Albatron FX5700 Ultra
Reviewed by James Sams on 03.02.2004

Conclusion

When the FX5600 cards came out, I was left with a sour taste, as were most reviewers. The card did not offer significant improvements over previous Nvidia offerings, and at most price ranges, ATI was embarrassing Nvidia insofar as performance is concerned. Drivers are another issue. Although ATI has ramped up their efforts to improve their drivers, I still have machines that consistently crash solely due to the ATI driver, regardless of which revision I use. Nvidia has been extremely reliable in this end, and if you are wanting stability over performance, I would not hesitate to suggest the 5700 over the numbers I have seen from ATI's current offering, the 9600XT.

However, most looking at video cards like these are unconcerned about rock solid stability and are looking for performance coupled with enough stability to play games for 12 solid hours or so and then a reboot. The 5700 will satisfied these gamers; however, the AA and AF performance on the FX cards still suffers. ATI has grown to become Nvidia's equal, and the recent series of cards shows this. However, Nvidia is not giving up and has offered a card which is, by all accounts, on par with the 9600XT. Held in isolation, we congratulate Nvidia for producing a card worthy of their long-praised name.

Did I mention it glows an eerily cool blue when powered on?

Albatron has taken Nvidia's reference card in a great direction. They provide high quality, though not industry best, and RAM with a great cooling solution which allows for great over clocking performance and stability.

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