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XFX GeForce FX 5600
Review by: Steve
Provided by: Purchased

The first thing that will draw you to this product is for sure the box. It comes nicely packaged in a box the shape of an X. But inside is what counts.

Introduction
Included with this product is 2 S-Video extension cables, a Y cable for the video in and video out functions, a DVI to VGA adapter for running two displays and the card itself.

Installation
Installation of this card went very easily I just had to simply take out my old card and pop this one in. One thing I was suprised not to see was a plug on the card for a power supply molex connector. Most of the other 5600 and up cards I have seen include one of these to make sure the card gets sufficient power.

Features
The 5600 as you can see has one DVI and one VGA plug which will allow you to run either one or two monitors. I have tested mine out with two VGA monitors using the included DVI adapter.
The two monitors seemed to work the moment I enabled them. I did not have to do any looking around or hard setup. One thing I do notice is every time I boot up my computer and windows loads my second monitor flickers a few times. From what I know that is just the card detecting it, but it can be a little annoying.

Next is the VIVO (video in, video out) part of this card. There is no a lot to say about this really. The included software Powerdirector Pro did not seem to work on my computer no matter how many times I installed it. I was However able to get a preview of the video in in Virtual Dub. When I tried to capture video I kept getting the error "Warning No Frames Captured" I have still not been able to successfully capture video with this card. It is most likely a hardware conflict on my computer. I will update this if and when I get it working.

Performance
Now for the performance. For the price of this card I was extremely pleased with the way it performed. Here's a quick run down on the specs:
Graphics Core: 256 bit
Memory Interface: 128 bit
Vertices/Sec: 81 million
Pixels Per Clock (peak): 4
RAMDACs (MHz): 400
So far the most intense game I have tested this card with would probably be Painkiller SP Demo.
It is able to hold a very steady frame rate and it never seems to fall behind. Of course I am still awaiting Half Life 2 which will put it to the ultimate test. If you put the 5600 into horizontal span while running two monitors you are able to play several games stretched out over two monitors.
I tested Unreal Tournament 2K4 like this. I was very suprised the card very rarely ever had a monitor get out of sync with the other, I was able to play the whole game very smoothly with the graphics all on max.

Benchmark results on AMD 1900+ @ 1644mhz:
3D Mark 01 SE: 7394
3D Mark 03: 3213
Aquamark: 17 351

Of course you'll want to know about overclocking. This card comes with the Coolbits Registry Hack, for overclocking Nvidia cards. I have successfully overclocked the Core Clock Frequency in 3D mode to 340mhz and the Memory Frequency in 3D mode to 510mhz. In 2D mode I have my Core Frequency at 306 and my Memory Frequency at 510. This is the most I am willing to overclock at this time because this card is my video card in my computer right now and I do not want to ruin it. At those settings above I have ran many benchmarks and tests and everything is very stable I'm sure if I wanted I could up it some more. But I won't, running it at stock does me just fine.

The only disappointing thing I found about this card would have to be the XFX support. If you know what your doing you'll never have to worry about this. As for the forums on their site the Admin doesn't know up from down and left from right. Also IF you ever get a response from their email support it hardly ever answers the question you asked.

Conclusion:
Overall this is an exceptionally good card. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a new 3D card.
It can handle everything I can throw at it so far and my computer is only AGP 4X, which means the card can still perform at twice the speed I have it. It also has a very reasonable price. Last I saw it was only about $230 CDN.

Pros:
Performs well
Dual Monitor support
VIVO

Cons:
XFX Support
VIVO can be tricky to get running

Rating: 5/10

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