MSI Geforce FX 5700 LE

The 5700 LE is Nvidias replacement for the old Geforce 5200 range of cards. The LE stands for "Limited Edition", which is quite apt as the card really is very limited. As the benchmarks show, this card can handle Half-life 2 well enough, and is playable at 1024 x 768 when you turn the graphical detail down to medium. Doom 3 performance isn't so good, and you will be forced to turn all the graphics settings right down to make it playable, making the game look almost like the original Doom.

The standard GPU/RAM speeds of 250/200 overclocked to 294/245, giving the performance a much needed kick up the arse. With these clock speeds, and the medium detail settings that Half-Life 2 recommends, the frame rate at 1024 x 768 rises to 48 FPS, and is just about good enough to be competitive in online play. However, even with overclocking, Doom 3 is only playable at 800 x 600 with the lowest possible detail settings, which looks awful.

This card will just about do for Half-life 2, but it doesn't make much sense to buy one when you could have a Radeon 9600 for only £4 more, and have much better performance, and a passive cooler as a bonus.

Connect 3d Radeon 9600

The Radeon 9600 has been around for many years, in the vanilla flavour reviewed here, and the faster Pro and XT versions. Testing of this card shows there is still life in the basic model, and Half-Life 2 managed 48.9 FPS at 1024 x 768 with maximum details, which is just adequate. Lowering the detail settings to medium as the game recommends, made this 57.5 FPS. Overclocking the card increased the frame rate further, to 66.9 FPS. At this frame rate everything runs perfectly smoothly, and this card is effectively the minimum requirement for playing and enjoying Half-Life 2.

Overclocking the 9600 isn't straightforward, since the card has a clock lock, like most low end Radeons. You can disable this and overclock the card using a very useful (and free) program called ATI Tool. The standard clock speeds of 325/200 overclocked to 372/277, which was a significant improvement. The bad news is the Doom 3 performance, or rather the lack of it. The lowest settings that you can comfortably play Doom 3 at are "high" detail at 800 x 600, and the Radeon 9600 manages 28 FPS at this setting. Overclocking increases this a little, and turning V-sync off prevents the game slowing down, but it will judder and slow down when you enter a new room or area, suggesting the card really isn't up to the job.

MSI Geforce FX 5900 XT

Before the Geforce 6 came along, the FX 5900 was Nvidias top of the range card, and this is the "XT" version. If the original 5900 were a pint of beer, the XT would be a half of shandy. Since the humble 9600 can play Half-Life 2 perfectly well, it goes without saying that the 5900 XT can also do the job. At 1024 x 768 with maximum detail settings, the card scores a respectable 75 FPS, which is sufficient for even the most intense online play.

Since this is an Nvidia card, and the most expensive in this little group test, it should do well at Doom 3. The game is great at 800 x 600, and mostly smooth at 1024 x 768, but not quite smooth enough for the most competitive gaming. Doom 3 looks so much better at 1024 x768 than at 800 x 600, so if you take your gaming seriously, you need to look to even faster and more expensive cards for good Doom 3 performance.

Unfortunately the card wasn't much of an overclocker, and the standard clocks of 390/350 Mhz managed to reach 416/377 Mhz, which didn't make any significant difference to performance.

Connect 3d Radeon 9550 SE

The SE tag at the end of this cards name stands for "Special Edition". This is obviously the same definition of the word "special" that people use when being condescending towards the mentally disabled. This card wouldn't play Doom 3 if you dipped it in liquid nitrogen and hooked it up to a lightning conductor. Just forget about it.

The 9550 SE is a 9600 with half the memory bandwidth, and is in every other way identical. Memory bandwidth is very important to performance, which accounts for the cards inability to play Doom 3. Half-Life 2 is within the cards capabilities though, managing a playable 50.4 FPS at 1024 x 768 with medium detail settings. This is only 7 FPS less than the Radeon 9600s score, but it is enough to make a noticeable difference to gameplay, and of course leaves less leeway to accommodate for lower spec systems.

We overclocked the 9500 SE with ATI Tool, and the standard clocks of 325/200 reached 476/211. Whilst the GPU overclock was very significant, the memory on our sample didn't do well at all, which was disappointing since poor memory performance holds the card back even at standard speeds. All that extra GPU speed only netted an extra 2 FPS on average.

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