by Alexey Stepin
08/07/2003 | 03:04 AM
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:
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.
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:
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.
The CD with drivers includes two curious utilities called Graphics Max and SiluroIQ. The first of them is an overclocking tool, and the second is a system monitoring program. Frankly, they both fell short of our expectations. Graphics Max has a narrow frequency range for the GPU (375MHz) and average (875MHz) for the memory. SiluroIQ will not work at all, which is no surprise: the hero of our today’s review has no hardware monitoring capabilities. The CD also contains a modified version of InterVideo WinDVD player under the name of SiluroDVD.
The second disk coming with the card stores a demo version of “Soldier of Fortune II”, an “Earth Viewer” program (a kind of virtual globe) and a special version of “Window Blinds” that can change the looks of Windows XP. However, the latter utility works only with styles from NVIDIA and ABIT that are enclosed.
Our ABIT Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT card gave out 415/810MHz at overclocking, but I decided to benchmark it at 400/800MHz (the frequencies of the new revision of NV31). The 15/10MHz frequency difference is of no crucial matter. The quality of the screen image in 2D was good enough, although the text seemed a little blurred in 1600x1200@85. On the other hand, 2D quality largely depends on the display you use the graphics card with.
The direct competitors to GeForce FX 5600 Ultra based cards are those that feature ATI’s RADEON 9600 PRO and a little out-dated, but still potent, RADEON 9500 PRO. We also include the results shown by NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 as a kind of reference-point.
The testbed was configured as follows:
The list of our benchmarks included:
All the games ran with maximum graphics quality settings in three resolutions: 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. There were two work modes: “light” (without full-screen antialiasing and anisotropic filtering) and “hard” (4x FSAA and 8x AF). To my regret, NVIDIA once again was caught at drivers “optimization”, this time in Splinter Cell. It turned out the graphics cards based on last-generation GPUs from NVIDIA and ATI Technologies couldn’t correctly enable full-screen antialiasing in this game. There appear artifacts, often in the way of light sources shining through solid walls. The companies took different approaches to this problem, although similarly unacceptable. ATI Technologies just ignored it and left things as they were. NVIDIA turned to its favorite hocus-pocus: modified the drivers so that full-screen antialiasing wouldn’t turn on when the user launches SplinterCell.exe. As usual, they “forgot” to tell the community about it and we have to make up for this now. Here are the visual treats you can enjoy by renaming SplinterCell.exe and running the game with enabled FSAA:
Some more:
Or even such:
Thus, we should acknowledge that Splinter Cell tests cannot be called correct, although GeForce FX shows a true-to-life performance hit in this game when FSAA is on. So, we recommend you use this benchmark to compare chips from one manufacturer (ATI against ATI or NVIDIA against NVIDIA). For the sake of truth I should note that there are some problems with light sources with ATI hardware as well when FSAA enabled. The artefacts are still not as dramatic as with NVIDIA hardware.
The introduction over, let’s see the benchmarking results.
Well, Quake and Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT seem to be born for each other: the non-overclocked card from ABIT is better than RADEON 9600 PRO in all tests, overclocking making the gap even wider. Only in the “hard” mode RADEON 9600 PRO, sky-high overclocked, catches up with FX 5600 Ultra DT. RADEON 9500 PRO did surprisingly good, notwithstanding its much lower frequencies (275/540MHz). Well, there shouldn’t be much surprise really: its eight-pipeline architecture helps the GPU perform at equals with the competitors under high workloads.
“Return to Castle Wolfenstein”, on the contrary, favors GPUs from ATI Technologies: Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT loses the light mode completely and comes closer to the rivals only with FSAA and AF enabled.
RADEON 9500 PRO once again shows an excellent performance.
It’s all otherwise in “Jedi Knight II”: Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT easily wins the light mode, but loses the hard one, where the good old RADEON 9500 PRO is racing fastest of all.
“Serious Sam: The Second Encounter” with its original game engine produces the following picture: ABIT’s card is in the lead, followed by RADEON 9500 PRO. The latter is getting closer in the hard mode and they simultaneously hit the finishing tape in 1600x1200. Still, I guess this test adds one more point to Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT.
The number of graphics pipelines and faster memory are crucial factors in UT 2003. Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT is best in the light mode, while RADEON 9500 PRO – in the hard one.
Overclocking of RADEON 9600 PRO is advantageous, too.
Now, here is the hardest game of the day. Splinter Cell can easily drive any graphics card with powerful shader units to its knees. GeForce FX cannot boast fast shaders processing and is on the losing side everywhere. Moreover, the overclocked RADEON 9600 PRO goes neck and neck with the much more expensive GeForce FX 5900.
Due to the reasons explained above, we can’t call the tests with enabled FSAA and AF correct. However, we may notice that Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT working at 400/800MHz is faster than non-overclocked itself.
Let’s see how good the hero of this review is in synthetic benchmarks.
ABIT Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT feels quite confident in the light mode where even RADEON 9500 PRO gives up before its 400/800MHz frequencies. The RADEON pays back, though, in the FSAA+AF mode thanks to its eight pipelines. The non-overclocked Siluro and RADEON 9600 PRO are alternately coming ahead of each other.
The second game test (a flight on a dragon) ranks the cards up as follows: RADEON 9500 PRO, the overclocked RADEON 9600 PRO and Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT. The Siluro card even catches up with RADEON 9500 PRO in 1600x1200 resolution.
The same goes for the “hard” mode where Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT is now faster than RADEON 9600 PRO in 1600x1200.
Siluro FX 5600 Ultra (400/800MHz) and RADEON 9500 PRO are best of all in the third game test (Matrix) from the 3DMark 2001SE suite.
The same pair – Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT (in both variants) and RADEON 9500 PRO – is fastest in the fourth game test (Nature). The overclocked RADEON 9600 PRO looks good in the light mode, too.
Now, let’s go over to the ultra-modern benchmarking suite, 3DMark03.
ATI’s GPUs perform better in the first test (a flight sim). Overclocking brings benefits to Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT in the light mode only.
The second game test (a 3D-shooter) shows that ATI’s GPUs do better in the light mode, while the overclocked version of Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT is ahead in the hard mode due to its higher frequencies and more effective memory subsystem. Moreover, GeForce FX chips are known to execute old-version shaders no worse than their ATI’s rivals.
The same goes for the second game test (it is a kind of third-person-view RPG). The NV31 architecture is advantageous in the hard mode, but worse – in the light one.
The fourth game test from 3DMark03, the notorious Mother Nature, drives yet another nail into the coffin of shader units of NVIDIA GeForce FX chips. The approach of ATI Technologies to shaders 2.0 realization is unquestionably best available. And these shaders are a part of DirectX 9.0! Even GeForce FX 5900 falls far behind the graphics cards featuring GPUs of the Canadian origin. Among RADEONs themselves, the 9500 PRO model is fastest in this test. Seems like ATI was wrong in reducing the number of pipelines to four in RV350: it is only by overclocking that RADEON 9600 PRO can run as fast as its predecessor.
The beautiful and geometry-heavy Codecreatures test tells that ATI GPUs, especially RADEON 9500 PRO, set the pace in the light mode, while Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT is better with enabled antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. Anyway, none of the graphics cards can provide for an acceptable fps rate in this test.
So, we have benchmarked an ABIT Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT graphics card. I think it is a well-made product; my only gripe is about the bleak box design and poor accessories. Instead of the interesting, but hardly useful “Earth Viewer” program and the practically useless “Window Blinds” utility, they might have included something like a full version of “Soldier of Fortune II” rather than just a demo. My critical remarks end here, though. All other things – the nice design of the PCB and cooler, fan highlighting, high quality of manufacture, appropriate set of cables and adapters – are good and pleasing. The high overclocking potential of the card may make it popular among overclockers. Modders will surely like the blue fan highlighting as well as its original shape.
As for performance, it is quite enough to play modern games and only weak shader units may become a significant drawback in the future. That’s why ABIT Siluro FX 5600 DT is going to perform slower than cards based on ATI chips in upcoming games. Well, this actually refers to the whole GeForce FX series. Overall, the ABIT Siluro FX 5600 Ultra DT graphics card is a worthy candidate for the AGP slot of your system.
Advantages:
Disadvantages: