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.

X2: The Threat Performance
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  • Anonymous User - Sunday, October 26, 2003 - link

    Stop acting like a moron and coming to conclusions on your own. If you actually had a method to checks IPs, you would see that I only posted ONCE. (#96). Maybe other people posted more than once, but assuming that the 10 posts are only from one person is complete BS. Unless you have proof, keep your mouth shut.
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, October 26, 2003 - link

    Please, #98 is right. Look at #'s 87-97; all of them were posted within an hour. Then look at the rest of the responses toward the end of this thread. Puhlease.
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, October 25, 2003 - link

    #98 just wanted to say that cause hes overwhelmed with how many people are posting with common sense.
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, October 25, 2003 - link

    #98 which one would that be?
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, October 25, 2003 - link

    LMAO! Some loser is posting messages pretending to be a different person each time! LOL, nice try, you were caught. Next time try changing your IP address, you look stupid.
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, October 25, 2003 - link

    and these days you can easily find a ati 9700 for around $220ish

  • Anonymous User - Saturday, October 25, 2003 - link

    Argh wtf.. this review is clearly biased. Very disappointing AT.. very..

    "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."

    Its 200 dollars AFTER the rebate comes in the mail. If you only have money to buy a $200 card, how the hell are you suppose to buy a 5700? Don't know, don't care..

    Grrr.

  • Anonymous User - Saturday, October 25, 2003 - link

    #76
    How dare you say ATI driver performance is not up to NVidia's?

    After all that cheating fiasco, replacing shader code, IQ optimization, Clipping planes, program detection, etc etc etc.

    WAKE UP dammit.
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, October 25, 2003 - link

    #62

    60,000 and alone? Yet defending [A] on their crap?

    Now I understand why you live alone...even if you didn't want to it'll be hard to find a partner that can stand such a lame attitude.

    I agree on the part of doing some investigations before investing. Yet you contradict yourself if you see no IQ diferences....for the hardware you might be able to buy, you should see it miles away. I do in a cheapo 17" monitor.

    You should be investing more in your eyes man....
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, October 25, 2003 - link

    #53

    No, it won't help, but for sure the website might GET A CLUE about what they are definitively not doing right.

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