Nvidia GeforceFX 5600 vs ATI Radeon 9600

Two months ago we reviewed nVidia's much-hyped GeforceFX card, the 5800 Ultra and, given how stunning it was supposed to be, we were mightily disappointed.

The performance scores still make it the fastest card going, but only by a hair's breadth, and it was the hottest, loudest and biggest card on the market. The 5600, codenamed NV31, is a different beast.

Based on the same architecture as its big brother, it has the same 0.13micron technology as the 5800, as well as the 128-bit memory interface. In order to trim the card down, though, it only supports DDR-1 memory, and not DDR-2 as so proudly boasted by the 5800.

The one thing that keeps this card in our good books is its size. The heatsink and fan are the same size as those on Geforce4 Ti cards, unlike the 5800's monstrous cooling system.

It's therefore far quieter than the 5800, but does require an extra power source in the form of a Molex power connector. Besides this last factor, though, it's technically very similar to ATI's Radeon 9600 card, codenamed RV350.

The 9600 is ATI's replacement for its 9500 range, and is its first card to use 0.13micron technology. Switching to such a process requires a complete redesign of the silicon, so it's quite a leap forward, even if nVidia beat ATI to it by a few months.

The advantage of shrinking down the processor size is that the chip requires less power (hence the lack of extra power connector that dogs the 9800, 9700 and all three of nVidia's current offerings), and can run far faster. Even though the card has fewer features than the Radeon 9500, ATI claims that, because of the streamlined core little or no performance decrease will be seen.

Like nVidia's 5600, it supports DirectX 9 and has four pixel pipes; ATI's 9500 chip had eight. There are a couple of differences between the two cards on test though: the ATI wins when it comes to clock speed (400MHz over the 5600's 350MHz) but has 100MHz slower DDR memory.

Both cards have a 128-bit memory interface, but the 9600 supports DDR2 memory. There's also a huge £70 price difference. At time of going to press, ATI claims that its card will retail for £130.

Performance-wise, the 9600 has an advantage over the 5600 in 3Dmark 2001 with default settings, scoring nearly 1,000 points more than the 5600.

The 5600 is slightly slower in Unreal Tournament 2003 on default settings. However, nVidia's superior anisotropic filtering engines, first used in the 5800, mean it performs significantly faster than the 9600 when filtering is turned on.

Both can handle 16x full scene anti-aliasing (FSAA). However, in our Unreal test, the 9600 drops from an impressive 65 frames per second (fps) to 37fps when this is applied at 1,600 x 1,200 and with 16x FSAA and 8x anisotropic filtering turned on; nVidia's 5600 doesn't even drop a frame, running at 63.75fps at default and 63.5fps at the aforementioned high settings.

What did surprise us was that Aopen's AGP 8x Geforce4 Ti4200 card, the 5600's predecessor, performs faster in 3Dmark 2001 with default settings.

Add any filters and this is no longer the case and, while the 4200 scores 1,440 in 3Dmark 2003, the 5600 gets a far superior 2,937. The 9600 beats both of them though, earning a magnificent 3,437.

The GeforceFX 5600 is an impressive card, but the 9600 is the real winner. At such a low price, we can't fault it.

ATI RADEON 9600 PRO

Price: £130 (£110.64 ex VAT)
Contact: www.ati.com

Specifications:

• 400MHz core
• 128-bit DDR GPU
• 128MB DDR memory
• 300MHz memory clock
• DVI, VGA, S-Video outputs
• OpenGL 1.3, and DirectX 9 compliant
• AGP 2x, 4x and 8x compatible

Speed.

Cons:
Suffers when using FSAA.

Overall:

NVIDIA GEFORCE FX 5600

Price: £200 (170.21 ex VAT)
Contact: www.nvidia.com

Specifications:

• 350MHz core
• 128-bit DDR GPU
• 128MB of DDR memory
• 400MHz memory clock
• DVI, VGA, S-Video outputs
• OpenGL 1.3 and DirectX 9 compliant
• AGP 2x, 4x and 8x compatible

Performance is not affected by filters.

Cons:
An extra power connector needed.