NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5700 Ultra


NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5700 Ultra - Page 5

NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
NVIDIA's immediate answer to the 9600 XT

By Robert Maloney
October 23rd, 2003

Performances Comparisons With Novalogic's Comanche 4
The Performance Battlefield

I guess you could call Comanche 4 the old man on the block, as it is probably the oldest of the tests in our current suite of benchmarks.  Comanche 4 uses DX8 class pixel and vertex shaders to produce some of the realistic visuals used throughout the game.  Unlike the previous tests, this benchmark is heavily influenced by CPU and system memory performance, especially at lower resolutions.  However, when the resolution is raised and AA and Anisotropic filtering are enabled, the current crop of video cards tend to slow down quite a bit

As we've seen and reported in the past, the Comanche 4 Demo is much more of a CPU-bound test than any of the other benchmarks we have used.  The GeForce FX 5700 Ultra and ATi Radeon 9600XT both put up some impressive numbers, locking horns without AA and then again with 4XAA.  The first cracks in the foundation come when 6XAA is applied, and the FX 5700 Ultra fell behind the 9600 XT by seven frames per second.  It still held a big lead over the 5600 Ultra though.  At 1600x1200 we were quite impressed by the 5700 Ultra's performance.  One only needs to realize that the 5700 Ultra with 4XAA applied managed to beat the 5600 Ultra with no AA to see that NVIDIA has something special here.

Benchmarks / Comparison With Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
New Game, Better Effects, Old Engine

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory can also be included in the "older" crowd, although its focus is on OpenGL testing (and yes, that means Quake 3 Arena is officially gone).  Wolfenstein: ET is a free standalone multiplayer game that is based on the original Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It uses a modified Quake3 core yet exhibits plenty of CPU scaling and platform variation, which also makes it a good benchmarking tool.  We used the built-in timedemo benchmark, which plays back a recorded multiplayer session.

The GeForce FX 5700 Ultra loved the Wolfenstein Demo we ran, so much so that it easily placed first in each and every test we ran.  It outclassed the other two cards by over 10 frames per second at almost every level at 1024x768, and even greater margins at 1600x1200.  Actually, both of the GeForce FX cards took to this test, where even the 5600 Ultra managed to routinely beat the 9600 XT.  The only glitch was when we applied 6XAA, as both GeForce cards put up numbers akin to having no AA whatsoever.  The Radeon 9600 XT did the same at 4XAA + AF, but only at 1600x1200, which explains the paucity of scores in the latter graph.

X2 The Threat, Overclocking & Our Final Analysis


Tags:  Nvidia, GeForce, 5700, Ultra, force, fx, 570, ULT, id

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