The GeForce FX 5700 Goes Light

In 2003, NVIDIA's mid-range GPU products were the GeForce FX 5600 and GeForce 5600 Ultra that contested against ATI's RADEON 9600 and RADEON 9600 PRO respectively. At that time, the mainstream 5600 model was much more prevalent than the performance oriented 5600 Ultra model and we have in past reviews cited the reason is due to a GPU shortage problem. We weren't really surprised either as it was merely a cut down version of the short-lived GeForce FX 5800 series, which also faced similar problems.

That situation took an about turn at the start of 2004 when the GeForce FX 5700 and GeForce FX 5700 Ultra were replacing their GeForce FX 5600 series predecessors. The NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 series is derived from the GeForce FX 5900 series that was released in the second half of 2003 and this revised silicon faced no such GPU shortages. This is because by late 2003, TSMC's 0.13-micron process was very much mature and we started seeing more reasonably priced products from NVIDIA that were competitively positioned against ATI's counterparts. As detailed in our GeForce FX 5700 Ultra performance review, the 5700 series incorporated critical performance enhancing features such as the CineFX 2.0 rendering engine that greatly enhanced shader performance, UltraShadow Technology that aids to reduce shadow computation workload and Intellisample HCT (High Compression Technology) for improved FSAA performance (Intellisample HCT is also known as Intellisample 2.0). More information on these features is available in our GeForce FX 5900 Ultra Review .

With all these improvements in addition to clock speed increments, the performance of the GeForce FX 5700 and 5700 Ultra were much more pronounced than its obsolete 5600 models and were now positioned against ATI's RADEON 9600 PRO and RADEON 9600 XT respectively. Now that left a gap in NVIDIA's lineup with no real competition against ATI's lower-end midrange RADEON 9600 product – at least not until a few months ago. Enter the GeForce FX 5700 LE which is nothing more than a slower GeForce FX 5700 and positioned to compete with the RADEON 9600. The GeForce FX 5700 LE was soft launched along with the GeForce FX 5900 XT and the GeForce FX 5500, but each of them play an important role in bridging NVIDIA's offerings against ATI's lineup. Here's how the GeForce FX 5700LE stands with the rest of NVIDIA's mid and low-end offerings:-

You can see that the GeForce FX 5700 LE is clocked significantly slower than the standard GeForce FX 5700. Interestingly, its core and memory speeds correspond exactly with the GeForce FX 5200 and the former's updated graphics core technology is the only differentiating factor between them. A comparison between both these products would reveal just exactly how much better NVIDIA's CineFX Engine 2.0 is over its first version amongst a few others. Now that you know a little about the history behind this GPU, let's take a look at the Leadtek GeForce FX 5700 LE and find out how it actually fared in real usage.