Overclocking:
My maximum overclock on this card was able to get the card up to 440MHz Core/900 MHz Memory. That's an increase of 40Mhz on the core side and 100Mhz on the memory side. That's an increase of 10% for the core and 12.5% on the memory side. This isn't an amazing overclock, but it still isn't bad either. It ran stable at these settings for quite some time, probably due to the Gas-Turbine fan cooling.
Conclusion:
The Chaintech Apogee FX-71 packs everything you’ll ever need in a videocard. As well performance values are decent enough for a mid range type videocard. What puts this card over the top is the slew of extras that Chaintech has bundled with it. The FX-71 will not only improve on the appearance of your games, but it will also improve the overall appearance of your system with its ultra bright blue LEDs. At $212 on PriceGrabber, it's not the cheapest videocard on the market, but well worth the couple of extra dollars you'd put into an FX5600. However, if you're upgrading from a TI4600 because you have the money to do so, you might want to rethink that and get a higher end card than the FX71. In anything but DX9 applications, the TI4600 will perform better as seen in the benchmarks. I give it high marks for the type of card it is, eventhough it doesn't surpass the TI4600 in many of the tests. I did not run any DX9 tests however, but I have no doubt that the FX71 would shine in this category.
Pros:
- “Sexy” design
- Blue LEDs
- Tons of added features
- Gas-Turbine Cooling
Cons:
- Takes up a PCI slot
- Not a good upgrade from a TI4600
Final Score: 91
Asside:
After 3 months of operation, the fan motor on the FX71 burnt out. I don't know the cause of this. However, the people at Chaintech were nice enough to send me a new one to replace this card.
