Date:
Thursday , October 30, 2003
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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BFG Asylum GFFX 5700Ultra Review

We take BFG’s new Asylum GeForceFX 5700Ultra for a spin in eight games and compare it with three popular cards in the mainstream market. Read inside for the gameplay evaluation.

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Test Setup:

ABIT IC7-G (i875P), Intel Pentium 4 3GHz “C” operating at 800MHz FSB, 2 X 512MB Corsair XMS PC3200LL TwinX Dual Channel DDR400, Maxtor 40GB ATA/133, Windows XP Professional SP1 with DirectX 9.0b.

BFG Asylum GeForceFX 5700Ultra 128MB – Operating at default clock speeds 475/900 using ForceWare 52.16 driver (WHQL).

BFG Asylum GeForceFX 5600Ultra 128MB – Operating at default clock speeds 400/800 using ForceWare 52.16 driver (WHQL).

ATI Radeon 9600XT 128MB – Operating at default clock speeds 500/600 using Catalyst Driver 3.8 (WHQL).

ATI Radeon 9500Pro 128MB** – Operating at default clock speeds 275/540 using Catalyst Driver 3.8 (WHQL).

**The Radeon 9500Pro was added to our comparison as we have had many people wondering if these new mainstream cards put them in a position of upgrading based on performance. The addition of this card will hopefully answer some questions surrounding that issue.

Drivers:

The latest ForceWare 52.16 WHQL drivers were used on both NVIDIA based cards being reviewed here. The same driver concerns expressed in the 5950Ultra Preview apply in this review as well. We suggest you give that page a read for more information about the 52.16 driver before moving on with this review.

Article Image Article Image Article Image Article Image

Above are screenshots from the driver control panel installed on the BFG Asylum 5700Ultra. As you can see above there is actually a TV Encoder that is integrated in the core instead of separate of it. The default image settings are set to the sliders maximum quality position. Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic filtering are set to Application-Controlled by default. The default 2D speed on this card is set for 300MHz core and 906MHz memory. The default 3D speed cranks up to 475MHz core and 906MHz memory.

Game Setup:

Anisotropic filtering was selected from the driver control panel on each card for each game where that is enabled. Anti-Aliasing was also selected from the driver control panel in all games except Tomb Raider: AOD and Max Payne 2 where AA was selected from the game itself.

Games being used in this review are:

Max Payne 2

Tomb Raider: AOD

Halo

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Flight Sim 2004

Unreal Tournament 2003

XIII Demo

Call of Duty Demo

All game settings are listed above each game being reviewed on the appropriate pages. Image quality shots were not compared in this review. The BFG Asylum 5700Ultra outputs the same image quality that the NVIDIA reference 5950Ultra does in the games tested. Likewise the Radeon 9600XT outputs the same image quality the Radeon 9800XT does. Therefore if you wish to see image comparisons the comparisons taken in our NVIDIA GFFX 5950Ultra Preview are very valid. We will have a page at the end of this review that shows screenshots from the BFG Asylum 5700Ultra so that you can get an idea what is going on in the levels we tested in each game.