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GeForce FX 5200 Reviewed

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the polys-per-second dept.

EconolineCrush writes "Tech Report has a great in-depth review of NVIDIA's budget GeForce FX 5200, which brings full DirectX 9 support down to an amazing sub-$70 price point. Any budget graphics card capable of running NVIDIA's gorgeous Dawn is impressive on its own, but when put under the microscope, the GeForce FX 5200 looks more like an exercise in marketing spin than a real revolution for budget graphics cards."

14 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Re:two words by bobbozzo · · Score: 4, Informative

    It isn't an MX.
    The MX's had fewer features; this one is full-featured, just slower.

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    Nothing to see here; Move along.
  2. Probable reason for the performance hit by Ryu2 · · Score: 3, Informative
    Besides the lower memory bandwidth and other reasons in the article, it seems to me that the 5200 is implementing the fixed-function T&L pipeline as a vertex shader, to save transistors by foregoing a pure HW implementation, which of course means it'll be slower (although still faster than in software, of course), and of course, you'll incur a greater cost switching between shader and fix-function rendering too. This trick was also used by Trident in their sub-$100 "DX9 compatible" chipsets.


    It's a good measure, but it invaribly means that you'll get lagging performance with these low-end cards, so it's something to be careful of. Maybe in a year or so, once shaders become the norm in games, perhaps Moore's law^3 will have enabled them to put those transistors back on and still hit their price target, but definitely not now.

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    There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
  3. Last generation is better by LittleLebowskiUrbanA · · Score: 4, Informative

    Tom's Hardware is currently recommending the geForce ti4200 for those looking for mid-range card w/ good performance.

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    This guy is way out there
    1. Re:Last generation is better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Not really. The full quote from tom's hardware is:

      If you don't need the very best in image quality enhancements, can do without DirectX 9 and are happy with 2x FSAA, you'll be glad to hear that there's a very affordable card out there for you - the GeForce 4 Ti 4200

  4. Re:PCI version, woohoo! by brer_rabbit · · Score: 2, Informative

    After RTFA'ing maybe those of us PCI bound should opt for the Geforce4 MX, which is also available in a PCI version...

  5. Water Cooled by fidget42 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Tom's Hardware has an article on the Gainward version of the card. It is water cooled.

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    The dogcow says "Moof!"
  6. Re:DirectX 9? by Allen+Akin · · Score: 3, Informative

    The OpenGL ARB hasn't approved the 2.0 spec yet, and there are still some pretty fundamental issues to be resolved before then, so there's no way to know whether the 5200 will be able to support it.

  7. Re:Err... by k_187 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Or is the FX the new MX line?

    No, they've dropped the mx moniker and are doing everything by model number like ATI has been. The High end GeForce FX is the FX 5800. There are 5800s, 5600s, and 5200s. 268. Pricewise too.

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    11 was a racehorse
    12 was 12
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  8. Dells only have the top quality cards... by Brian_Ellenberger · · Score: 2, Informative

    The reason why Dell is on top is they know what they are doing and put the best into their computers. I knew ATI's were the king of the hill when Dell started putting them into their boxes instead of Nvidia.

    Check out this gaming machine:
    http://www.dell.com/us/en/gen/topics/segtopic_dimx ps.htm

    Brian

  9. I'd rather get the new ATI cards, though. by MtViewGuy · · Score: 2, Informative

    While Tom's Hardware recommendation of boards that use the nVidia GeForce4 Ti4200-8x may be fine for current games, it's going to end up being a wasted expenditure when games that use the full DirectX 9.0 functionality start arriving later this year. Given that ATI's Radeon 9500, 9600, 9700 and 9800 support DX9 functionality in hardware, small wonder why ATI sales have gone up quite a lot recently.

    Chances are pretty good that Doom III, EverQuest II, and a good number of other "hot" games coming out for the next few years will implement DX9 support; once that happens the fact that GeForce4 Ti4xxx chipsets won't support DX9 functionality means the new games are going to bog down with the older cards. Why do you think nVidia is preparing to release the NV35 chipset, which is essentially finally delivering on the promises of the GeForce FX 5800 chipset?

  10. NVidia's budget cards.... by grolschie · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hey c'mon this is normal. The budget NVidia cards have always supported advanced features, but when you actually use them they run like crap. I still have a Geforce 2 MX200 (a gift from a friend who got duped by a retailer). It supports 4x AA, but when this feature (and others eg: 32bit color on resolutions higher than 400x300) are activated, it craps out.

    The thing overclocks nicely, and when running in "best performance" mode in 16bit, it flies, uh well kinda. The key with all NVidia budget cards is to run 'em without all the technical advanced features. The reviewer enabled all kinds of crap that the card only just supported. Perhaps NVidia would do well to not let their budget cards support these advanced features. Benchies would be higher, and I guess more realistic. Most gamers (or would-be gamers with crappy MX200's like me) try to squeeze as much juice from their cards as they can. ;-)

  11. Re:NVIDIA's product naming is very confusing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think that was the whole point of the new naming convention on the GF FX (IE Geforce5) series of GPUs; there is no longer such a thing as the mx line; the FX5200 is the low-end version of the line (think Celeron/Duron v. P4/Athlon; they burn out a few components & otherwise limit the chip, but the core is still fundamentally the same).

    The FX5200 being slower than the GF4 Ti series, well... that's not too suprising; the lowest-end of the new technology doesn't need to be faster than the highest end of the old tech (look at the original P4s in comparison to the 1.13G P3 chips...). The FX5200 isn't supposed to replace a GF4 Ti, it's supposed to replace a GF4 mx (and they're probably cutting the production of the GF4mx and focusing on 5200s now, actually a good thing, since the whole FX line is running on essentially the same chip, the could, in theory, cut the price-point of the whole line _and_ drop prices, if we're lucky).

  12. Slightly off about DoomIII by phoxix · · Score: 2, Informative
    Chances are pretty good that Doom III, EverQuest II, and a good number of other "hot" games coming out for the next few years will implement DX9 support

    Errr, actually
    Mr Carmack himself is a large OpenGL fan. Additionally he openly questions those who rely on MSFT's DirectX too much. This is probably the reason why most (if not all) of his games have native linux ports.

    Sunny Dubey

  13. Re:Hovercraft by nick_davison · · Score: 2, Informative

    From this thread:
    This thing sounds like a hovercraft when you turn on the PC.

    From the article:
    However, for average consumers and business users, the GeForce FX 5200 offers better multimonitor software, more future-proof feature compatibility, and silent and reliable passive cooling.

    It's amazing what actually reading the review on the product you know nothing about will do for you.