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MSI GeForce FX5600-VTDR128 Review May 26, 2003 Brandon Bell |
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Summary: Based on the GeForce FX 5600 GPU, MSI's FX5600-VTDR128 has built-in hardware monitoring and MSI's incredibly quiet T.O.P. Tech cooler. To round out the package, MSI even includes a remote control unit! But how does the GeForce FX 5600 core perform against its competitors? Find out in this review!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 16 ) |
Although we all love to debate about ATI’s RADEON 9800 PRO/9700 PRO and NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra/5800 Ultra on the high end, we all know by now that the real bulk of sales for both companies come from the segments below that. According to a survey conducted by NPD last summer, 44% of sales came from graphics cards less than $100, while 39% spent up to $149. 9% of sales were between $150 and $249, while just 1% came from graphics cards above $350. In the grand scheme of things, clearly we’re talking about a very small portion of the graphics market.
It’s partially because of this that NVIDIA has maintained their share in PC graphics. Even the most diehard NVIDIA fan will admit that ATI has had a technology and performance advantage over NVIDIA for consecutive quarters. But largely thanks to GeForce4 MX 440 and GeForce4 Ti 4200, NVIDIA has continued to ship GPUs by the truckload. Just look at the extraordinary level of participation NVIDIA is getting from its board partners. MSI, NVIDIA’s biggest graphics customer, has 10 Ti 4200 variants available alone, not including Ti 4400 and Ti 4600 cards. Do you want your MSI Ti 4200 card with dual DVI outputs? MSI’s got that. 64MB or 128MB? MSI’s got you covered there too. Why don’t we throw in a VIVO module while we’re at it? MSI has one of those as well. In fact, you can get a different combination of all three! In comparison, many of ATI’s board partners only offer two or three products based on one family. As the Burger King commercial goes “you can have it your way” thanks to MSI.
From NV28 to NV31
NVIDIA now has the difficult task of replacing a perennial best seller in the GeForce4 Ti 4200 (NV25/28). To accomplish this they’ve constructed the GeForce FX 5600 and GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, previously known by the codename “NV31”. Today we’re looking at the GeForce FX 5600 in the form of MSI’s FX5600-VTDR128.
Before we go any further, we’d like to clarify NVIDIA’s product positioning in comparison to ATI, as there’s a lot of confusion out there regarding the topic. In all honesty, NVIDIA hasn’t done the best job of making things clear as they’ve done in the past. This is partially because ultimately retail cards are shipped by their board partners, rather than directly themselves, another problem is NVIDIA’s nagging GeForce FX supply issues. We’ll try and lay everything out as we see it.
According to NVIDIA documentation, GeForce FX 5600 prices should start at roughly $150. This is right in line with ATI’s official price for the RADEON 9600. At the $200 price point lies GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, this again, corresponds with RADEON 9600 PRO. (A lot of our readers don’t know this, but RADEON 9500 PRO still lists for $220 according to ATI.) When you look at street prices however, things get pretty muddy. GeForce FX 5600 currently starts at $153 on Price Watch but the 9600 PRO can already be found for as low as $176 ($160 for RADEON 9500 PRO).
Since GeForce FX 5600 Ultra hasn’t arrived on the market, the GeForce FX 5600 is essentially competing against RADEON 9600 PRO, and the limited supply of even regular 5600 cards is keeping prices artificially high: while six pages of Price Watch listings exist for the 128MB GeForce FX 5600, there are 11 for the GeForce FX 5200 (12 if you include the Ultra model). Due to the lack of GeForce FX 5600 Ultra availability, card manufacturers are scrambling for something to fill in against the 9600 PRO until its arrival – enter the GeForce FX 5600 256MB.
As supply increases, we believe the situation will eventually settle itself appropriately. RADEON 9600’s will be priced competitively with GeForce FX 5600’s. Just above those cards, the RADEON 9600 PRO and GeForce FX 5600 Ultra will duke it out. But is the GeForce FX 5600 a worthy successor to GeForce4 Ti 4200? Read on to find out!
SIDEBAR: MSI FX5600-VTDR128 Product Webpage
| GeForce FX 5600 GPU | Page:: ( 2 / 16 ) |
Like GeForce FX 5800 and GeForce FX 5900, the GeForce FX 5600 family is built on TSMC’s 0.13-micron manufacturing process. In addition, both GPUs support the same 2.0+ pixel and vertex shaders NVIDIA has been boasting about since last summer. As a result, GeForce FX 5600 shares the same feature set and capabilities of NVIDIA’s flagship, albeit with lower performance.
The key difference between the 5600 series and 5800/5900 lies in its fixed function units. While GeForce FX 5900 offers four pixel pipelines with two texture units per pixel pipeline (4x2), the GeForce FX 5600 family is built on a more conservative four pixel pipeline with one texture unit per pixel pipeline architecture (4x1). This results in a reduced peak texel fill rate if the chips were clocked similarly but is largely responsible for GeForce FX 5600’s reduced transistor count: approximately 80 million in GeForce FX 5600 versus 125 million in GeForce FX 5800. With fewer transistors, GeForce FX 5600 cores are cheaper to produce for NVIDIA.
An additional difference between GeForce FX 5600 and FX 5800 lies in its memory subsystem. For GeForce FX 5600, NVIDIA has implemented twin 64-bit memory controllers; GeForce FX 5800 utilizes four 32-bit controllers while GeForce FX 5900’s memory subsystem is composed of four 64-bit controllers. GeForce FX 5600 also employs more widely available DDR memory rather than the DDR-II memory present on GeForce FX 5800.
GeForce FX 5600 models
Two GeForce FX 5600 variants are available: GeForce FX 5600 and GeForce FX 5600 Ultra. Like previous NVIDIA products, the “Ultra” product possesses higher clock frequencies than the non Ultra. Initially NVIDIA announced a core clock frequency of 350MHz for the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, however this has recently been increased. Unfortunately, we can’t disclose the exact figures for this newer GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, but we can tell you that the GeForce FX 5600 operates at a core clock frequency of 325MHz with a memory clock of 275MHz (550MHz effective). This results in a peak fill rate of 1.3Gigatexels/sec and up to 8.8GB/sec of peak memory bandwidth.
In comparison, GeForce4 Ti 4200-8X offers a fill rate of 2.0Gigatexels/sec and 8.2GB/sec of memory bandwidth.
With its lower fill rate, GeForce FX 5600 will have a hard time competing with GeForce4 Ti 4200 in low resolution environments where texture performance is more critical. But thanks to its memory bandwidth advantage GeForce FX 5600 should be able to fare better in situations with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, visual quality settings that an increasing number of gamers are taking advantage of with today’s games. GeForce FX 5600 also boasts more advanced color and Z-compression techniques – features allowing the 5600 to make more efficient use of its available memory bandwidth (again, this will play the greatest dividends in anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering environments).
We’ve provided the following chart to summarize how the GeForce FX 5600 stacks up to the competition:
| GPU | Core clock (MHz) | Memory clock | Peak fill rate (Mpixels/sec) | Peak fill rate (Mtexels/sec) | Peak memory bandwidth (GB/sec) |
| GeForce4 Ti 4200-8X | 250 | 512 | 1000 | 2000 | 8.2 |
| GeForce FX 5600 | 325 | 550 | 1300 | 1300 | 8.8 |
| RADEON 9600 PRO | 400 | 600 | 1600 | 1600 | 9.6 |
| RADEON 9600 | 325 | 400 | 1300 | 1300 | 6.4 |
| RADEON 9500 PRO | 275 | 540 | 2200 | 2200 | 8.6 |
| RADEON 9500 | 275 | 540 | 1100 | 1100 | 8.6 |
SIDEBAR: Interestingly enough NVIDIA has removed the GeForce FX 5800 from its website
| The FX5600-VTDR128 card | Page:: ( 3 / 16 ) |
Board analysis
While we don’t have a reference GeForce FX 5600 card to compare the FX5600-VTDR128 against, we can tell you that MSI’s GeForce FX 5600 card is built on a six-layer PCB, just like the GeForce4 Ti 4200. In contrast, GeForce FX 5600 Ultra cards are built with eight-layer PCBs. By keeping the number of board layers to six, production cost is reduced at the loss of some signal quality. Since the GeForce FX 5600 is running at lower clock frequencies however, this isn’t too much of a concern.
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Another important difference between the GeForce FX 5600 and GeForce FX 5600 Ultra board design lies in the use of less expensive TSOP memory on the GeForce FX 5600 in the place of BGA chips on the FX 5600 Ultra. In the case of our MSI FX5600-VTDR128, MSI has elected to use 3.6ns memory from Samsung, good for 550MHz. This puts the FX5600-VTDR128 right at spec. You will also notice that GeForce FX 5600 cards do not require an external power source like GeForce FX 5600 Ultra.
Like all of MSI’s retail video cards, the FX5600-VTDR128 sports the familiar red PCB we’ve grown accustomed to. MSI adds a Philips video decoder chip for video input support, as well as a Winbond W83L785R chip for hardware monitoring.
T.O.P. Tech Cooling
As graphics processors have grown more advanced, the cooling requirements of these devices have increased as well. NVIDIA’s FX Flow heat pipe cooler required for GeForce FX 5800 Ultra is the most talked about example of an extreme graphics cooler, but even cards based on ATI’s RV300/R300 (RADEON 9500/9700) and its follow-up (R350) require pretty hefty cooling: heatsinks are used on the voltage regulator modules for RADEON 9800; a metal plate (that gets quite hot) accomplishes this task for RADEON 9700. And while the heatsink/fan unit on these cards is fairly mundane, they’re known for being pretty hot graphics cards.
MSI’s T.O.P. Tech cooler reverses this trend. Not only do you get a cooler that does an incredible job of keeping the GPU cool, it does so with significantly reduced noise levels. The only cooler we’ve seen that’s quieter is Zalman’s heat pipe used on the Sapphire 9700 Ultimate Edition.
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MSI starts with a copper plate that is attached to the GeForce FX 5600 core and memory modules on the top of the card. MSI then embeds a folded copper sheet, which acts like the fins you see on a traditional heatsink, increasing surface area. A plastic duct is then placed on the copper heatsink apparatus, when combined with the near silent fan MSI uses hot air is drawn off the copper plate and then blown away from the graphics card.
The end result is an ingenious design that is incredibly effective without an excessive noise level. The low RPM fan is comparable in noise level to the chipset cooler used on many motherboards.
SIDEBAR: In 2D mode, GeForce FX 5600 cards operate at 270/550MHz.
| VIVO/Hardware monitoring | Page:: ( 4 / 16 ) |
As we mentioned previously, the FX5600-VTDR128 supports video input thanks to its Philips SAA7108AE video encoder/decoder chip, hence the “V” in its VTDR128 name. For connecting your FX5600-VTDR128 to external devices, a breakout box is included in the packaging. S-Video and composite outputs are provided, as are S-Video and composite inputs.
MSI also manufactures a 128MB variant of the FX5600, the FX5600-TD128 at a reduced cost. Therefore, if you really want the video editing capabilities of the FX5600-VTDR128, we suggest you read the fine print before making your purchase, especially if you’re dealing with an online vendor.
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Remote control unit
The “R” in VTDR128 designates the remote control unit that comes with the FX5600-VTDR128. That’s right MSI’s GeForce FX 5600 video card comes with a remote (batteries included)! This is meant to correspond with MSI’s Media Center Deluxe II software package, which is also included in the FX5600-VTDR128’s packaging.
Media Center Deluxe is basically a launch pad for a myriad of software applications. You can use it to watch DVDs, play videos, listen to music, and look at pictures, and if you have MSI’s TV tuner, you can use Media Center Deluxe to watch TV. While Media Center Deluxe is probably a nice feature for inexperienced computer users, MSI’s 3D! Turbo Experience utility will probably be more useful to gamers and hardware enthusiasts.
Hardware monitoring utility
With the built-in hardware monitoring capabilities of the FX5600-VTDR128, 3D! Turbo can be used to monitor such functions as fan speed and the graphics core’s temperature and voltage. You can also use 3D! Turbo to alert you if the graphics core begins to overheat.
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Overall it’s a nice design on paper but in practice the use of Macromedia Flash seems a bit unnecessary. The point of utilities like 3D! Turbo is to monitor these critical graphics functions with a minimum of system resources, 3D! Turbo requires you to overclock your card and/or monitor these functions through a web browser that is filled with flashing lights and is gaudier than a gold-colored Cadillac with matching gold rims. Quite frankly, the usefulness of the 3D! Turbo Experience is its only saving grace.
256MB board
Besides the aforementioned 128MB cards, MSI also offers a 256MB GeForce FX 5600 card, the FX5600-TD256. As its name implies, the FX5600-TD256 ships without the video input support (the VIVO breakout box mentioned above) or the remote control unit, but still retains MSI’s T.O.P. Tech cooling (the fan is a different design but its also very quiet). Due to extenuating circumstances we were unable to test the 256MB board we received, but in our RADEON 9800 PRO review we tested both the 128MB and 256MB boards and noticed little or no performance difference until you really cranked up the anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. For now we just don’t see the purpose of a 256MB GeForce FX 5600 card, in situations where the extra memory may show benefits, the GeForce FX 5600 core simply lacks the horsepower to provide a playable frame rate.
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MSI also bundles copies of Virtual Drive 7, Restore It 3, MSI 5.1-channel DVD player, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, Morrowind, and Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project. There’s also a 7-in-1 games pack, which includes demos taken from a selection of games.
SIDEBAR: The build of 3D! Turbo included with the FX5600-VTDR128 doesn’t offer native support of the GeForce FX 5600 GPU yet (so no overclocking) but it can still be used to monitor fan speed and temperature.
| Test Systems | Page:: ( 5 / 16 ) |
System Setup
AMD Athlon XP 3200+
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe 2.0
512MB OCZ Technology EL DDR PC-3200 (operating at DDR400) SDRAM
ATI RADEON 9600 PRO
Sapphire ATLANTIS RADEON 9500
ATI RADEON 9500 PRO – 128MB
Driver version Catalyst 3.4
MSI GeForce FX 5600-VTDR128
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200-8X 128MB
Driver version Detonator 44.03
30GB IBM Deskstar DTLA 307030 ATA/100 Hard Drive
Windows XP Professional
DirectX 9.0
Benchmarks
Quake III: Arena version 1.17
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (Elephant Atrium demo)
Unreal Tournament 2003
Splinter Cell (Very High Quality settings)
Comanche 4
Jedi Knight II
SIDEBAR: We used NVIDIA’s Coolbits registry tweak to overclock the FX5600-VTDR128 card.
| Serious Sam 2 | Page:: ( 6 / 16 ) |
Serious Sam 2 - OpenGL
Notes
The GeForce cards perform well at low resolutions in Serious Sam, but at higher resolutions it doesn’t have the fill rate to keep up with the RADEON 9500 PRO/9600 PRO or GeForce4. At 1600x1200 it trails the RADEON 9500 by 5%.
SIDEBAR: NVIDIA has also incorporated an overclocking tool in the latest Detonator FX driver. It’s really handy!
| Splinter Cell | Page:: ( 7 / 16 ) |
Splinter Cell - DirectX
Notes
We’ve noted in previous articles the fill rate requirements of Splinter Cell, so it was no shocker to see the FX5600-VTDR128 finish behind GeForce4 and the RADEON PRO graphics cards in this test. It was a bit of a surprise to us however to see the RADEON 9500 finish ahead of the GeForce FX 5600, we would’ve expected its fill rate and memory bandwidth advantage to be enough to come ahead of the RADEON 9500 but clearly it wasn’t capable of achieving this. Even the overclocked card had its hands full.
SIDEBAR: Although the FX5600 runs slower in 2D mode, the fan runs at full speed at all times.
| Quake III | Page:: ( 8 / 16 ) |
Quake III - High Quality
Notes
We were quite surprised to see the FX5600 finish ahead of the 9600 PRO in Quake 3, so we re-ran the numbers a total of 9 times and got similar results. Still puzzled, we looked back at our CATALYST 3.4 article, and sure enough, the 9600 PRO topped out around 115 frames per second while 9500 PRO finished at 132.9 frames per second, the same results we see here. The FX5600-VTDR128 is still behind GeForce4 by 15% at 1600x1200.
SIDEBAR: T.O.P. stands for Thermal Obviation Protection.
| Comanche 4 | Page:: ( 9 / 16 ) |
Comanche 4 demo
Notes
Comanche may be a test that relies more heavily on the CPU than our previous benchmarks, but we still see an overwhelming disadvantage for GeForce FX 5600 in this test.
SIDEBAR: Did you know MSI also makes 3D stereo glasses?
| Unreal Tournament 2003 | Page:: ( 10 / 16 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003 - flyby
Unreal Tournament 2003 - botmatch
Notes
Flyby performance in Unreal Tournament continues to favor GeForce4 over GeForce FX 5600, but as you can see the FX5600-VTDR128 is able to outpace its direct competitor (RADEON 9500) by roughly 15% at 1280x1024 and up (the same margin it trails GeForce4 by).
SIDEBAR: NVIDIA’s overclocking tool auto-detected to 367/665.
| Jedi Knight II | Page:: ( 11 / 16 ) |
Jedi Knight II – High Quality
Notes
For the most part, Jedi Knight II results mirror what we saw earlier in Quake 3.
SIDEBAR: Now that 3DMark is out of our standard testing rotation, we need a good DX9 game to test with badly!
| UT 4x AA/8x Aniso | Page:: ( 12 / 16 ) |
Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby
Unreal Tournament 2003 Botmatch
Notes
Once anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are enabled we see that the GeForce FX 5600 card is able to overtake GeForce4. In fact, in some cases it offers 1.5 times the performance of GeForce4 Ti 4200. Likewise, ATI’s RADEON 9500 isn’t able to keep up. ATI’s RADEON 9500 PRO still offers dramatically better performance than all of these cards however.
SIDEBAR: We still use 3DMark to test overclocking stability. 3DMark 2001 can be looped for days on a stable system.
| 4x Anti-Aliasing | Page:: ( 13 / 16 ) |
Quake III – High Quality
Notes
Once again GeForce4 trails GeForce FX 5600 once anti-aliasing is enabled. On a surprising note however, RADEON 9500 beats GeForce FX 5600 by 14% at 1600x1200. This directly contradicts our UT anti-aliasing results on the previous page. Perhaps NVIDIA has some driver work to do here, as we also see the overclocked card having a hard time besting the stock RADEON 9500.
SIDEBAR: May has been a pretty busy month for hardware releases huh?
| 4x AA/8x Aniso | Page:: ( 14 / 16 ) |
Quake III – High Quality
SIDEBAR: The month isn’t over yet either.
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 15 / 16 ) |
Pros
Performance: Since it lacks the texel fill rate of GeForce4 Ti 4200-8X, the GeForce FX 5600 GPU the FX5600-VTDR128 is based on is outperformed by its predecessor in games that use multi-texturing (read: all the games we tested). Fortunately, due to its 8.8GB/sec of memory bandwidth (the highest in its class) and improved Intellisample anti-aliasing engine, the GeForce FX 5600 outshines GeForce4 Ti 4200 in performance once anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are enabled. Results against ATI’s competitor, RADEON 9500 are mixed; the GeForce FX 5600 wins in some cases, and loses in others.
Overall performance isn’t bad, but if given the choice we’d upgrade to one of NVIDIA’s “Ultra” or ATI’s “PRO” models in a heartbeat.
Cooling: Ever since we first lay eyes on MSI’s T.O.P. Tech cooler, we were impressed. Fortunately, it’s just as effective at removing heat as it looks and it's incredibly quiet to boot! As far as we’re concerned, MSI has perfected GPU cooling with its T.O.P. Tech cooling unit, we hope that MSI will continue to implement this unique feature in future graphics cards. It’s great being able to keep your graphics card cool without excessive noise, a lesson NVIDIA learned recently with GeForce FX 5800 Ultra.
Price: Online prices for the FX5600-VTDR128 start at $179, $26 higher than the lowest GeForce FX 5600 card available on Price Watch. Once you factor in extras like T.O.P. Tech Cooling, and built-in hardware monitoring the added premium of the FX5600-VTDR128 isn’t that bad. Also remember that you’re getting a remote control unit and video editing capabilities thanks to the Philips/VIVO module combination.
Hardware monitoring/utilities: MSI’s Live Update series can be used to keep your FX5600-VTDR128’s BIOS and driver up to date. Meanwhile, 3D! Turbo Experience monitors parameters such as fan speed and GPU temperature. If the graphics card begins to overheat, an alarm will sound, alerting the end user. 3D! Turbo can also be used to overclock the GPU (although the version that shipped with the card didn’t support the FX5600 GPU), but NVIDIA’s Coolbits registry tweak is far more powerful in clock speed adjustment. Hopefully MSI will address this and also overhaul 3D! Turbo’s interface, in its current form it's fairly annoying.
Software bundle: While the game bundle MSI includes with the FX5600-VTDR128 is beginning to show serious signs of age, MSI complements it well with system backup and restore software as well as WinDVD 5.1 and WinProducer and WinCoder for video editing.
Cons
Value: The GeForce FX 5600 performs competitively with other graphics cards in its class however, the current market situation has pitted it largely against the RADEON 9500 PRO and RADEON 9500 (RADEON 9600 PRO cards are just now arriving at retail as well) in addition to GeForce4 Ti 4200. Against the RADEON 9500, its true intended competition, the GeForce FX 5600 is able to put up a good fight, but once GeForce FX 5600 is paired against RADEON 9500 PRO/9600 PRO it tumbles to the canvas quickly. GeForce4 Ti 4200 offers better performance as long as anti-aliasing is disabled and does so at a lower price point.
Because of this, we see many interested consumers in an either/or situation. Either enthusiasts will scrape up the cash to upgrade to RADEON 9500 PRO/9600 PRO, or they’ll go for the cheapest GeForce4 Ti 4200 card they can find to tide them over until DirectX 9 titles begin to ship. Perhaps once GeForce FX 5600 Ultra hits retail and more GeForce FX 5600 cards are available the situation will change. It wouldn’t surprise us to see GeForce FX 5600 prices plummet once the plethora of board partners NVIDIA has for GeForce FX all get cranking into full production on first and second generation GeForce FX 5600 cards. We’ve seen a similar situation occur for GeForce4 Ti 4200. In fact, the price difference between 64MB GF4 Ti 4200 cards and 128MB offerings is negligible.
SIDEBAR: The MSI FX5600-VTDR128 is a hair shorter than MSI’s Ti 4200-VTD8X we reviewed last year.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 16 / 16 ) |