The Last Bout of ‘03 – NVIDIA’s GeForce FX 5700 Ultra

Final Words

After testing the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra, we have been very pleasantly surprised by NVIDIA. We mentioned last week that the 5700's new architecture might help to close the gap. In fact, NVIDIA has flipped the tables on ATI in the midrange segment and takes the performance crown with a late round TKO. It was a hard fought battle with many ties, but in the games where the NV36 based card took the performance lead, it lead with the style of a higher end card.

We are still recommending that people stay away from upgrading to a high end card until the game they are upgrading for is available. By that time, either new cards will have trickled out, or the prices will have fallen. We still don't have a way to predict what card will be best for you in the future. If you are dead set on getting a DX9 card, we recommend you look to the midrange cards.

Neither card can touch the 9700 Pro for price/performance right now. If the 9700 Pro is in your price range and you're looking for a better than midrange performer for a near midrange price, go ahead and pick one up.

The GeForce FX 5700 Ultra will be debuting at $199 after a mail in rebate. If $200 is your hard limit, and you need a midrange card right now, the 5700 Ultra is the way to go if you want solid frame rates.

If $200 is still a bit much, the Radeon 9600 Pro is a very healthy option; we have yet to see how the non-Ultra 5700 performs as it may also deserve some attention once it hits the streets.

What will also determine our recommendations in this segment is what clock speeds add-in card vendors actually ship the products at. We’ll be keeping an eye on that and update our recommendations accordingly.

Of course, we still have more to come in the form of image quality analysis. Our findings in that arena will affect what we recommend just as much as pure speed. Stay tuned for more.