Verdict: Another great start for the NV36 chipset
The last time Leadtek sent us something to review it just missed out on an award as one of the better mid-range graphics cards available. A couple of months on and Leadtek has launched a new mid-range card based on the brand spanking new Nvidia NV36 GPU.
NV36 is Nvidia's codename for the chip, which has been renamed the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra now that it's actually available to buy. Leadtek is one of only two companies to have boards ready to ship in the UK at the time of going to press, and as we were impressed by its last mid-range offering, we were looking forward to see what the company could do with this new GPU.
NV36 is essentially a hybrid GPU, mixing old and new technology to produce groundbreaking performance for a mid-range product. The old elements come from the horrifically noisy NV30 GPU (aka the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra) in the shape of DDR2 memory support. The new element is the 32-bit combiner from the NV35 GPU.
A first for Nvidia is that the NV36 GPU is not being made by TSMC, but at IBM's advanced 0.13 micron foundry at the bizarrely named East Fishkill near New York. Despite the funny name, having a company as large as IBM responsible for manufacturing should ensure there's a decent supply of chips, and thus no hiccups in the pricing.
The Leadtek card runs at the standard Nvidia specifications for the 5700 Ultra, which have the GPU running at 475MHz and the128MB of RAM at 900MHz. Compared with its direct competitor, the ATi Radeon 9600XT GPU, the 5700 Ultra appears superior on paper. For example, both GPUs have four pixel pipelines and identical 128-bit wide memory controllers. However, the 5700 Ultra makes use of DDR2 memory running at 900MHz while the 9600XT uses DDR memory clocked at 700MHz. This results in a vast difference between the memory bandwidth available to each GPU. For example, the 9600XT has to struggle along with 9.6GB/sec while the 5700 Ultra has a much more generous 14.4GB/sec available to it.
Unlike the higher-end GeForce FX 5900 Ultra cards, the 5700 Ultra doesn't need to take up the PCI slot nearest to the AGP slot. However, we'd still recommend leaving the nearest PCI slot free so there's plenty of room for air to get to the cooling fan. The reduced dimensions also mean it'll be much easier to squeeze a 5700 Ultra inside a SFF system, such as Shuttle's XPCs, than a high-end GeForce FX card. Unlike the Radeon 9600XT, you'll have to plug a Molex power connector into the end of the card, though.
PERFORMANCE
Performance-wise, the Leadtek card doesn't disappoint, as the 5700 Ultra GPU is so much faster than its predecessor, the 5600. While the 5600 struggled to provide a smooth frame rate in any of our game benchmarks at 1,280 x 1,024 with 2x AA and 4x AF, for the 5700 Ultra such settings are not a problem. For example, a 5600 card would struggle to provide 20.4fps in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory with these settings, while the Leadtek made the game zoom along smoothly at 32.6fps.
In fact, it's so much faster that you can even play most games at 1,600 x 1,200 - the first time that such a high resolution has been within reach of a mid-range card. You could even try a high resolution with some anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering, as it delivered a frame rate of 24.4fps in Unreal Tournament 2003 at 1,600 x 1,200 with 4x AA and 8xAF.
Easy overclocking is supposed to be a highlight of the 5700 Ultra, but the Leadtek card was actually quite disappointing. Although we managed to clock the GPU up from 475 to 515MHz, the RAM would only go from 900 to 935MHz, resulting in a mere 1.6fps improvement in Unreal Tournament 2003 at 1,600 x 1,200 with 4x AA and 8x AF. A graphics card performs best when the GPU and RAM are in sync, so although we could clock the GPU much higher, because the RAM was less flexible the overall performance increase remained small.
The Gainward 5700 Ultra card (see p34), on the other hand, is clocked much higher by default with the GPU running at 500MHz and the RAM at 1GHz and so gives a much better overall performance.
Compared to the Asus Radeon 9600XT (see p40) the A360 performed very similarly in most of the benchmarks, although the 9600XT was generally a few frames per second faster. The only exceptions to this were at very high resolutions and image quality settings. For example, in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory at 1,600 x 1,200 with 4x AA and 8x AF the 9600XT was incredibly slow, with a frame rate of just 9.8fps while the A360 sped past with a stonking 23.6fps. The reason for the huge difference is no doubt due to the much higher memory bandwidth available to the 5700 Ultra GPU.
Leadtek does bundle a lot of software with the A360, such as its own branded DVD player and WinFox II. The latter bolts onto the Nvidia driver and adds a number of new functions. Foremost among these are the overclocking options, plus a temperature monitor to check on the health of the GPU. WinFox II also has a separate page dedicated to gamma settings, allowing you to change all three colours (RGB) separately, along with the brightness and contrast. You can even set particular profiles for certain applications. This could be really useful if you have the A360 hooked up to a TFT monitor which doesn't have a gamma control in its OSD.
Also included in the box are two games: Gun Metal and Big Mutha Truckers. Although neither are particularly great games, both are DirectX 9 titles and will at least allow you to show off the capabilities of your new graphics card. Unlike the Asus Radeon 9600XT card, the Leadtek has no video capture capabilities, although it does have an S-Video TV output.
CONCLUSION
Ultimately, the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra is a great performer and it's encouraging to see Nvidia returning to form after such a long run of badly conceived and executed GPUs (5600 and 5800 Ultra). In retrospect, this is arguably Nvidia's first decent GPU since the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 - and that was almost two years ago now.
The Leadtek card is therefore really worth considering, especially as, unlike many cards in this class, it includes a pretty decent software bundle.
The only thing it falls down on is overclockability, which is a shame, as the Gainward 5700 Ultra card overclocks so well. However, it's definitely still worthy of consideration, as it's a huge step up from previous mid-range cards, and the price of £163.33 makes it affordable too.
