BFG
Technologies ASYLUM GeForce FX 5700 Ultra Review - Page 9 Of 9
By Clay Angelly - October 23, 2003
ISSUES AND CONCLUSION
You just gotta love "Twitch" (BFG Technologies' Mascot)
I'll wrap things up here briefly (no offense there
Twitch) :). I was very impressed
with this product. You'll have a tough time finding a better solution in
the mainstream market than the BFG Technologies ASYLUM GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. To
re-quote what I said earlier:
Everyone places value differently and admittedly this
price to performance ratio I'm presenting is somewhat disputable from various
perspectives. At the end of the day though, a BFG 5700 Ultra owner would find
themselves in a satisfying situation with very playable frame rates up to
1280x960 and with an extra $165 in their pocket compared to the enthusiast
market product offerings.
Product availability should also be a
strong point for this offering from BFG Technologies. This will not be a "paper
release" by any means as many people have been reporting seeing these on store
shelves for days now already. The only real tangible downside I can see is that
you'll run into some games that won't play smoothly at 1600x1200 with aggressive
AF/AA settings. All you need to do though is to drop down to a slightly lower
resolution and you're in business. This can't really be considered a strike
against this card though since it is a mainstream targeted product.
In the spirit of America's national
pastime...NVIDIA has hit an in-the-park homerun with the NV36.
Positives:
Excellent price and value for your dollar
Will offer excellent performance for 99% of today's games
Very stable even when overclocked fairly aggressively
Improved cooling over reference design
Quiet
Fast DDR2 memory
.13 micron fabrication
Lifetime warranty
24/7/365 technical support
Immediate availability
High build quality synonymous with BFG Technologies
products
Negatives:
Not quite enough power for some games at 1600x1200 with
high AA/AF settings
No bundle to speak of
No VIVO support
Pixel Shader 2.0, while greatly improved, is still not
quite up to speed with the competition
Lack of full tri-linear filtering support
Addendum
On a more technical note, there are still some apparent issues regarding the
performance in dealing with Pixel Shaders 2.0 (which are a core feature of
DirectX 9) by both the NV36 and NV38 chipsets. I will be updating this review
with some more insight into this issue in the future. So, for now you need to at
least understand that these latest chipsets from NVIDIA do not appear to be
reaching their full potential in this area. It is open for debate as to whether
this performance problem will be remedied by updated ForceWare drivers or not.
How does this affect you and the games you play? Well, today the answer is not
much, as there are just a handful of games that even begin to scratch the
surface of the potential that Pixel Shaders offer. As more and more games begin
to utilize Pixel Shaders (2.0 specifically here), however, then these NVIDIA
chipsets will increasingly come under more and more scrutiny until the
performance improves. It comes down to whether this specific Pixel Shader
performance gap can be improved upon by improved drivers or not.
Also, it would be a disservice to you, the consumer, if I
did not acknowledge the issue of "aggressive optimizations" or "cheating" within
video card drivers. This is a very touchy subject and one that has staunch
supporters on both sides of the fence. So, for those that are not already aware
you should know that both ATI and NVIDIA have been accused of "cheating" in
their drivers dating back years and many different situations. It's beyond the
scope of this review to dive deeply into this issue but you can find out as much
as you'd like with a quick trip over to Google to learn more.
My personal take on this topic is that the term "cheating" is slung around very
loosely at times and that there is a fine line between "cheating" and making
innovative, beneficial and positive optimizations to drivers. After all, that is
what drivers are all about in the first place, to improve/optimize performance,
stability and functionality of the hardware that they communicate to and the OS.
I won't deny that some questionable changes have been made to drivers but I also
will not jump to conclusions and use a review as a platform for trying to
convince you of my opinions on this topic. In summary, you should decide for
yourself what is acceptable to you, and what is not, regarding changes to the
drivers for your particular hardware.
