I've got Andy's review of the FX5600-VTDR128 review up. The FX5600 is not a performance card, but MSI has packaged this with a very nice bundle, their nice TopTech cooling system, and a remote! Andy spent some time playing with the remote control that comes with this card, and he's got some advice re: that remote that you want to read before making any decisions.

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/msi_fx5600/index.html

We'll be publishing our reference Nvidia FX5600 Ultra review later this week - it's the real contender for the higher end (but not uber high end) spot against the 9600PRO.

Hmmm..That 3dmark score seems so low..... My ti4200 gets 14,000......... WOOO! I really think that card should be getting a higher score..

Yes, but you got to remember that your card and processor is overclocked whereas the FX 5600 isn't. I'll most likely get a Radeon card next since they seem to be performing a lot better in games.

Yes but my Card is still clocked LOWER than the fx5600. And even when my Computer and card were at stock speeds.. I got 11,700

It strongly depends on what your settings are. We use some pretty aggressive settings.

I have everything at Default, With the Mip Mapping stuff on High... IN simple words... I think that the FX5600 is New Crap

OK just so other people don't get the wrong idea... Yes some of you might get 3dmark scores that are higher than what you see on our results... however, ALL of our 3dmark2001 scores are pretty low because we do NOT use default settings. The settings we use are:

32bit color
24bit z-buffering
triple buffering

So don't compare the 11,000 score of the cards with the 14,000 score that you might get at home on an older card. There's no doubt tho that the 5600 is not going to lift any eyebrows.

This message was edited by Redemption on Aug 21 2003.

Firstly, it is illogical to use the settings you are using. A default industrial standard setting should be used so cross-referencing is possible. Secondly, like all the nVIDIA cards, bar the FX5200, the are inferior to the ati equivalent. A 9600Pro will anhilate a 5600 Ultra in everything apart from extremmely high resolutions with 4AA and 16AF, where games are unplayable. Also, i think it is about time that the 3dmark 2001 was scrapped for 2003. No one is particularly bothered how there card will do in UT2003, they want to know the Half-Life 2 performance.

K, the 9600pro is faster than the GF fx5600/ultra, but what about compatible problems that ati has? I've got a GF 4mx440 and want to buy a 5600, the only reason for that is that the 9600pro scares me with its problems on motherboards and some games.
Sure there are patches, but I want to install my card and pay games without having problems. And i'm willing to sacrifice some fps for that.
Boudewijn

quote RasterChief

Firstly, it is illogical to use the settings you are using. A default industrial standard setting should be used so cross-referencing is possible. Secondly, like all the nVIDIA cards, bar the FX5200, the are inferior to the ati equivalent. A 9600Pro will anhilate a 5600 Ultra in everything apart from extremmely high resolutions with 4AA and 16AF, where games are unplayable. Also, i think it is about time that the 3dmark 2001 was scrapped for 2003. No one is particularly bothered how there card will do in UT2003, they want to know the Half-Life 2 performance.

Ok so I admit that the settings we chose to use from day 1 were a little offbeat, but our thinking was that everyone else was already using the default settings, so what's the point of having 30 reviews from different sites, of the same card benched against pretty much the same cards on the same settings? Since you can replicate our settings pretty easily you can still do some cross referencing, and cross referencing is always dangerous since you have a different setup than us, so you always have to take all the factors into consideration. I guess in the future we will choose more industry standard settings so that straight comparisons are easier to make.

Btw out of curiosity on the 3dmark2003 remark. Is there any concrete idea yet the relationship between real world game engine performance (eg Doom3 and Half-Life2) and 3dmark2003 scores? I'm just not sure how the two might relate since there's been so much controversy in 3dmark2003.

This message was edited by Redemption on Aug 25 2003.