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Chaintech Apogee 5700 Ultra Video Card Review

Author: Dennis Garcia

Abit IS7 (Springdale) GAT Enabled
Pentium 4 3.0Ghz 800Mhz FSB
AVC Sunflower II
2x Corsair XMS3500
IBM Hitachi Deskstar 80gig SerialATA 7200RPM
Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo II
Antec 430watt power supply
12x/40x DVD/CDRom
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1

Chaintech Apogee AA5700U (GeForceFX 5700 Ultra 128megs) - ForceWare 53.03
ATI Radeon 9600XT (128megs) - CATALYST 4.2

For the purposes of the benchmarks the AA5700U is using the Chaintech GOSU Max video settings putting the core/memory clock at 546/1041. This wasn't the highest overclock attainable but not too shabby for a factory approved setting.

Unless otherwise noted all Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering (AA/AF) was manually set via the display drivers. Since the 5700Ultra is an upper mid-range card 2xQ AA and AF was used on both cards for this review.

Framerates were captured using a little software program called FRAPS. This program is very easy to use and appears to be very accurate. Gameplay was recorded from the start of the game and persisted until a stopping point was reached. Each resolution was tested twice with the results being weighted between the scores, most passes only varied by 2-5fps. Due to the nature of this testing the framerates recorded reflect real gameplay in a variety of situations with a genuine attempt to reproduce the passes as much as possible.

Benchmarks are next.