|
 |
|
The
BFG Asylum GeForce FX 5700 Ultra 128 |
|
Up
Close and Personal |
|
The GeForce FX
5700 Ultra is based on the NV36 core, which is the first of
NVIDIA's GPUs to be manufactured by IBM. This is a
recent partnership between the two companies and so far it
looks like a good collaboration. IBM is manufacturing
the GPUs at .13 microns, reducing the overall size of the
chip as well as reducing power consumption and heat.
The core is clocked at a peppy 475MHz and is complimented by
128MB of DDR2 memory clocked at 450MHz (900MHz effective).
Boasting 14.4GBps of bandwidth, we should see some
significant performance gains over previous mid range FX
cards.
BFG Asylum
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
One might think
that a newer company might opt to simply re-brand a standard
NVIDIA reference card and sell it as is, but this was not
the case with BFG. BFG is pushing an image of attitude with
their current media and packaging, and it would be quite a
let down if they didn't keep that attitude with the card.
The BFG Asylum GeForce FX 5700 Ultra is built on a bright
blue PCB instead of the de facto green NVIDIA reference
version. Knowing that the end-user will most likely be
overclocking the heck out of the card, BFG also added some
extras to help keep temperatures in check. Along with an
improved cooler over the stock model, BFG also tacked on
some heat spreaders to the RAM on both sides of the card.
When we removed the cooler from the GPU we found a nice
application of thermal paste to help the cooler conduct the
heat away from the GPU.
|
|
|
In-Game Screenshots With the BFG Asylum GeForce FX
5700 Ultra 128 |
|
Need
for Speed: Underground |
|
Naturally, no
video card review would be complete without some gratuitous
gaming screenshots, showing off the cards video rendering
prowess. In this case, we opted to use the recently
released Need For Speed: Underground from Ubisoft.
This is the latest game to grab the attention of several HH
writers, proving to be a helluvalot of fun. Aside from
being fun and challenging, the graphics quality of the game
is superb. With all of the in-game graphical options
set to their maximum, the environment is extremely
realistic. To give you an idea of what the BFG Asylum
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra could do, we maximized the video
options in the game, set the video drivers to best quality
with 4X AA enabled, and snapped a few pics.
In the image at
the upper left, we locked up the brakes and put the pedal to
the floor to see the realism of the smoke as the tires
burned rubber. While the quality is somewhat degraded
because of JPEG image compression, the realism is clearly
very good and excellent in actual game play. The upper
right image spotlights the sparks that can fly when the car
bottoms out in a dip. The lower left image does a
great job at capturing the vehicle reflection in the road,
with the tail lights and tail pipe easily distinguished in
the reflection. The last image captures a sweet power
slide that shows the entire car in the reflections as well
as the front right tire laying down some rubber.
In actual game
play, we've tried this game with both the BFG Asylum
GeForceFX 5700 Ultra and an ATi All-In-Wonder 9600
Pro and it was impossible to tell the two apart.
We did find that there was minor chugging in extremely
complex screens with all graphical options maximized in-game
and in the drivers, but we knew we were pushing it.
The Test System, AquaMark3 & Halo
| 
