Test Setup

We have discussed much of the performance levels and capabilities of the GeForce FX5600 Ultra in our extensive Chaintech Apogee FX71 graphics card review . Hence, we now jump directly to our test results portion of the MSI FX 5600U-VTD128 where we measure it up against the recently reviewed Chaintech FX 5600 Ultra graphics card. Just for relative comparisons, we have also included the results of a non-Ultra GeForce FX 5600 graphics card.

Our test system is a Pentium 4 3.06GHz processor running on Intel’s D875PBZ Canterwood motherboard with 512MB Kingmax DDR333 operating in dual-channel mode. You may refer to the complete test setup configuration at the end of the review. All graphics cards were tested with the Detonator FX 44.03 WHQL driver. Using Windows XP Professional operating system, our test suite comprised of the following:

Futuremark 3D Mark 2001SE Pro

Futuremark 3D Mark 2003 Pro

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

Quake3

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Jedi Knight II

Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo

Codecult’s Codecreature

GunMetal demo benchmark

AquaMark 3 benchmark

High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting demo

Note that 3D Mark 2003 was patched with the 3.3.0 update, but the results may still not depict the actual performance (this one’s still debatable, but nevertheless, we are showing it for your personal comparison).

Newly added to our benchmark suite is the long-awaited AquaMark 3 benchmark, which uses plenty of DirectX 8 and some DirectX 9 routines, so there’s plenty use for all the shader hardware in today's graphics cards.