Albatron FX5600EQ - Overclocking And Conclusion

(Page 5 of 5 )

Overclocking

With the succes we had in overclocking the Albatron GF4 Ti 4200P Turbo, we naturally had high hopes for the FX5600EQ. Utilizing the old faithful "Coolbits" clock rate registry entry, I was not able to do anything in the overclocking department. See below.

Quite discouraged I went ahead and downloaded RivaTuner from Guru3d to see if I could get some overclocking love from the card. Sure enough, it worked like a champ.

Next I began moving the core and memory clock up slightly and finally settled on 350/450. I could actually get the memory clock up as high as 480MHz w/out crashing or instabilities, however severe artifacting started at speeds above 450 and got worse as you went higher. Even though we didn't get the stellar overclocking we had hoped for with the FX 5600, performance did improve somewhat. Here is 3DMark01 SE with the 5600 Overclocked to 350/450.

A 500+ point increase is a nice bonus when trying to get that high 3DMark score. Still, nowhere near the 4200 however. But as always, we suggest taking synthetic benchmarks just as they are. Synthetic.

---

Conclusion

Let's finish off with some highs and lows of the Albatron GF FX5600EQ and bring this review to a conclusion.

Highs

1. Great looking card with adequate stock cooling

2. Nice software package

3. TV-OUT cables, DVI Adaptor, S-Video included

4. Good AA/AF Performance

5. Competitively priced

Lows

1. Sub par non-AA/AF performance

While our socks weren't exactly blown off by the performance of the FX 5600, I really can't find much fault with it either. While I really wouldn't recommend anyone with a GF4 Ti series card to upgrade to an FX 5600, I could recommend the 5600 to anyone building a system from scratch, OR looking to upgrade from a much older video card, such as a GF2 or even GF3. Although as seen in our recent FIC ATi R9600 review, the FX 5600 gets spanked around pretty good so you will have some thinking to do when deciding which video card to go with if you're looking in the 140 to 160$ price range. We are very happy with all of the Albatron products we have seen here at OCAddiction, but quite honestly, the FX 5600 GPU simply isn't as powerful as the Radeon 9600. NVIDIA is going to have to do better when it comes to their mid-range cards.

Thanks for joining us today for the Albatron GF FX5600EQ Video Card Review. Want to discuss this review and others? Head over to the Dev Hardware Forums to get your point across. Also special thanks to the Albatron Technology Co. LTD. for providing this review sample. Not only do they manufacture high quality PC parts, they do it at great prices and come highly recommended by Dev Hardware.

DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware.

Comments On: Albatron FX5600EQ

>>> Be the FIRST to comment on this article!

Recommended by Dev Hardware