MSI GeForce FX 5700 Ultra-TD128

NVIDIA's FX series of graphics GPU's marks a welcome return to sensible naming schemes. After the confusion of the GeForce4 Ti and MX nomenclature, it's comforting to know that 5200, 5600, 5700, 5800, and 5900 all mean the video card is progressing upwardly. And in keeping with tradition, NVIDIA has added the 'U' to the product mix, signaling a performance increase and the end of the line for the current FX lineup.

Our review card is the FX5700 Ultra-TD128 from Micro-Star International (MSI). The 5700U is NVIDIA's attempt to atone for the under whelming 5600/5600U. The 5700U features the NV36 core at 475 MHz, 900 MHz DDR2 memory speed, and improved pixel shader performance courtesy of CineFX 2.0. While both the 5600/U and 5700U utilize a 128-bit memory interface, the 5700U is the first NVIDIA GPU to be built with IBM's 0.13-micron manufacturing process. The 5700U sports 3 vertex shader pipelines compared to just 1 on the 5600/U. Anyone who has tried to play "Halo" with a 5600 should appreciate having triple the pixel power! In essence, the 5700U is a scaled-down 5950 Ultra and not in the least a hopped up 5600. And that's a very good thing!

The cut and paste section:

• Graphics Core: 256-bit
• Memory Interface: 128-bit
• Memory Bandwidth: 14.4GB/sec.
• Fill Rate: 1.9 billion pixels/sec.
• Vertices/sec. 356 million
• Memory Data Rate: 900 MHz
• Pixels per Clock (peak): 4
• Textures per Pixel: 16
• RAMDACs 400 MHz
• Video out, DVI support
• Full versions of "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon", "Duke Nukem Manhattan Project", and "Morrowind"
• Demo versions of "The Sum Of All Fears", "IL-2 Sturmovik", "Serious Sam 2 lite", "Rally Trophy", "Beam Breakers", " Zax The Alien Hunter" and "Oni"
• MSI Media Center Deluxe II release 2:
  • Multimedia Center II
  • Virtual Drive 7.0 Professional Version
  • Restore It 3 Professional Version
  • MSI 5.1 ChannelDVD Player
  • MSI Live Update Series (Live VGA BIOS and Live VGA Driver)
  • GoodMem
  • LockBox
  • WMIinfor
  • ThinSoft BeTwin
  • MSI Secure DOC
  • E-Color
  • Adobe Acrobat Reader
  • Trend Micro PC-Cillin 2000
  • Microsoft DirectX 8.1
    

Like its big brothers, the 5700 Ultra requires a separate power connector. Should you forget, or accidentally use a lower voltage connector than necessary, a helpful warning sign will inform you when Windows starts up that you lack power and the card has been underclocked for its protection. Naturally, we did this on purpose as a designed test and not because we had a brain phart (a-hem).

The 5700 Ultra is a full-size card. If you have miscellaneous parts protruding into the space of your AGP slot, be forewarned that this card does not have the smaller form factor of the 5600. It does, however, have a very nice red PCB that just so happens to match the red on my Biostar motherboard.

Unlike the infamous leaf blower first generation FX cards, the MSI 5700 Ultra features a quiet fan. There was no audible noise from the card outside of my Antec case.

Basically what you get in the box is standard fare for video cards these days: Video out cables, a DVI adapter, and some shovelware. Frankly, the software bundle is disappointing. MSI has in the past provided pretty good bundled software. I was reasonably pleased with the bundle I got with my last MSI card, a Ti4800 SE. Unfortunately, it's the exact same bundle that came with the 5700 Ultra! The worst part about is the inclusion of DirectX 8.1, and no version of DX9. Nothing like dating yourself...

If MSI does not wish to go to the expense of providing current generation software, then they should just drop the pretense of providing value and ship the cards without software at lower price.