cards, just like Albatron’s solution, will feature the same power consumption and heat dissipation, alongside with low noise level. These qualities will make graphics cards like Albatron GeForce FX 5200 an excellent choice for low-cost home gaming systems and as a worthy replacement to morally outdated ATI RADEON 9000 Pro and NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440.

As for the more expensive NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600/5600 Ultra chips, we can’t draw any final conclusions yet. On the one hand, GeForce FX 5600/5600 Ultra feature a lot of advantages over GeForce4 Titanium family, such as faster anti-aliasing, faster anisotropic filtering, DirectX9 support. On the other hand, ATI RADEON 9500 pro managed to beat these solutions in performance in most cases. So here the attractiveness and popularity of the graphics cards will be mostly determined by their price compared with rivalry solutions on ATI chips. In fact, NVIDIA has a lot of room for price reduction, so I am pretty sure that NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600/5600 Ultra based graphics cards will cost little enough to be an attractive buy.

Well, and in conclusion a few words about the drivers: don’t you think they should finally bring the names of different “quality-performance” modes in accordance with common sense?