Just bought MSI Geforece FX 5600 128 mb...Return It?

Jazzyjazz

Good Day,
I received an MSI Geforece FX 5600 128 mb card (http://www.msi.com.tw/program/produc...&MODEL=MS-8912) (yesterday in the mail. The card was magnificently appropriated, having no less than 11, (get that, 11) cds included. They consisted of useful software and games. I bought an nVidia card versus ATI since I have eDimensional 3d glasses and ATI does not support Stereoscopic 3d glasses in their drivers but nVidia does. The card included a remote,which LOOKS great, but something I never installed, because I never got that far.
I anxiously, and tediously, uninstalled my Radeon 8500 LE so that I could install this new, red, and hot card. I disabled antivirus, uninstalled rage3dRegtweak, emptied recycle bin, dumped my PREFETCH (c/windows/prefetch) folder, and used Drive Cleaner, etc. Install was foolproof and flawless. I used nVidia reference driver 44.03 which was just released this month.
When I rebooted, I expected Paradise...I was sorely disappointed! First the graphics were below the level that I am accustomed to using my Radeon 8500 LE. In 2d on my desktop, the card was noticeably slower in reacting to mouse input than my R8500. Understand, in all fairness, I tested this response AFTER having allowed my PREFETCH folder to reconstruct itself. 2d clock speed is set to 270 mhz (5 mhz less than R8500 (275 mhz), so I overclocked to 278 mhz using overclock feature of nVidia software for comparison...same result. In Microsoft Flight Simulater 2002, the terrain was blurry and appeared to shimmer. The frame rate was around 20 to 30 fps (using Fraps (www.fraps.com) compared to 45 to 50 fps using my R8500...I used the same resolutions and settings that were in place for my R8500.
I then used Omegadrive's Nvidia Omega Drivers v1.4345 and saw improvement in frame rate and image quality but it still did not match my R8500. What a disappointment.

I wish ATI would consider developing drivers for 3d glasses...I wouldn't be in this quandry if they did. Hint, hint, ATI! Plus, nobody developes such cool tweaker programs for nVidia as RegTweak...how about it Rage3d?

Question: Is this a driver issue that may be resolved or is it a graphics card problem and I should return the card?

The_Neon_Cowboy

the 5600 is even a drop from a 4200ti when it comes to preformance....
11 cd's Wow i think nvidia's new tatics of loading thier boxes with stuff is great but they shoud worry about thier cards more ... you might do alot better with some tweaking ... what your 3dmark 2001se score should be about 12,000+ if not than some tweaking might help you but you would be better off/happyer with a 9700 pro

WyreTheWolf

JazzyJazz,

To tell you the truth, I was really looking forward to the release of the Geforce FX 5600 Ultra. I really was planning on buying one. At the time I owned a Geforce4 Ti 4200 128MB Card, and was fairly happy with its performance... but it was starting to show its age. When the benchmarks hit, and the performance was lower than my 4200... I was sorely disappointed. I gave up on nVidia at that point. I am now running a Radeon 9500 non pro (softmodded to a Radeon 9700, and overclocked to above stock Radeon 9700 Pro speeds) and I am AMAZED at the image quality, and the responsivness of this card.

I am VERY happy with this card! BTW your low IQ problems will not go away. It is hardware issuses... the 5600 is actually no longer made, and will probably not be supported by nVidia. It was a failure, and I would suggest you returning it.

This is just my humble wolfish opinion.

IceMole19

Do you have Clear Type enabled? That helps a lot with IQ in XP. As for the 5600 it's more or less like a GF4 MX card, less performance then GF4 Ti cards and the DX9 stuff is all software based. I'd much rather have a 4200,4400,4600 over a FX 5600, I'd say return it and get at least a 5800 if you still want FX series, or one of the GF4 Ti cards.

Junk

the 5600 ultra gets ousted by the ti4200 in most situations with aa & af disabled, but the card really cooks (compared to the ti series) when you enable them.

if you REALLY like aa/af, then take your card back and get a 9500 pro, or even a 9700. if aa/af aren't for you, then take the card back and get a ti4200..

Bane the ECF

It might be worthwhile to wait for the new GeForce 5900 line to come out, it'll rpobably be better than the 5600 you have.

Junk

it'll be better, but it'll also cost at least 2x more..

The_Neon_Cowboy

i'm with ya ..............
nvida keep burning thier bridges form both ends dont they...
sonn they will wonder why yhier sales dropped off

The_Neon_Cowboy

copy all the games and return it and buy a 9500/9600 pro

Kgentatszu]

and now they're out, it cost 4x more.............i would rather get a radeon 9800pro which only cost 3x more BUT, performs better in many ways compared to a GFfx 5900 ultra and its IQ is a lot better than that card...

now, neon, you're gettin bader and bader, didnt your mom teach you not to say a word 'bout copying all the games in the box?? hhehehe~LOL

now mate, hurry and borrow a cd-writer from a friend and burn all those games day and night and you'll be rich in no time at all....

brypaulcullen

OMG I wish I had looked at this forum before I was seduced by the 256mb of memory that came in at under £100 on the fx 5200. I should have realised something was up when it didnt have a cooling fan on it instead just a heatsink!!! I have had nothing but trouble with the damn card! It simply will not install the latest nvidia 44.03 drivers at all (I've tried the driver cleaner and cab cleaner programs from here to remove the old drivers). The drivers that come on the disc are pretty pants. When I do get the provided drivers installed 3dmark is very glitchy and judders about something terrible. To make matters worse without overclocking it my 3dmark score is worse than my old card which was only a gef4 mx440 despite the fact that this card can perform all the tests and the old one couldn't!

At first I thought it was a cooling problem because the heatsink was all but glowing when i asked it to perform the 3dmark tests, so i bolted on a heatsink and fan that i had for my xp1600 athlon processor. That made it a bit less glitchy and more overclockable but still not the 10,000 score I was expecting from it and still glitchy in places. Obviously as I have tinkered with the card sending it back is not an option so now I'm stuck with "the latest technology" card that gets its ass kicked by its previous technology little brother PAH if you are tempted to buy any of the low end fx range (the specs on the 5600 arent that much better than the 5200) don't bother it aint worth the hassle!!!!

shuki

sorry for your troubles bry However, as a last resort, try reinstalling the entire OS and see if that improves performance and bench any at all...

brypaulcullen

That is my last resort mate.I have done a bit of digging on gainwards home site and found out that the 43.03 drivers are the only ones that will currently run the card i've bought. I am thinking that perhaps as it is such a new card it hasn't been integrated into the nvidia chipset generic driver family yet, WELL I'm hoping anyway. None of the other drivers including third party drivers work with my card. I am hoping that either gainward or nvidia will get round to sorting the problem out soon or i will be skipping this card and getting a OMG am I really saying this an ATI!!!!!!

Kgentatszu]

dont hesitate, GET A RADEON 9800PRO RIGHT NOW, THIS IS AN ORDER, cause its fxxkingly GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[SIZE=x-small]i'm so high tonight, LOL~[/size]

brypaulcullen

when I can afford it lol. I just through a hundred english quids in the bin effectively lol

Kgentatszu]

so?? what now?? will ya' keep that card?? and what will you be getting??

Peterous

In all sincerity maybe maybe not, this is a discussion of never mind the quality feel the width and on both fronts there is a high cost solution.

However perhaps, and I use the word reservedly the FX will have its day just not now. It would seem that if you want better quality images and bit shifting then the FX has it, the down side is the FPS is not as high. If on the other hand you want reasonable imagery and and high FPS then the Radeon is a clear winner.

I think the fact that at the moment there are no games/applications that show off the Nvidia/Radeon DX9 capabilities and most of the focus lets face it is games playing, where 32bits and depth of colour are lost in a hunt and seek visual focus on surviving the next level as oppsed to art gallary style obsevation of an image. In which case Radeon is currently a clear winner.

So I would say its horses for courses and that FPS has a ceiling at which point you now have the resolution and FPS you start to focus on the quality of the image. Sooner or later the ceiling will be hit for both and then you can say the market has been saturated, perhaps the FPS side of development has been saturated already and Nvidia made the decision to look at the image quality this time around.

I know open for a flaming but there you have it I think the real trade of is, do you worry about the speed or the comfort, even the car industry suffers with this one you can have both but at a price and is it a price your willing to pay.

£300 is normally the pre mass market breakthrough price and once maufacturing prices are generally met then the price starts to fall. give it a couple of months, a few more revisions and release of some DX9 apps/games and you should see the board you want at the price you want, question is can you wait.....................

Nuff said

'If at first you dont suceed "Upgrade"'

brypaulcullen

You are of course quite right. The image quality from the fx card is far superior to that of my old mx440, I guess I have basically found myself P**sed off that the 3dmark score was not as big a rise as I was expecting and in fact that in most areas my frame rate had dropped. Frame rate isnt everything but when you upgrade to a newer chipset from a bubget model to a budget model you really do expect gains across the board and not losses. But as you said I've lost frame rate but gained a significant amount in card abilities I guess its horses for courses, at the moment I only play counterstrike with my machine so the dx9 abilities and the super quality isnt as relevant to me as the frame rate is. I have also fitted a zalman heatpipe cooler to my card since my last post and as i suspected the heatsink that the card came with just wasnt up to the job of cooling it so I have instantly added £30 to the cost overall of my card. That said its still the cheapest 256 mb card available so where do you draw the line? My advice don't buy the 4200 680 pro version without a cooler fan unless you realise that you will have to put more adequate cooling on it at personal risk and expense.
If I'm honest with myself I have been radeonist from the very begining of my pc days and still now even thoughits patently obvious that the radeon cards are better I would still opt for an Nvidia stupid and unexplainable but there you go!!

dohcmark8

Yo jazzyjazz, have you tried the 44.71 or 44.90 drivers?.

moggy

I just had the MSI FX5600 128 installed and so far have not been able to play any game for the past week.
UT2003, Mafia, GTA VICE CITY etc... they either freeze at the intro screen or play about 2 minutes and then freeze. I have tried various drivers all to no avail.
I just wish I had read this thread before I purchased.

brypaulcullen

You might find that the card isnt the problem in your case. Did you have an Nvidia graphics card fitted previously?
Did you completely remove all the drivers for your previous card?
Do you have the latest AGP slot driver from your motherboard provider?
What operating system have you installed and does it support dx9?
Do you have the correct drivers installed for your card, My Gainward card can only use certain nvidia drivers and not all of them like i first thought!!!
check that lot before being too disheartened