The latest mainstream graphics chips from ATI and Nvidia offer solid performance at a reasonable price. In our small number of tests, boards using the Nvidia GeForce FX 5700 Ultra and the ATI Radeon 9600 XT outran cards carrying the chips’ immediate predecessors.
We tested a production-level ATI Radeon 9600 XT board and a GeForce FX 5700 Ultra board; each included 128Mbyte of memory.
For comparison, we also tested an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro board and a GeForce FX 5600 Ultra reference board from Nvidia.
The 9600 XT and 5700 Ultra boards notched virtually identical scores in our Halo benchmark across our three test resolutions. Both reached 33 frames per second (fps) at 1024 by 768 and 22fps at 1280 by 1024; at 1600 by 1200 they scored 16 and 15fps, respectively.
The 9600 XT card outperformed the 5700 Ultra board in our Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness tests, offering frame rates from 30 to 37 per cent faster. That said, the 5700 Ultra board showed some substantial gains over the 5600 Ultra board, nearly doubling the older card’s scores. (Neither Nvidia-based card completed our 4x anti-aliasing tests at 1600 by 1200 resolution and 32-bit colour depth.)
We recommend that gamers looking forward to Valve’s Half-Life 2 or Id’s Doom III wait for benchmarks with those games before buying. However, if you need to get a new board now, the Radeon 9600 XT gets the nod.
PC Live! Verdict
ATI Radeon 9600 XT
Solid performer continues ATI’s graphics winning streak by outpacing Nvidia’s latest chip.
PC Live! Verdict
Nvidia GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
More powerful than the 5600 Ultra, but it still trailed the ATI.
www.nvidia.com
Contact: Harvey Normans 01-8909900
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