Chaintech FX5700 Ultra Apogee AA5700U Review

Chaintech is a strong supporter for NVIDIA GPU and no doubt it has a whole series of GeForce FX cards up their sleeves. This time round, Chaintech has released their new card based on the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GPU known as the Apogee AA5700U equipped with better cooling system, bundle and accessories and a set of faster memories over the typical FX5700 Ultra cards.

Introduction

While NVIDIA has positioned their GeForce FX 5950 series for
the high end segment, they have also the GeForce FX 5700 series for the mid end
segment. The GeForce FX 5700 series are meant meant to replace the existing
GeForce FX 5600 series and better compete with ATi’s offering, the Radeon 9600
XT. GeForce FX 5700 Ultra is targeted at the upper mid end segment and is
recommended to retail at US$ 200. However, during launch most FX 5700 Ultra cards
are priced at around $ 230-240 due to better card features and bundle offering by
the card manufacturers but price are now coming down to around $ 200 price range.
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra is built on the 0.13 micron NV36 core and has some key
features of the more powerful GeForce FX 5950 such as CineFX 2.0 engine,
UltraShadow and Intellisample HCT. It is clocked at 475Mhz core and has the
advantage of faster 900Mhz DDR-II memories on 128-bit memory interface.

Chaintech is a strong supporter for NVIDIA GPU and no doubt it has a whole series of
GeForce FX cards up their
sleeves. This time round, Chaintech has released their new card based on the
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GPU known as the
Apogee AA5700U equipped with better cooling system,
bundle and accessories and a set of faster memories over the typical FX5700
Ultra cards. In
this article, we will check out the baseline Direct3D and OpenGL gaming
performance with no AA/AF and 4xAA/8xAF for different type of gamers. Definitely
we will check out how well this card can be overclocked with a better cooling
system and faster memories.

Specifications

Process Technology	0.13 micron copper process (82M transistors)
Package	40mm x 40mm, BGA 1309 flip-chip
AGP Interface	AGP 8x including Fast Writes and sideband addressing
Core Engine	256-bit GeForce FX 5700 Ultra (NV36)
Core Clock	475Mhz
Memory Type/Size	128MB GDDR2
Memory Clock	900Mhz
Memory Bandwidth	14.4GB/s (128-bit)
RAMDAC	Dual integrated 400Mhz RAMDACs for display resolutions up to and including 2048×1536@85Hz
PCB Layers	10
Max Resolution	2048 X 1536 X 85Hz
Output Options	15-pin D-sub VGA out TV-out (Mini Din 4pin S-Video connector) DVI (DVI connector)

Key Features

CineFX 2.0 Engine :
The second-generation CineFX 2.0 engine powers advanced pixel and vertex shader
processing and true 128-bit color precision. Delivering double the
floating-point pixel shader power of the previous CineFX engine, CineFX 2.0
produces a visible performance boost through its more efficient execution of
pixel shader programs.

UltraShadow Technology : Powers the
next-generation of complex, realistic shadow effects by accelerating shadow
generation. Accurate shadows that effectively mimic reality without bogging down
frame rates are one of the keys to more believable game environments.

Intellisample HCT : Second-generation
Intellisample technology delivers up to a 50-percent increase in compression
efficiency for compressing color, texture, and z-data, and powers unprecedented
visual quality for resolutions up to 1600 x 1280.

Package Contents

• S-Video Cable (150cm)
• Composite Cable
• S to AV Cable
• DVI-I to VGA Adapter
• Power Cable
• Q Ball (Monitor cleaner)
• Commandos 3 and 5-in-1 game pack
• WinCinema : WinDVD 4, WinDVD Creator, WinRip,
  WinProducer 3.0