Test Setup

ABIT NF7-S v2.0: AMD Barton 2500+, 2 x 256MB Corsair TWINX PC3200, MSI FX5700 Ultra, 80GB Western Digital, Windows XP SP1, Detonator FX 53.03.

ABIT NF7-S v2.0: AMD Barton 2500+, 2 x 256MB Corsair TWINX PC3200, XFX FX5600 Ultra, 80GB Western Digital, Windows XP SP1, Detonator FX 53.03.

Test Software will be:

Code Creatures
Specviewperf
Unreal Tournament 2003
Jedi Knight 2
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Splinter Cell

The comparison video card will be the XFX FX5600 Ultra. Benchmarks will be shown with and without AntiAliasing and Aninsotropic Filtering (where applicable). Settings for both cards are "Balanced".
CPU clock speed will be 11.5x181, totalling 2083MHz. The ram is running at 2-3-3-5 timings at 200MHz.

Code Creatures

This is a DX8 benchmark that makes good use of vertex and pixel shaders. Given that these cards are DX9 parts, we can get an idea of how it will handle an older video shader specification.

Code Creatures @ 1024

Code Creatures @ 1280

Even though the FX5700 Ultra may not look like a big jump on the FX5600 Ultra on paper, we can see a nice difference between the cards at No AA/AF and 2AA/AF. At higher resolutions, it the gap does narrow, but as expected, the FX5700 Ultra maintains the lead.

SpecViewPerf7

There are some big improvements seen with the FX5700 Ultra, with close to 100% improvement in the 3dsmax, Drv-08, and Dx-07 tests. The rest see smaller improvements, but they are there nonetheless.

Splinter Cell

We used the Beyond3D demo, maximum detail at 10x8 and 12x10. There are no AA/AF results to show as there is a bug with the game and AntiAliasing.

Splinter Cell @ 1024, Max Detail

Splinter Cell @ 1280, Max Detail

At 1024x768 the FX5700 Ultra gave us acceptable performance, and even at 1280x1024, the game was somewhat playable. We panned the FX5600 in the past as being a bit weak with this game, but it would appear that the FX5700 should do the trick.