FX 5600 Ultra
By contrast the FX5600, looks exactly the same?
Based around the NV31 core, the FX5600 is direct competition to the 9500 series from ATI and NVIDIA’s own Ti4200. As with the FX5200 we have, as yet, no confirmation on possible retail solutions, but you can rest assured that Gainward, Albatron, and MSI will be producing cards utilising the FX5600 in the near future. Technically the NV31 uses the more expensive .13 micron manufacturing process and is therefore more like the FX5800 than the FX5200. Our test card had 128MB of DDR Memory in the form of BGA memory 2.5ns ICs. A sticker on the reverse of the card described the memory as Hynix 400 MHz. As with the FX5200 the memory is coupled with 4 pipelines but now to a 400MHz Ramdac and with a 128bit memory bus. Clock speeds for the FX5600 are 350 MHz for the core and 700 MHz memory. Again our reference board came with DVI, TV Out, and VGA connectors.
The design of the PCB seems very well thought out with plenty of space for cooling. There are holes surrounding the RAM chips, inviting the addition of some additional cooling. The supplied heatsinks performed very well, with fan noise being no louder than most Ti4200’s or the Radeon, but again remember that this is not a retail card.
Compared to other graphics cards in the labs, the size didn’t seem to be an issue – or something which stuck out. The cards were basically the same size as the Ti4200, so slightly larger than the Radeon, but smaller than the Ti4600. Fitting the card into all but extremely small cases should not be a problem. We were able to fit the cards into a SFF system without concern.
We have however heard that ATI are going to be releasing the RV350 in the form of the 9600 - the performance details of this card are thin at the moment, but it is going to be put in as a direct replacement for 9500 Pro.
