Drivers
ATi recently released their new
Catalyst Control panel software, though previously nVidia also
released some improvements to its Forceware drivers. So
lets take a quick walk through the 61.77 drivers.
First we will take a look at
the overall setup of the drivers. This is nothing that
is particularly new in the layout of the drivers. nVidia
has used the main window to provide the data for the selected
option on the left panel. The left panel gives you all
the different sections for each option, with about seven different
option boxes to change different monitor options from Color
correction, to adjustment, to refresh rate override. The
Clock frequencies tab is only available when you run the Coolbits
registry file.
Next is the Performance &
Quality menu which is where most of the tweaking will occur for
this card. Here is where nVidia has changed the layout somewhat
compared to the multiple menus of some of the much older versions.
Here you can change the AA, the ansiotropic filtering as well
as some quality settings. The settings you see there are
the ones that we used for the AA tests on the card.
Overclocking
Now lets take a look at the overclocking
ability of this video card. The obvious reminder is that
this is a sample of one video card, so your results may vary.
However the FX5750 is made on a very mature 0.13µ
process, so overclocking headroom should be good. The RAM
isn't rated much higher than the stock speeds, but still should
provide at least some overclocking headroom. So lets see
the results we had.
From the stock speeds of 425/500
(Core/Memory) we see a very nice overclock. The core increases
by 83MHz or about 20%, which is more than the standard ~10% increase
that most see out of their video cards. The memory increases
by 35% over its stock clock speed, while it also overclocks 22%
higher than its rated speed. Overall a very nice theoretical
improvement in both core and memory speeds, but does this translate
into any noticeable reallife results? We will see in our
test results.
Sound levels are something that
many don't think about until they try to quiet their computer
down and the only remaining sound is found with their video card.
So what kind of sound levels does this card produce with its fan.
|
Video
Card
|
MSI
FX5900U - VTD (Front Fan) |
MSI
FX5900U - VTD (Both Fans) |
Matrox
Parhelia |
ATi
Radeon 9800XT |
Albatron
Trinity PCX5750 |
|
Sound
Level (dBA):
|
51/56
(L/H) |
55/63
(L/H) |
61 |
50/64 |
66 |
We can see that the Albatron
video card is not exactly quiet, in fact its the loudest card
that we tested here. At 66 dBA from the 2" distance
this is loud, though the CPU cooler and other fans inside your
system will drown out your video card fan.
Quality Tests
First we will look at the 2D
quality of the video card. This is one of if not the most
important aspect of the video card, though many people do not
take the time to look closely at the quality of display that they
are constantly looking at. So lets take a look at how well
the FX5750 does with 2D quality. The test is the same as
we've been using for a while, with the reference display being
a Matrox G400 video card attached to a 21" Dell badged Trinitron
monitor. The screen resolution was 1600*1200, with a color
depth of 32bpp and a refresh rate of 85Hz. So lets see how
it did in comparison.
| Test |
Matrox
G400 |
Matrox
Parhelia |
ATi
Radeon 9800XT |
MSI
FX5900U |
Intel
915G IGP |
Albatron
FX5750 |
| Black
Text / White Back: |
5 |
7.5 |
7 |
6 |
4.5 |
5.5 |
| White
Text / Black Back: |
5 |
8 |
7.25 |
7 |
5 |
7 |
| Bitmap
Test: |
5 |
9 |
8.5 |
7 |
6 |
6.5 |
| Overall
Rating |
5 |
8.25 |
7.5 |
6.5 |
5.25 |
6.25 |
We can see that the two video
cards we looked at here are almost a step back in terms of 2D
quality. The onboard video of the 915G is particularly
weak at text with your standard text turning out to be about
as bad as the worst card I've looked at. The graphics
are better for the onboard video but are still washed out by
comparison to the better cards. The FX 5750 by comparison
is much better, but this still doesn't put it in the same class
as the best cards, though it is very close in some cases.
This is especially true in the white text on black background
where it basically is as good as all but the Parhelia.
The image test is like the 915G, being washed out, but in this
case it is not as bad as the other card.
TV Out is becoming a major piece that video card
manufacturers are putting into their video cards, as people
are using their computer for displaying their movies and games
onto their 'big' screen TV's. Our test uses two computers,
one that contains a TV Tuner in this case the 5750 uses the
AiW 9600 while the rest are using the ATi AiW 9000 though I
haven't really noticed much, if any difference between the two
cards. However we also have a reference image from the
DVD that we used to test, that of the movie "Chicken Run",
a claymation movie with plenty of vibrant colors and contrasts.
All tests were output using a SVHS cable, so lets see the results.
Reference Image
|
Matrox Parhelia
|
ATi Radeon 9800XT
|
MSI FX5900U
|
Albatron PCX5750
|
So what does this picture
show? Lets first take a look at the text of the cards.
The Albatron card does antialias the text quite a bit in comparison
to the reference image, in fact its a little too much for
my tastes, bordering on the blurry. Otherwise the card
slightly squishes the text horizontally by a small amount.
As for the image quality of the output we see that there are
points where there is a slight bit of blur and a higher brightness
on the picture which isn't really desirable in this case.
The overall picture is cut slightly on the horizontal, but
not enough to distort the image greatly. The text for
the 9800XT is sharper and has very little of the checkered
pattern that the AiW 9000Pro had. For the rest of the
image it is blurry but is smoother than that of the AiW 9000Pro.
The TV out of the FX5900 Ultra suffers from a distorted image,
that has a border on either side of the picture, and a fuzzy
picture. There also seems to be a pronounced checker
pattern on solid colors and also on the text, something we
don't see with some of the other cards notably the Parhelia.
While the text on the reference image is sharp and aliased,
the Parhelia does a good job of antialiasing the text, while
not overdoing it.
3D quality is the last quality
test we will look at. All video cards offer some form
of antialiasing and ansiotropic filtering, from the 16X Ansio
of the ATi cards, to the 8X AA of the nVidia based cards and
even the 16X FAA of the Matrox video card. So lets see
how each video card looks in our testing.
Looking first at the AA test
we see that there is very little difference between the three
cards without AA enabled. With the various levels of
AA enabled (16,8,4) we see that the Parhelia comes out on
top but only by a slim margin. If you look at the landscape
in the background on the 5900 Ultra and PCX5750 and the Parhelia,
you can notice that the Parhelia has just a smoother image.
The Radeon 9000 is in last place in this test with its maximum
of 4X AA. The 6X AA is pretty nice, looking better on
more horizontal lines (horizon) than the 8X of the 5900U but
worse with a more vertical line (rooftop).
Moving to the ansiotropic filtering
of the cards, with it disabled the Parhelia has better filtering.
You can notice that the ground seems 'bumpier' on the Parhelia
without ansiotropic filtering even enabled, otherwise all of
the other cards look very similar. With ansiotropic filtering
enabled, we see that in this part of the image the Radeon 9000
doesn't really do much if any filtering, due to its adaptive
design. The Parhelia's 2X ansio looks slightly better
than its trilinear filtering. The Radeon 9800XT has extremely
good ansiotropic filtering as at 16X it is much better than
any of the others we have tested so far. I am also impressed
by the 8X ansiotropic filtering of the Albatron card, though
it is still not quite the same quality as the ATi cards with
16X.
NEXT
