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GeForce FX 5200 Reviewed
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."
Conclusions There are really two issues to consider as I conclude this review. First, there's the performance and features of NVIDIA's NV34 graphics chip and the GeForce FX 5200 cards that make use of it. Second, we have the Gigi FX5200P, Albatron's take on the GeForce FX 5200. This is Dawn on the GeForce FX 5200 This is the Dawn we drool over To NVIDIA's credit, the GeForce FX 5200 largely makes up for the travesty that was--and still is--the GeForce4 MX. With the GeForce FX 5200, NVIDIA can claim full DirectX 9 feature support across its entire graphics line. Even the cheapest GeForce FX 5200s, which retail for as little as $67 on Pricewatch, support all the DirectX 9 features that make NVIDIA's "Dawn" demo look so good, and that's an impressive feat. However, it's important to make a distinction between feature capability and feature competence. As we've seen in our testing, the GeForce FX 5200 is considerably underpowered in situations where even less technically capable graphics cards excel. Sure, the GeForce FX 5200 supports high precision data types, pixel and vertex shaders 2.0, and a host of other advanced features, but it doesn't seem to perform particularly well when those features are exploited. So, while the GeForce FX 5200 is technically capable of all sorts of DirectX 9-class eye candy, I have to question just how well the card will handle future DirectX 9 games and applications. After all, a slideshow filled with DirectX 9 eye candy is still a slide show. The GeForce FX 5200 isn't as capable a performer as its feature list might suggest, but that doesn't mean cards based on the chip aren't worth picking up. At only $67 online, the GeForce FX 5200 is a few dollars cheaper than the Radeon 9000 Pro. For gamers, the Radeon 9000 Pro offers better and more consistent performance. 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. The GeForce FX 5200 is a great feature-rich card for anyone that's not looking for the best budget gaming option. So what about Albatron's Gigi FX5200P offering? Unfortunately, it looks like Albatron may have tried to cater to gamers a little too much with the Gigi FX5200P. The Gigi FX 5200 retails for $95 on Pricewatch, which is pricey compared to GeForce FX 5200 cards from other manufacturers. The Gigi FX5200P does feature 128MB of memory, but since I wouldn't recommend a GeForce FX 5200-based graphics card to budget gamers, I don't see much point in having 128MB of memory on the board. With 128MB of memory, Albatron's Gigi FX5200PP is too slow to appeal to gamers and too expensive to compete with the $67 GeForce FX 5200 64MB cards that will appeal to budget-conscious businesses and consumers. Albatron does, however, have plans for a whole slew of budget GeForce FX 5200-based offerings, including versions of the card with 64MB of memory, 64-bit memory busses, and even a PCI variant. Those cards should be cheaper than the $95 Gigi FX5200P and more appropriate for consumers and business users.
Time to use my work and post this before it gets to /.ed
NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5200 GPU
Between capability and competence
by Geoff Gasior -- April 29, 2003
WHEN NVIDIA announced its NV31 and NV34 graphics chips, I have to admit I was a skeptic. The chips, which would go on to power NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5600 and 5200 lines, respectively, promised full DirectX 9 features and compatibility to the masses. Who could resist?
Me, at least initially. Perhaps I still had a bitter taste in my mouth after the recycled DirectX 7 debacle that was the GeForce4 MX, or maybe it was NVIDIA's unwillingness to discuss the internal structure of its graphics chips. Maybe it was merely the fact that I didn't believe NVIDIA could pull off a budget graphics chip with a full DirectX 9 feature set without making cutting corners somewhere.
Or maybe I'm just turning into a grumpy old man.
Well, NVIDIA may have pulled it off. Now that I have Albatron's Gigi FX5200P graphics card in hand, it's time to take stock of what kind of sacrifices were made to squeeze the "cinematic computing" experience into just 45 million transistors. Have NVIDIA and Albatron really produced a sub-$100 graphics product capable of running the jaw-dropping Dawn demo and today's 3D applications with reasonably good frame rates? How does the card stack up against its budget competition? Let's find out.
The NV34 cheat sheet
NVIDIA's big push with its GeForce FX line is top-to-bottom support for DirectX 9 features, including pixel and vertex shaders 2.0, floating point data types, and gobs of internal precision. As the graphics chip behind NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5200 and 5200 Ultra, NV34 has full support for the same DirectX 9 features as even the high-end NV30. What's particularly impressive about NV34 is that NVIDIA has squeezed support for all those DirectX 9 features into a die containing only 45 million transistors--nearly one third as many as NV30.
Beyond its full DirectX 9 feature support, here's a quick rundown of NV34's key features and capabilities. A more detailed analysis of NV34's features can be found in my preview of NVIDIA's NV31 and NV34 graphics chips.
Clearly defined pipelines -- NVIDIA has been very clear about the fact that NV34 has four pixel pipelines, each of which is capable of laying down a single texture per pass. Unlike NV30, whose texture units appear dependent on the kind of rendering being done, NV34 is limited to a single texture unit per pipeline for all rendering modes.
Arrays of functional units -- NVIDIA has been coy about what's really going on under the hood of its GeForce FX graphics chips. Instead of telling us how many vertex or pixel shaders each chip has, NVIDIA expresses the relative power of each graphics chip in terms of the amount of "parallelism" within its programmable shader. NV30 has more parallelism than NV31, which in turn has more parallelism than NV34. How much more? Well, NVIDIA isn't being too specific about that, either.
Lossless compression lost -- Unlike NV30 and NV31, the NV34 graphics chip doesn't support lossless color and Z compression, which could hamper the chip's antialiasing performance. The absence of lossless Z compression will also limit the chip's pixel-pushing capacity.
0.15-micron core -- NVIDIA's mid-range NV31 and high-end NV30 graphics chips are manufactured on a 0.13-micron manufacturing process, and both feature 400MHz RAMDACs. Since NV34 is targeted at low-end graphics cards, it's being built on a cheaper and more mature 0.15-micron manufacturing process. The 0.15-micron manufacturing process limits NV34's RAMDAC speed to 350MHz, but only those running extremely high resolutions at high refresh rates should be limited by a 350MHz RAMDAC.
I agree. Fark is more cutting edge at this point...