Hi
I'm going to be asking what might appear to be some dumb questions. What's
the difference between a FX5700 and an FX5700-Ultra?
I'm looking for a mid-range card, and in the UK I've seen the ultra for
£113.
kony said:You'll have to consider the specific card in addition, some have
better (or worse) heatsinks, quiet or quite loud fans, heatsinks on
the memory or not... it's similar to the past, choosing a Geforce
TI4200 or TI4400, except there's less price difference "usually" to
choose an ultra over a non-ultra.
The ultra is a longer card (usually, following a reference design),
requiring a motherboard that doesn't put anything in the way behind
the AGP slot for an extra few centimeters. It has better power supply
circuitry and "should" have better heatsink or at least heatsinks on
the memory. This would also allow it to overclock a bit higher,
perhaps have a longer lifespan though hindsight is better than
foresight when it comes to lifespan.. too many variables involved.
As for performance, the ultra is clocked around 50MHz faster, perhaps
faster memory too, could be a 10% performance boost if the rest of the
system is fast enough, but it can come down to the specific cards what
happens when they're both overclocked, that is if you're willing to
put memory heatsinks on the non-ultra yourself the difference may
dissappear but likely the ultra will have memory still capable of
higher speed so better for high-resolutions.
Dave
Thanks Dave. Where do you find out this information? Are there some
benchmarks that compare the old Geforce4 with the newer boards (5200, 56,
57, etc)?
kony said:I find it here, there, everywhere... there isn't any website I'm aware
of that does a direct comparison of the finer points, just benchmark
results which should be easily found doing a Google search. If you're
familiar with the cards you can also tell a lot by the pictures.
Website reviews and Newegg.com generally provide the best pictures.
Unfortunately it's quite hard to determine the relative fan noise
without two cards side-by-side to do a subjective first-person test.
If the fan is the typical cheap, small sleeve-bearing type the odds
are good it'll fail within a year or so, makes it more important to
have a heatsink that accepts a standard fan or some ingenuity to adapt
some other fan or fan-sink combo.
As for the FX vs TI cards, a TI4200 would be preferred over an FX5200,
but any higher (than 5200) FX card is a better choice, better value
(usually) than a TI card. If you're buying a mid-to-high end card it
ought to have DirectX 9 support too, which the TI cards don't.
Thanks again for the reply Dave. There certainly is a lot of info out there,
maybe too much for me! Of course, that's why this newsgroup is so valulable.
I'm just about to get a P4@3GHz system (well two actually), and am trying to
choose a mid-range graphics card. Most of the time it will be for simple
stuff (used at work), but after hours it'll be doing Quake, Doom, HalfLife,
etc. I had thought that the FX5700Ultra would be my best bet, but then I
think there may be a tricky decision to be made between this and the
ATI9600XT (which is about the same price). That stupid fairy tempted me
toward to nVidia stuff, but if the ATI range is better, then I'll dump here
;-)
I've seen benchmarks that show the 5700 is better than the 9600 (with
current gaming technology), but would the 9600 be a better 'investment' when
new games arrive?