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Introduction

The GeForce FX 5600 non-Ultra is designed to succeed the aging but still widely popular GeForce4 Ti series video cards. The GeForce FX 5600 is based on the nv31 core, which is the successor to the overhyped and underperforming nv30 core. Along with its bigger brothers the FX 5600 Ultra and the 5900 Ultra/non-ultra (click for our review), nVidia has a video card for every gamer's budget.

As the cheaper version of the FX 5600 Ultra, there are some sacrifices in speed and performance. The FX 5600 non-ultra has a core speed of 325 mhz and a RAM speed of 550 mhz, which is a far cry from the default 400/800 of the FX 5600 Ultra.

The card we will be reviewing is the MSI FX5600-VTDR128, which comes with 128 mb of DDR Ram running at 550 mhz on a twin 64-bit memory bus (compared to the nv30's 4x 32-bit memory bus). The card features a 15-pin D-sub, DVI-I and S-video connectors.

The chart below summarizes the differences between the GeForce FX 5600 and the rest of the members in its immediate family.