So here’s a fuller review than my excited babbling from the other day. I bought myself this card to replace my Veteran 5700LE.
It cost me about £95 posted from ebuyer UK.
This is box, nothing fancy, just a few centimeters bigger than the actual card. It also came with no game packs or software which isn't really a surprise for under £100.
The card itself (yes it’s resting on my knee). The HSF is small enough to only take up the PCI-E slot the card takes and isn't too bad. Keeping the card between 50 and 65ish.
Note above the capacitor there is an NTSC/PAL jumper. But nothing anywhere to tell u exactly which way to set it for what.
Standard Install procedure worked fine. Was a little worried about my weak PSU but I took my chances anyway and it’s not blown out yet. The PCI-E slot seamed to be a lot more card friendly than the AGP.
Card Specs
After a bit of digging I found them, none of my programs could identify the chip let alone give its specs.
From what I’ve read, these specs fall between the Geforce 6600GT and various versions of 6800. And on-paper wise, for the price, it’s a good buy.
The card installed (makes my pc looks tidy lol)
The ATI catalyst drivers however aren't quite up to the nVidia forceware's standard. The catalyst control center is riddled with options, but not is very helpful on exactly what they do.
Benchmarks:
To run these I used the following:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (Newcastle)
1GB PC3200 Kingston Value Ram, 2x512 in dual.
ASRock 939Dual-SATA2
Maxtor 40GB ATA133 Boot drive
Seagate 120GB ATA100 Storage
3Dmark03 (800X600, all low) 8880
These settings were used on my 5700, as it was...well...crap. Also this mark was only taken with 512mB of ram.
3Dmark03 (defaults) 6870
3Dmark05 (defaults) 3774
CS:S (800X600 dust_2, 9 bots) 80-150fps
CS:S (1024X768, dust_2, SX dust server) 100ishfps
CS:S Stress test 130
HL2 (1024X768, Max levels (other than AA, AF and HDR) 80(ish)FPS (constant)
HL2: lost coast (everything bar AA and AF maxed, inc. HDR) skipped around the 30fps mark
Thoughts
Having forked out for this card I can say it was worth the money. It’s a powerful midrange card that’s got plenty of bang per buck. Despite ATIs slightly disappointing drivers. At the resolutions my crappy monitor can handle it plows through most games with relative ease. I’m reluctant to test its overclockability due to the fact if I fry it, there’s no way in hell I can get a new one until next xmas
.
Pros:
Cons:
Cheers
Ham
After thought:
After a while with this card something rather alarming has come to light. At this moment I’m running the 3D render that ATI Tray tools kindly offers with
everything at stock. It has been running now for some time and the GPU temp has settled at 74degC!! I knew this card was running hot but 74! I would have thought the chip would have melted.
It cost me about £95 posted from ebuyer UK.
This is box, nothing fancy, just a few centimeters bigger than the actual card. It also came with no game packs or software which isn't really a surprise for under £100.
The card itself (yes it’s resting on my knee). The HSF is small enough to only take up the PCI-E slot the card takes and isn't too bad. Keeping the card between 50 and 65ish.
Note above the capacitor there is an NTSC/PAL jumper. But nothing anywhere to tell u exactly which way to set it for what.
Standard Install procedure worked fine. Was a little worried about my weak PSU but I took my chances anyway and it’s not blown out yet. The PCI-E slot seamed to be a lot more card friendly than the AGP.
Card Specs
After a bit of digging I found them, none of my programs could identify the chip let alone give its specs.
- 12 pixel pipes
- 5 vertex pipes
- 4 texture units
- 4 ROPs
- 8 Zcompare units
- 128 max threads
- 500 MHz core clock
- 405 MHz memory clock (810DDR)
- 2.0 Gpixels/sec peak pixel fill rate
- 1,000 Mvertices/s peak throughput
- 128-bit memory interface
- 256 MB
From what I’ve read, these specs fall between the Geforce 6600GT and various versions of 6800. And on-paper wise, for the price, it’s a good buy.
The card installed (makes my pc looks tidy lol)
The ATI catalyst drivers however aren't quite up to the nVidia forceware's standard. The catalyst control center is riddled with options, but not is very helpful on exactly what they do.
Benchmarks:
To run these I used the following:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (Newcastle)
1GB PC3200 Kingston Value Ram, 2x512 in dual.
ASRock 939Dual-SATA2
Maxtor 40GB ATA133 Boot drive
Seagate 120GB ATA100 Storage
3Dmark03 (800X600, all low) 8880
These settings were used on my 5700, as it was...well...crap. Also this mark was only taken with 512mB of ram.
3Dmark03 (defaults) 6870
3Dmark05 (defaults) 3774
CS:S (800X600 dust_2, 9 bots) 80-150fps
CS:S (1024X768, dust_2, SX dust server) 100ishfps
CS:S Stress test 130
HL2 (1024X768, Max levels (other than AA, AF and HDR) 80(ish)FPS (constant)
HL2: lost coast (everything bar AA and AF maxed, inc. HDR) skipped around the 30fps mark
Thoughts
Having forked out for this card I can say it was worth the money. It’s a powerful midrange card that’s got plenty of bang per buck. Despite ATIs slightly disappointing drivers. At the resolutions my crappy monitor can handle it plows through most games with relative ease. I’m reluctant to test its overclockability due to the fact if I fry it, there’s no way in hell I can get a new one until next xmas
.Pros:
- Cheap
- Reasonably powerful
- Only takes up one Slot
- Has a VGA port for those of us with senile monitors
Cons:
- Drivers aren’t wonderful
- Seams to get hot
- No diagnostic programs recognize it
Cheers
Ham
After thought:
After a while with this card something rather alarming has come to light. At this moment I’m running the 3D render that ATI Tray tools kindly offers with
everything at stock. It has been running now for some time and the GPU temp has settled at 74degC!! I knew this card was running hot but 74! I would have thought the chip would have melted.
