Hello I am new to this so bare with me, I’m thinking of buying a MSI GeForce FX 5600XT-TD128DDR TV Out. With my new PC which will have the following: Abit NF7 NFORCE2 Socket A 266FSB DDR400 8xAGP, Athlon XP 2500 Barton Socket A CPU and 400MHz 184Pin 512MB PC3200 DDR RAM. Could any one tell me if this graphic card is any good? or should I get a better one, don’t want to spend too much thou!!
It's okay, but not great.. if you can stretch to it, you'd be better off with a 9600Pro or XT - much better cards for a little more money
The FX 5600 are not very good cards IMO. The graphics card would be holding your system back in perfromance. An ATI 9600 XT would be far far better.
If you're wanting to use an nVidia based card, get the 5700, it's the best card that nVidia have released in a long time, and it actually lines up fairly well against the 9600XT
The FX 5700 Ultra is a better card then some of there erlier poor releases. In the tests I have seen The ATI 9600 XT is bit faster in some areas. In normal fillrate and texturing it is between 4% - 37% faster the the FX 5700 Ultra. In Pixel Shading it looks to be 30% - 70% faster then the FX 5700 Ultra. Check out this thread for a more detailed discussion. http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8623 Either card would be much better then the FX 5600.
I owned a 5600 then upgraded to a 9600pro almost straight away. Pretty disapointing card my ti4200 was faster in 3D Mark 01.
off subject a bit a friend of mine was building a new system,he was gonna replace his ati 9700pro with a 5600,cos it was newer he thought it would be faster.
....Just to add I hav a Gefore 2 64Mb graphics card at the mo, i mean even with the fx 5600 il see better improvments!! (should i?)
you would see an improvement as the overall system is better than your current system. but the 5600 isnt the best out there by a long way. If you are buying a new system you really dont want to be bottlenecking it with a lower performance graphics card. i would suggest getting the 9600pro or XT
Consider the 5900se. Got my eVGA 5900se from Newegg for $190 US and it spanked my 9600XT. Went from 3800 (9600xt) 3dmark03 to 5187 (5900se). Gained 12 or so FPS in Need for Speed Underground and jumped up a detail level. Also came with Call of Duty free. Ive read three reviews at three diff places where the 5900se spanked the 9600xt. One of the places said they couldnt even recommend a 9600xt after the review.......I second that. But its a big card.....and required external power so keep that in mind.
The 9600 XT improves on the 9600 PRO (in some areas more than others). NVIDIA's 5900 SE/XT (eVGA call it SE, officially it's XT) is a better card than the 9600XT in most areas, though it does cost a bit more so no suprises there, the 9600XT is around $110 US... [EDIT] Just depends on how much you want to spend: MSI GeForce FX 5600XT-TD128DDR TV Out ~£80 Radeon 9600XT 128MB ~£110 5900SE/XT ~£150 (havn't seen any in UK yet - this is going on US price then the extra we normally pay) A few minutes ago I went for a Saphire 9600XT 256MB, cheap and even before it needs to be upgraded there will be a new range of cards to choose from...
iv decided to get the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro and if not got any, im going to get the GeForce FX5600 XT 128MB.
If you have to get a 5600 then get a Gainward Powerpack one. It has ocing potential and has two glowy fans and has higher than normal clock speeds.
Although I give nVidia are bit of **** the 5600 and 5700 are good cards really. The gainward powerpacks are real great performance boosters...just make sure you install their clocked up driver.
