Closer Look: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra and GeForce FX 5200 Ultra

Two reference graphics cards based on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra and GeForce FX 5200 Ultra feature absolutely identical PCB design, so that it is absolutely impossible to distinguish between them at first glance. Therefore, I will offer you only one pair of pictures: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra:

Just like NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 Ultra, the new cards feature a special power supply connector, even though the new chips consume less power:

Both graphics cards feature 128MB of DDR SDRAM memory in BGA-chips from Hynix with 2.5ns clock time:

The only thing different about the cards design is the graphics chips: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra features a chip marked as NV31, and GeForce FX 5200 Ultra – as NV34:

The clock frequencies of the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra are 350MHz for the chip and 700MHz (350MHz DDR) for the graphics memory. NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra works at slightly lower frequencies: 325MHz chip and 650MHz (325MHz DDR) memory.

It looks as if the PCB design of the mass graphics cards based on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra and GeForce FX 5200 Ultra will be different from the reference, because it doesn’t make much sense to use the same design for solutions working at different frequencies and selling at pretty different prices. And the first mass graphics card from Albatron, which we had at our disposal, is clear evidence to that.

Closer Look: Albatron GeForce FX 5200

The mass graphics card from Albatron doesn’t have anything in common with NVIDIA’s reference design. It looks more like one of the numerous GeForce4 MX440 based solutions. Take a look yourselves:

Albatron graphics card is equipped with 128MB of 128bit DDR SDRAM memory in Samsung chips with 5ns clock time:

The working frequencies of this solution are exactly as recommended by NVIDIA: 250MHz for the chip and 400MHz (200MHz DDR) for the memory, that is considerably lower than those of an Ultra version of the card. This significant reduction of working frequencies resulted into a much lower power consumption. So, the chip can be cooled with a pretty small (according to today’s parameters) cooler and there is no additional power supply connector on the PCB.