Introduction
Today NVIDIA have launched 2 new cards based on their "FX" technology. We all saw that around 2 months ago NVIDIA broke in to the market with their new leading card - the NV30. Some people were shocked by the noise which this created, but underneath this there was some attractive technology. This of course is something which we are not all seeing being taken advantage of at the moment.
The 2 new cards are called the NVIDIA Geforce FX 5600, and the 5200 models, these are targeted at the mainstream and the budget sectors of the market. NVIDIA has both of these under 2 code words - NV31, and NV34 - both of which are without doubt going to be familiar with a lot of you already.
The 5600 and 5200 GPUs
NV31 Product label
Proof of the pudding!.
The NV34 Top shot (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200).
The NV34 back shot (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200).
The NV34/1 Connectors
The NV34 Power interface (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200). Both the 5200 and 5600 are the same in this deparment
Final Notes
These cards do have some sacrifices - NVIDIA have moved away from pipelines and fill rate in to the CineFX shaders, this is the same way which a lot of people are moving - away from the "coloured house" in to a house which looks more realistic and shaded. We have these cards in at the moment, and we have run a large amount of numbers on them already - these will be realised in our formal review early next week. The performance we believe would follow the following pattern: The TI4200 card which is the segment that the 5600 family is targeting (NV31) will compete with the card and possibly beat it within DX7/8 applications - but the NV34 will shine through in more DX9 applications - and thus in the future this is a card which will run applications such as Doom 3 a lot better than the TI4200 will. The NV34 we believe will perform well for a sub $99 card - and will be an ideal budget solution, the card will score admirably within DX7/8/9 applications but of course will not have the same power as its bigger brothers. This is down to what you want to do with the card, some people do not care about the 3DMark score or the FPS in games – they just want a card which can run game X properly – this maybe a solution for you. With this announcement it brings all of NVIDIAs GPUs up to “date” and are all DirectX9 compliant.
Unlike the NV30 chipset these will be released to all of the usual partners for them to create there own implementations of the cards. It is an interesting time a head, and with this, and today’s earlier announcement the GPU/VPU wars are hotting up - I wonder what else NVIDIA and ATi have up their sleeves - I know for sure I am looking forward to seeing it.
