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Let’s unwrap the card and have a poke around, shall
we?
With
the card out of the wrapper, you notice the HUGE gold
cooler on the front. This cooler claims to give your
overclocking headroom a wide margin. It may look impressive,
but we here at 3DV need results, so we’ll be the judge
of performance a little later in the review.
There
is also a heat spreader on the RAM chips on the rear
of the card
Dissecting
the card, we find the 5700U core, now looking more
like a modern CPU than ever. There isn't much info
on the stepping codes of FX5700U chips, but it seems
that there are "A", "B", and "C"
cores, and that they all run at slightly different
temps. This is a "B5" core, which is right
in the middle... For those that are interested, the
exact stepping here is D5QUT00B30 0356A1
A
shot of the RAM reveals that they are Samsung DDRII
chips, rated at 500MHz (1GHz DDR)... but as we all
know, Samsung has a reputation for a little headroom,
and with the card clocking at 906 out of the box,
we should see some free performance towards the end
of this review
The
standard I/O panel is here, this time; however, it
is plated with a golden metal to match Chaintech’s
heatsinks. A PC that is built on Chaintech components
would have enough bling bling to satisfy Mr. T. It’s
a bit gaudy for my tastes, but some of you out there
will love the golden color (It may even match your
front teeth if you’re "bout it ‘bout it")
Of
course there is the now common 4 pin MOLEX connector
to give that added boost of power that modern day
graphics cards seem to need
Head
to the next page for a breakdown of features offered
by the AA5700U..
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