Overclocking

With the trusty Coolbits registry hack, I was able to clock this card to a very respectable 550MHZ on the core and 1.02 GHz on the memory with complete stability and zero artifacts. I feel that these overclocks quite nice, especially when consider all this XFX is using is the reference cooling unit. Had XFX gone with something more exotic who knows what the potential overclockability of this card could be?

Overclocked Performance - Splinter Cell

Overclocking increased FPS by a fairly nice margin given the stock results. It's free performance that can't be overlooked. Let's wrap it up.

Conclusions

Sean's $0.02

XFX has produced a card that is worth every penny you will pay for it. Not only is this card feature rich, it managed to overclock like mad, performed well in games and to top it all off, came with some pretty badass packaging. The Dual DVI feature was the proverbial icing on the cake on this card, as it is something that no other manufacturer offers.

The bad points of this card are obvious before you even open the package. NVidia's cards are lacking in DirectX 9 benchmarks when compared to their ATI counterparts, though the 9600XT and 5700 Ultra both had a heated battle which resulted in what I would consider a draw. The 5700 Ultra took some of the benchmark victories while the 9600 XT took a few as well. Overall, however, my personal preference lies with the 5700 Ultra.

While the XFX 5700 Ultra isn't the fastest card in the block, it is still a good card worthy of a recommendation for the performance and Dual DVI capability if nothing else. If you want a good, stable, fast video card that won't break the bank I would put the 5700 Ultra on your list of possible video cards to purchase. If you don't need Dual DVI and want slightly better performance, it might be better to take a look at the 5900XT from XFX, which is about twenty dollars less. I am finishing a review on this card shortly as well, so stay tuned.

Hubert's $0.02

The one thing I feel is going to kill the FX 5700 Ultra, is nVidia's own FX5900 XT. A quick look at PriceGrabber shows us that the card, as reviewed today, is going for about , whereas the XFX FX 5900 XT is selling for .

We were impressed with the overclocking ability, but at the end of the day, it's the amount of cold, hard cash you have to drop down, and it's very difficult for me to give the thumbs up to any FX 5700 Ultra if you're in the market for a sub-$200 nVidia card.

Pros:
Dual DVI Support (Only GeForce FX 5700 Ultra w/Dual DVI)
Nice Bundle/Packaging
Good Performance (On par with 9600XT)
GREAT overclocking capability (530 MHZ Core, 1.02 GHZ RAM)

Cons:
XFX has limited distribution in the US
5900XT cheaper

Bottom Line:
We're not disappointed in the product itself, but the XFX FX5700 Ultra finds itself in a bad position. A price cut would help a lot (maybe down to the 150$ price range), but in the meantime, with XFX's own FX5900 XT at a lower price point, that is the direction we encourage you to steer.

If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.

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