BFG certainly knows how to package a video card, in my opinion. An eye catching
picture is always a good thing in my opinion. After all, with the plethora
of NVIDIA and ATI graphics cards on the market, and shelf space on Best Buy
or Fry's crowded with GEFORCE FX 5700s, what differentiates one card from
another on the shelf? The box art can be the difference between a sale and
a look away from the box. The box has a picture of a black globe with flashes
of electricity flashing across the surface. The back of box has the usual
PR fluff describing the primary important features of the card along with
a few screenshots of upcoming and current games. The side panels include a
proof of purchase, the specifications and system requirements and what's in
the box.
The card is a standard single slot AGP card in size easily fitting in any AGP
slot on most cases. The approximate size is 8.5" long by 3.75" high.
In my case, I had to attach the power cable to the card before inserting the
card into my AGP slot. I unfortunately don't have a 5700 Ultra reference board,
but it's apparent that BFG has made some changes to the card. The first change
is the new heat sink/fan combination. BFG says that this offers "superior
thermal resistance to the reference fan". The heat sink looks like the
card has fins, which is aesthetically pleasing. The fan assembly has 9 fins
for cooling the GPU.
The back side of the card is fairly non-descriptive. It’s
populated by the 4 memory chips and a jumper. It's aesthetically pleasing to
me to have a card that doesn't put a lot of transistors and other chips on the
back side, as most NVIDIA and ATI cards have. It's also pleasing that there
isn't a big bar across the back of the card, as the 5900 Ultra would have or
5950.
BFG has outfitted the 5700 Ultra with 8 128 megabit memory chips,
4 on the front side 4 on the back side, giving a total of 128MegaBytes of memory
(8 bits per byte). The memory used is Samsung 2.2ns DDR2 memory, the same type
as used on the 5800 Ultra (NV30). This gives a maximum memory frequency of 450
MHz, which is standard for the GEFORCE FX 5700 Ultra. One nice addition is the
addition of memory heat sinks. BFG has put an heat sink over each pair of memory
chips for a total of 4. This should keep the memory running cooler than without,
and it just looks cool.
BFG included the now standard set of input/output connectors with
their 5700 Ultra. Included are a VGA connector, a DVI connector and a TV-Out
port. Unfortunately, BFG decided not to include Video In Video Out with this
product. In order to keep the costs of the card down and to fit within the $219
MSRP price point, BFG left it out. You can connect 2 monitors to the card via
a DVI-VGA adapter, which is included.
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