Believe it or not there are still more FX5700 cards in production as Albatron now offers a grand total of eleven graphics cards based on this core. The latest entrant is the GeForceFX 5700 Ultra utilizing the new GDDR3 memory. This memory technology was of course developed by JEDEC with a great deal of support from ATi. Despite the influence on this technology from ATi it was actually NVIDIA who will be the first to introduce it with their new GeForce 6800 Ultra GPU. Surprisingly and somewhat unexpectedly, NVIDIA has also decided to couple this new memory technology with one of their mainstream products. This is of course the FX5700 Ultra GPU, designed to compete with the ATi Radeon 9600XT. The original FX5700 Ultra utilized GDDR2 technology with the baseline FX5700 cards making use of the more mainstream GDDR1 memory.

There are few differences between GDDR1 and GDDR3 with the major variation being their operating voltage. The older more common GDDR1 memory chips require 2.5v where as the newer GDDR3 chips want just 1.8~1.9v. This small improvement allows the chips to run at much higher frequencies for example the memory has already been demonstrated at 800MHz which is effectively DDR 1.6GHz! However there is one drawback when comparing GDDR1 to GDDR3, and that is the CAS Latencys. Due to GDDR3 being able to operate at such extreme frequencies the CAS Latency has been increased to maintain stability. Therefore at the same working frequency GDDR1 will be ever so slightly faster then GDDR3.

This year I expect to see GDDR3 accepted much more rapidly when compared to GDDR2 last year. With GDDR2 in existence for over a year now, GDDR1 is still much more widely used. With the frequency improvements of GDDR3 it should no doubt be the number one choice for all graphics cards in 2004. However, right now we are beginning to see FX5700 Ultra cards boasting this new memory technology which I still find very odd. The FX5700 Ultra utilizing GDDR2 showed little to no increase in performance over the GDDR1 solutions. With the FX5700 Ultra core at just 475MHz I cannot see the power requirement for 900MHz+ DDR memory.

Naturally, I believe the real reason behind the FX5700 Ultra adopting GDDR3 memory technology is all a bit of a marketing pitch. This year in particular NVIDIA and ATi has been fiercely competing in the mainstream market. With ATi set to do well with their Radeon 9600XT the need for NVIDIA to act was critical and the FX5700 was not turning off the 9600XT sales quick enough. Looking for fast results NVIDIA unleashed what they called the FX5900XT the most powerful budget card to become readily available. Unfortunately, for NVIDIA the FX5900XT not only hurt sales of the 9600XT but also their very own FX5700. Therefore the FX5900XT was said to be getting the axe. Now in an effort to breathe life back into an old product NVIDIA is adding something new and unusual, that something just happens to be GDDR3.

Sadly I do not believe GDDR3 will make the FX5700 Ultra quite the product that the FX5900XT was, but for some the addition of this new memory technology will be quite beneficial. While at stock speeds there will undoubtedly be no difference between the GDDR2 and GDDR3 versions of the FX5700 Ultra, I do expect the overclocking abilities of the latter to be much more impressive. With achievable frequencies of this technology set well over the 1GHz barrier, this can only mean good things for overclockers.

Another great overclocking aspect of this product is the patented Wise Fan technology, which is based on a 2+1 Backup triple-fan cooling system. This has been upgraded from the previous Wise Fan and dubbed Wise Fan ll for the GeForce FX5700U3. With the Wise Fan II the third backup fan will startup when any of the two primary fans malfunction or when the GPU temperature reaches 56 degrees. This provides ultimate protection for extreme-condition graphics performance. With the additional fans for this card, Albatron have gone to great lengths to suppress fan noise down to about 25dBA, almost 10dBA lower than the NVIDIA reference board.