Please critique this video card

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Thu May 20, 2004 7:18 pm

GAINWARD nVIDIA GeForce FX5700 ULTRA Video Card, 128MB GDDR3, 128-bit, Dual DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "FX PowerPack! Ultra/960 DVI-DVI Golden Sample" -RETAIL
N82E16814128188

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 188&depa=1

$183

I am wanting the fx5950u, but it is still $300-400 for a decent brand. I can't justify that much for these new games. I was thinking of the TI4600, to use in my game box until the 5950u drop below $200, then throw it in my development box...but the thing is $160! for $20 more I can get a 5700.

Thing is, is this 5700 ok?

Chipset/Core Speed: nVIDIA GeForce FX5700 ULTRA/500MHz
Memory/Effective Speed: 128MB GDDR3/1000MHz

How does that have a 1ghz memory speed(which is more than on the 5950u)?! Even the core speed is higher. What's the catch?

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Thu May 20, 2004 8:24 pm

It's the only nvidia card in the market to use GDR3 (The 6800 series use it too, but they are hard to fine and int he 400-500+ $ range)

Good card for the money.

kurupt · Post by **kurupt** » Thu May 20, 2004 9:12 pm

radeon 9800 pro, slightly more buck, alot more bang.

SuperSheep · Post by **SuperSheep** » Thu May 20, 2004 9:43 pm

I have a Geforce4 TI4600 by Gainward and all I can say is I am very satisfied with the features, stability, and overclockability of this card. Gainward is a good company IMHO.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Thu May 20, 2004 10:57 pm

I have a FX 5900 Ultra (leadtek), IMO most nvidia cards are equal. Gainward is a good brand.

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Fri May 21, 2004 7:35 am

At half the speeds, Kur, how is that more bang?

and can anyone shed ight as to why the specs on this 5700 are higher than the 5950u?

Warlock · Post by **Warlock** » Fri May 21, 2004 7:52 am

if u wait till the 6800 comes out the prices will drop big time

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Fri May 21, 2004 7:55 am

That's why I'm waiting.

Vertigo · Post by **Vertigo** » Fri May 21, 2004 8:37 am

Testiculese wrote:At half the speeds, Kur, how is that more bang?

Depends on what games you play, if you only play D3 i'd stick with an nvidia card.... but for all the rest, this 9800Pro will be waaay faster than that FX5700.

KompresZor · Post by **KompresZor** » Fri May 21, 2004 8:53 am

Review at Tom's
If I was going to buy a card in the under $200 price range, I would buy a FX5900XT
Gainward cards are top notch imho.

Arch · Post by **Arch** » Fri May 21, 2004 9:21 am

Testiculese wrote:At half the speeds, Kur, how is that more bang?

Clock speed means absolutely NOTHING when talking about video cards. Nothing at all, don't even consider buying a card based on the clock speed of the GPU or memory. The 9800Pro will destroy that 5700 is just about everything. See Tom's roundup of just about every modern video card available at the moment:

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/2 ... index.html

Personally, I couldn't tell you the clock speeds on my 9700 Pro, I haven't got the faintest idea as to what it runs at. Get a 9800Pro, some can be had for $199.

Arch · Post by **Arch** » Fri May 21, 2004 9:25 am

I didn't notice this before, but here's Sapphire's 9800 Pro for $172. Retail box even. Thats a hot deal!

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 369&depa=0

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Fri May 21, 2004 10:48 am

The only thing keeping me from ati is drivers.

Do they have the same feature set as a gf?

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Fri May 21, 2004 10:58 am

Testiculese wrote:The only thing keeping me from ati is drivers.

Do they have the same feature set as a gf?

with Riva, you can tweak them just like NVidia drivers

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Fri May 21, 2004 11:43 am

Drivers are the sole reason I've stayed away from the ATI products too Dave. The GDR3 is why the clock is so high btw

Admiral LSD · Post by **Admiral LSD** » Fri May 21, 2004 12:02 pm

I wub my 9500 Pro, it's not going anywhere. Drivers haven't been a problem. It's a year old though and therefore not 1337 enough for this conversation.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Fri May 21, 2004 12:06 pm

If you play D3, go nVidia -- better OGL. My last few cards where Gainward Golden Samples, best cards IMVHO. The 5700 in a GS version for that price is hard to beat.

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Fri May 21, 2004 1:35 pm

Well scrap the 5700..only 45fps in UT2k4

Teddy · Post by **Teddy** » Fri May 21, 2004 2:19 pm

Unless you never want descent opengl peformance... stay the heck away from anything ATI, you wont even be able to turn on antialising in d3(it's a hardware "design flaw" as ati cards can't do antialising in 16 bit color since the r300 chips). i also got sick an tired of 75% of my opengl games not running properly on my 9700(no working gamma, games crashing to the point that ctrl/alt/del wouldnt even work and of course no antialising in d3)

A 5900xt card is your best bet if you want something now, the one i got was under $180, has vivo and is clocked as high as the regular 5900's. In d3 i got a 25% boost in framerate over ati's 9700..in most d3d games i gained about 5% at 1024x768 over my 9700.

the 5700 is a much weaker chip than the 5900.... i'd stay away from it..

Pun · Post by **Pun** » Fri May 21, 2004 4:16 pm

I love my BFG FX5900. I did, however, get into a bad batch @ newegg and had to return two of em before I got one that worked. Now that I have a good one, I can say it rocks. I'm running it at 500/1000 and getting 100FPS in UT, 1024x768, everything turned up.

I wouldn't buy any nvidia FX with the XT after the name, Dave. They are slower. Also, beware of XT's being advertised as non-XT's. Ran into that as well.

kurupt · Post by **kurupt** » Fri May 21, 2004 6:25 pm

i built a machine for a buddy and i used one of those middle of the road nvidia cards becuase of the price, and they cant hold a candle to my card. for only 20 bucks more you can have a much better card, be it an ati 9800 or a nvidia 5900.

the ati drivers are fine, they've been fine for a few months. they were crap when the cards came out, but since 4.2 (i think?) they've been beautiful. if you're buying a card from this generation, for bang to buck ratio, you cannot beat the 9800 pro right now.

however the next generation is about here, so you might want to wait a little and see what happens before you buy a video card. better cards are coming out, prices will drop, etc.

if you are indeed only playing d3, just get a geforce 3 with 64mb of ram. more than enough. i had my old one running battlefield 1942 without problems, so it can deliver a decent punch to fairly new games. again if its d3 only nvidia is better, but why would you be buying a new video card for d3 only when you have glide now?

nvidia and ati's cards are both great, i've used both the 5900's and the 9800's, and they both rock. i think the 9800 pro plays games slightly better though, from what ive seen. you cant really go wrong with either, just go for the price. if you can find soemthing cheaper than that 172 dollar 9800 pro then go for it. but i'd just get that.

just make sure you dont get one of the middle of the road cards expecting it to perform well. they won't. you'd have to get a 9800 pro or xt, or a 5900/5950 ultra to get good performance.

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Fri May 21, 2004 10:56 pm

When all is said and done, I'm getting my new card for the new games. D3 will run fine with whatever card I get, so I'm not worried about that.

(I am aware of the XT limitations, thx anyway)

That said, I *am* waiting for the new 6800's and ati's whatever they are coming out with so that the rest of the cards will drop in price. Then I will get my 5950u. I'm only looking for a middle-of-the-road card, but I want it to be worth something for the money. That 5700 just isn't it.

I'm thinking of just getting a ti4600/4800 for now ($80 at MicroCenter). I got one for my friends mahcine, and it plays UT2k4 just fine. This card will just go in my development machine eventually anyway, where it will rot away doing nothing but giving me decent 2d performance. I'd get a Matrox for that, but I don't care enough.

@#$%, before I do this, I still have to drill a 1" hole for the PSU lines in the case backplane.

Vindicator · Post by **Vindicator** » Fri May 21, 2004 11:47 pm

ATI's drivers were an issue a few years ago when I got my Radeon PCI, but my Radeon 9700np and my 9800 pro have been fast and trouble-free.

I thought about waiting until the 6800's came out before getting a replacement for my dead 9700, but I decided to just get a 9800 pro and i'm very pleased with it.

Teddy · Post by **Teddy** » Sat May 22, 2004 7:58 am

Vindicator, give that 9800 about 6 to 8 months and you will see exactly why i can't stand ATI. After you get 5 or 6 driver releases in a row that hard lock your computer while trying to run several popular games(as Call of duty or Medial of honor do on the 9700) even if ati coulndt fix it in one driver release.... wtf is up with 5 certified drivers with the same major bugs??? Or even something as simple as gamma hasnt worked in the last 5 or 6 driver releases(and believe me.. there is a much bigger list of bugs for hte 9700)????

I'm sorry, i call them as i see them, and ati has tto have the crappiest beta testing team for them to let this stuff through... expecially when they claimed on each release that these exact bugs were fixed...

If you really want to get an ati card... i'd buy the x800 as it's the only card that will recieve any good support over the next year. but before you even consider doing something like this, i'd check out rage3d.com and look at the threads where the 7200/7500/8500/9700 gamers are complaing about all the bugs and how poor the support has been for thier card as soon as the newer card has come out....

kurupt · Post by **kurupt** » Sat May 22, 2004 8:49 am

just out of curiosity teddy, do you know about the song and dance involved with updating drivers? you cant just uninstall the old ones and reinstall the new ones, it causes all kinds of problems, problems similar to yours. are you using driver cleaner?

Teddy · Post by **Teddy** » Sat May 22, 2004 9:19 am

yes, i know the song and dance. I've been gameing sice 1992, so i'm fairly versed in how to set up a computer.... and i also know how to do a fresh format/install, which is much safer than using those driver cleaners(norton ghost also helps with testing drivers when you save a backup with everying installed except video drivers.)

You don't have to take my word for any of the problems i've listed here for the ati card's, thay are all listed on rage3d.com since that seems to be the most popualr Ati fan hangout. I'm not the only one having these prolbems, there are quie a few users having the exact same problems...

here are a few samples....

regestry hack you have to do to fix buggy opengl gamma bacause ati cant get it right in the first place http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread. ... d=33751953

8500 users complaining about 4.x drivers hardlocking thier systems http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread. ... d=33759126

this one hit home for me as i had a 9700 http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread. ... d=33738390 (you might want to note all the 9600/9800 fanboys in this thread posting that it must be user error because they have no problem

maybe they need to learn to read, and they'd see this bug was limited to the r300 - 9500/9700)

you want more, go check out it out for yourself, the only reason i'm bothering to post this is because i'd hate to see another gamer get burned the way i did with my 9700, The card started out ok but it's support went to #e11, and as a result, i'll never give ati my money again..

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat May 22, 2004 9:44 am

Testi, if you are already planning on waiting till the 6800s hit the shelves, you might think about waiting for one of the midrange or lowend 6800 cards, I was highly impressed with some of the results I saw from the 6800 GT card that was reviewed on some sites.

-Krom

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sat May 22, 2004 9:48 am

Teddy, I have the 9700 pro and have been using it for a couple of years. Yes, early on I had some problems. Now I don't. One thing you may not know is ATI recommends in bios to drop the agp speed down to 64. Once I did this I had no problem with games locking up.

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Sat May 22, 2004 9:55 am

It's a possibility, Krom. The 6800's will be out for a lil bit before I'd get the 5950 anyway, so I'll see what the price/performance ratio is. It will be my video card for at least 2 years, and since I'm not much on getting games as soon as they come out anyway, I can afford to sit on a 5950, as it plays all the ones I want (bf,ut) just fine.

Teddy · Post by **Teddy** » Sat May 22, 2004 11:38 am

the problems with games locking up had nothing to do with the agp speed(altho i did try it in the past along with setting agp 8x down to 4x..)

If you read the thread posted there about the crashing in opengl games(medal of honor or Call of Duty only), you will see that driver sets before 3.10 worked fine and driver set newer for some reason, resulted in the game crashing the whole system!!! Now that dont sound like a hardware problem that would cause you to fool around with the agp speed to me.... that is 100% driver issue(expecially when it only affects one certian chip aka r300).

Admiral LSD · Post by **Admiral LSD** » Sat May 22, 2004 12:56 pm

Teddy wrote:Vindicator, give that 9800 about 6 to 8 months and you will see exactly why i can't stand ATI.

I've had my 9500 Pro (an R300 derivative) for over 12 and haven't noticed any of the problems you describe. In fact, I've had more issues with nVidia's drivers than I've ever had with ATi's. I even uninstall the old drivers before installing the new ones (this is the first time I've heard it was a no-no, I got the exact opposite impression when I first got it a year ago) and still have no trouble. I even run it on an nForce2 motherboard and guess what? No trouble at all.

Kyouryuu · Post by **Kyouryuu** » Sat May 22, 2004 2:05 pm

I've had the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro for about two years now and have experienced no significant crashing or problems with the card, regardless of what games I've put it through.

It's quite solid and the only thing that bugs me about it is ATI's Linux ignorance (i.e. only compiling their work for RPM-based distros instead of generic tarballs).

Mr. Perfect · Post by **Mr. Perfect** » Sat May 22, 2004 3:40 pm

Krom wrote:Testi, if you are already planning on waiting till the 6800s hit the shelves, you might think about waiting for one of the midrange or lowend 6800 cards, I was highly impressed with some of the results I saw from the 6800 GT card that was reviewed on some sites.

Who has those benchies? I'm rather interested in that card, sicne it's a "performance mainstream" or whaterver, but still has the 16 full pipes.

kurupt · Post by **kurupt** » Sat May 22, 2004 8:19 pm

theres a guy on our halo team selling a 5900, i think he wanted 150 for it, you can pop by the forums if you want and take a look, i think he posted it in the lounge.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat May 22, 2004 11:01 pm

Mr. Perfect wrote:Who has those benchies? I'm rather interested in that card, sicne it's a "performance mainstream" or whaterver, but still has the 16 full pipes.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/gef ... a_extreme/

Ferno · Post by **Ferno** » Sun May 23, 2004 12:48 am

'extreme'

heheh, i smell desperation in the air.. smells like manure.

I have a 9800pro 128mb. picked it up a few weeks ago. even with the regular cat 4.4's it's been goin strong. course my cpu can't push it to it's full potental, but that's another story.

so yea, if you want, grab a 9800pro. you'll be a happy camper.

kurupt · Post by **kurupt** » Sun May 23, 2004 6:35 pm

i think he bought my man jeff's card.

Testiculese · Post by **Testiculese** » Sun May 23, 2004 7:25 pm

Yes, I posted on d3k, and Stress gave me a heads up that Jeff would sell it directly to me.

fx5900!! Thanks to all who were involved in my endeavor.