Well I think Im going with the FX5600 Ultra....

Looking at the PNY $213 or the ChainTech Apogee $223, It appears they are the same chip. However the Chaintech has the 2.5ns RAM. I imagine both do,, not sure.

I may be splitting hairs here, but all I ever owned is Voodoo's....
Has anyone had had succes either of the above ?

Also I seen a PNY 5600 Ultra at Pricewatch for $174, but lets say I have some reservations ....

Any input is appreciated.
S! Kymad
I/JG3 --- Virtual

They're about the same.....

But, honest question and I don't want to start flaming...

Out of curiosity, why aren't you looking at an ATI solution? You could get a 9500 Pro (or 9600 Pro) easily in the price range.

I'm using a G4 Ti4200, but my next upgrade will be ATI. I've read countless reviews that compare the FX5600's to the ATI 9600 Pro and the 9500 Pro (which is getting scarce), and all the reviewers have recommended the ATI.

One selling point for at least one model of the Chaintech FX5600 Ultras: the Video-in feature, which will enable you to use your computer for capturing video from VCRs, Camcorders, etc. One model I have read about even includes some great video editing software. it would cost a lot more for an ATI "All In Wonder" card to do the same thing.

I upgraded from the G4 4200 to the 5600 Ultra 256 Mb and theres very little improvement/difference between them definitely not worth the upgrade costs I only saw about a 10% increase in FPS I returned the 5600 and reinstalled my 4200 and I will wait for the next generation.......Nvidia seems to be trying to sell increasing small improvements for a hefty price tag, its GOOD thing ATI has stepped up and added some competition to this market.so I went all out and decided to buy a 9800 pro and its seems that ATI still has aways to go on the reliability/stability front as I have had the Radeon crash my entire system and had to RMA the card, not good when you take the plunge and buy a $400.00 card ,also ATIs opengl performance leaves a LOT to be desired direct3d is much faster with the Radeons the card ran ok for about four months then it went south big time crashing my system a total of five times before I figured out it was the card doing it and I have the required PSU mines a 430 watt if your gonna go Radeon go to Rage3ds forums and read up

Ive just bought a 9800 Pro... not many problems to deal with... nearly all were fixed by installing the Cat3.7's.. no instability problems at all...
my friend has a 9700 in his computer, and it would crash all the time... turned off write combining, and its been as solid as a rock... some people seem to be blaming the card, when it is simply a motherboard issue of being unable to handle the card properly a little tweaking goes a long way for making things work properly.

Thanks for the reply's folks ...

I may be looking at a 9700 Pro on E-bay.
However Im concerned about my 300W Power supply.

This could turn into a winter project ... LOL !
:p

S!

Ive never had to tweak anything to run an NVIDIA card let alone had one crash my entire system..........

I still believe ATI has some work to do on their stability and reliability issues irregardless or your personal experiences

anyone doubting this only has to visit Rage3ds forums....paying particular attention to the troubleshooting sections it seems Im not the only one this has happened to..............

Not every BIOS has the option of turning off write combining and its never really mentioned in their official forums either.I would suggest you post this wonderful piece of info and save a lot of grief.

Also ATI seems to think I got a bad card (it was 4 months old)otherwise they wouldnt have let me RMA the card

My old NVIDIA runs just fine again in my comp(no more complete system crashes)it seems the card was hosing my registry, but I do miss the performance I was getting with the 9800 pro,to their credit ATI responded rather quickly to my request for an RMA.............

I was leary of moving from Nvidia at first too, tweaking and such.

I can honestly say I've never, ever had to do any fiddling with my ATI card to get software to look or play right. Period. It's even better than my GF3 ever was. I remember when text looked fuzzy with F4 (texel alignment or something?) No problem with my ATI.

Text was fuzzy with OP:FP and my GF3. Not a problem with my ATI.

I'd highly recomend them to anyone. Stability, tweeking is not an issue for me whatsoever.

For someone who already owns a GF4, I highly recommend NOT buying a FX 5600. The AA and AF are not improved, they're only marginally faster in most older games, and their DX9 support is pretty much little more than a bullet point on a specifications list. I say this last part because synthetic benchmarks and games like Angel of Darkness and the Half Life 2 testing all show that the FX line of boards are severely underpowered when it comes to running DX9 shaders.

I'm not trying to sound anti-Nvidia (I've owned plenty of GeForce boards), but they simply underestimated their competition for this generation of hardware.