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Chaintech Apogee 5700 Ultra Video Card Review
Author: Dennis Garcia
Published: Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Conclusion
People have asked me, so now that you've tried both of the major mid-range cards, which one do you like best?? The ATI 9600XT or the GeForce FX5700Ultra?. Well I won't pull any punches here, the ATI 9600XT is the faster card, it's lighter, runs cooler and doesn't require an external power connector. On the surface it would seem to be the card to buy, and for some it is. Though despite the speed advantage I was more impressed with the game experience provided by the Chaintech AA5700U. The demos used for this review appeared crisp, the colors were vibrant, textures were clean and the range between the recorded high and low framerate was considerably less, when comparing the numbers.
Both cards were installed using the latest drivers (as of this review) with default quality and color settings retained. The only major change was in disabling vsync and enabling the 2x (or 2xq on the FX5700u) AA and AF settings. The Chaintech AA5700U ran flawless in each of the 10x7 tests and experienced only minor slowdowns at 12x10 during certain parts of FarCry and Painkiller.
While testing the 9600XT, gameplay was indeed faster though some major tearing was evident in the FarCry demo when it came to rendering rocks and underwater rock textures. If you look closely at the 9600XT screenshot #1 you will see the issue I speak of. This appears to be common with ATI video cards while AA and AF are enabled and is likely a driver issue. Other than that the 10x7 tests ran flawless as expected with only minor slowdowns at 12x10 during certain parts of FarCry and Painkiller.
All things aside I was very impressed with the Chaintech Apogee AA5700U, the card came with a great software package and had plenty of overclocking headroom. Even though the FX5700Ultra isn't any faster than the 9600XT the Chaintech card it did keep up and looked great doing it.
Now for the ever popular list of Good things and Bad things.
The Good Things
Fast DDR2 onboard
nVidia Ultra means better hardware
Dark Brown / Black PCB w/ Gold accents
Effective and Lighted copper heatsink
Extensive included software
Great Gameplay and Video rendering
Excellent overclocking
nVidia Ultra means better hardware
Dark Brown / Black PCB w/ Gold accents
Effective and Lighted copper heatsink
Extensive included software
Great Gameplay and Video rendering
Excellent overclocking
The Bad Things
Not quite as fast as 9600XT
Copper heatsink = heavy
Copper heatsink = heavy
Ninjalane Rating
