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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."
This thing sounds like a hovercraft when you turn on the PC.
I wouldn't say the always crappy... The original mx was just as good as me original geforce-sdr at 1/4 the price. You really can't beat that.
The Monkey Pages: Not just another personal site...okay, so I lie.
As the poster states...looks like mostly marketing spin in terms of performance. "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." Throw some fancy "big boy" names on a box without the performance to back it up.
Colossians 2:8
-A.M.
Pimpin' all the Karma Hoes!
Does this honestly surprise anyone in the least?
THINK!
If the low end was worth the PCB is was printed on, there goes the market for the higher-end (and higher-margin) stuff.
TODO: Something witty here...
It isn't an MX.
The MX's had fewer features; this one is full-featured, just slower.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
You said it yourself.
It's a budget card.
No leaps and bounds in terms of graphics card techonology progress will be found, otherwise, it wouldn'b be a budget card.
Besides, they have to put a product out, so that they keep customer awareness on their products and not on ATI's, considering how the latest NVIDIA flagship product performs...
/. Where the truth
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.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I trust when you say it has DirectX 9 support you mean it implements OpenGL 2.0?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I still use my old Matrox Millenium I bought in 1995 for $300 (if I remember correctly). Nowadays there are graphics adapters going for $70 that probably have more power and memory than the P200 that houses the Matrox Millenium. Moore's law never ceases to amaze me ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Why use all the unnecessary GPU processing to draw a semi-realistic, semi-naked chick (as linked to Nvidia's Dawn demo) when you can play pics and movies of real naked chicks that looks tons better using the system intergrated GPU?
Tom's Hardware is currently recommending the geForce ti4200 for those looking for mid-range card w/ good performance.
This guy is way out there
Not really worth it. For just a little more you can buy a decent Geforce 4 4200/4400/4600 that runs better than this card. It only seems worth it if you want or need those DX9 features.
Btw, I am selling my GF 4 4200 card. I am happy with my GF2 MX. I stopped playing games, no really, I did.
Question everything.
Tom's recommendation changes frequently, depending on which compant gave gim the last shiney toy. Read THG for the articles, but don't take his Advice
I'm not Seth.
Thanks for the update! I've been waiting ages for a video card that will play Nethack at 10,000fps! Who cares about 3-D games when you can go dungeon hacking?
Here's the deal. It's cheap. But will it play Doom III and Half Life 2 acceptably when they're released? If it can, then it's worth buying. If it can't, it's nothing more than a card for the IBMs, Compaqs, Dells, etc. who want to list "Graphics by NVidia" as one of their bulletpoints.
Looks like PNY have made a PCI version of this card. Before you l33t gam3r start laughing that it's PCI, a number of us have server-type or older motherboards that don't have AGP slots. The lowest price on Pricewatch I found for it was $139, so it's quite a bit more than the AGP version.
Check out the nude patch:
= by _message&message_id=202
http://www.digital-daily.com/news/?view_options
HA HA HA. I need a new card...
If anything will be the downfall of NVIDIA, it will be the fact that nobody but a hardware weenie can figure out what card is better based on the age/name without a secret decoder ring.
Seriously.. what average person would know that an a Geforce 3 TI200 was better than a Geforce 4 MX400. I mean.. geforce 4 sound better, right?
Likewise, who would think that an "old" Geforce 4 TI4200 is way better than a new Geforce FX 5200.
Please, NVIDIA, can you come up with some names that actually convey to people whether they're buying the 'Value' version of your graphics card, or the 'Professional/Platinum' version.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think there's something wrong with the ti4200 beating out the FX 5200 in every test?
Or is the FX the new MX line?
If 1 fps framerates are your idea of "running". then yes, DX9 will substitute for it using the software Reference Rasterizer.
Dawn uses pixel shaders, which (as the name implies) are programs that execute for EVERY pixel being rendered, There is NO way to emulate that in software and still get decent frame rates, no matter how good your CPU is.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Tom's Hardware has an article on the Gainward version of the card. It is water cooled.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
Is anyone else completely fed up with nvidia's moronic naming conventions?
First we had the original GeForce 1+2 series, and things were good. Then GeForce 3 Ti kicked it up a notch performance wise. Following this the GeForce 4 *Ti* series continued the improvement in performance, but the GeForce 4 *MX* series was also introduced and performed like a piece of overcooked dog-doo. In benchmarking my old GeForce 2 GTS card easily beats a GF2-MX 400 in 3D games and benchmarks.
But nvidia's marketing fools weren't done yet. Not content with ripping off kids who thought they would be getting a cool, up to date graphics card for a bargain price, they then introduced the following naming convention to the GeForce 4 Ti series:
GF4-Ti 4200 - Entry level
GF4-Ti 4400 - Mainstream
GF4-Ti 4600 - High performance
GF4-Ti 4800 - Either a 4200 or 4600 with an 8x AGP bus (read: no performance increase), depending on which version you happen to buy
So, we have a GeForce 2 that kicks the ass of a GeForce 4 in 3D games, and now a GeForce 4 4400 that kicks the ass of some GeForce 4 4800s but will always be slower than a GeForce 4 4600, which in turn will always be at least as fast as a 4800.
With the FX series, who the hell knows? All I know is that there is now absolutely no connection between the family number (Geforce 1,2,3,4,FX) and actual performance, and no connection between the model number (4200, 4400, 4600, 4800) and actual performance. Given that ATI is currently whupping nvidia in performance and output quality it seems to me that the marketing people at nvidia need to think *really* hard about their naming conventions. Amazingly adding a higher number to a piece of crap does not make it a faster piece of crap, although it may wreck your reputation with consumers.
Read Pynchon.
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.
x ps.htm
Check out this gaming machine:
http://www.dell.com/us/en/gen/topics/segtopic_dim
Brian
well I have an extra $100 that I have been saving for the George Foreman USB iGrill...
God my friends will never let me down for falling for that one...
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?
*breathe of relief* What would I have done if my video card and motherboard didn't match?!
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.
And the big secret is...
The FX 5200 was being compared to an old budget card. The 9000 pro has been replaced(for a while now) by the 9100 and 9200 cards which are faster! Not to mention that you can get a 128 meg version for 74$ just 5$ more than that card(at gameve.com).
The submitter said: the GeForce FX 5200 looks more like an exercise in marketing spin than a real revolution for budget graphics cards.
Tech-report said: 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... The GeForce FX 5200 is a great feature-rich card for anyone that's not looking for the best budget gaming option.
Sheesh, why not let the article speak for itself and spare us the lame and inaccurate editorialising. It's not "an exercise in marketing spin", nVidia have just got a bit behind the curve and ended up producing a card slower than the Radeon 9000 and only very slightly cheaper. The choice between them depends on the features and price point you want, with the Radeon 9000 probably the best choice for most people.
No need for the conspiracy theories. nVidia's decision to go for directx 9 across their whole range might be arguable, but it's silly to claim they did so just to mislead people somehow.
Welcome to the real world. nVidia simply cannot compete with similar offerings by ATI at this point in time. Although the GeForce FX 5200 may be DX9 aimed at the masses, the performance isn't. Personally, I'd be more inclined to get an ATI based card, namely a 9000/9100/9200 series based card, even though they are "only" DX8.1.
In terms of DX9, the only smart thing would be to get a 9500/9600 Pro if you're looking for something in the middle end, and a 9700/9800 Pro if you're looking high-end.
I'm on a 9700 Pro right now myself, and there's no way that I'd consider any nVidia product at this moment in time. Maybe sometime in the future (and no, I am not an nVidiot or a fanATIc).
They were just ansy to talk about their Radeon 9600 again. They start out the article telling about how the 9600 is a much more expensive and more capable card, and that it is not really in the same bracket that the FX5200 is in, yet the entire thing seems to brag about how much better the 9600 is doing. If they wanted to put the 9600 into the review, they should have at least included an NVidia card that was comparable to it, if only to not make NVidia look bad. If a potential buyer were looking over this review, and didn't read the disclaimer at the beginning, he would be very turned off to this card's performance, which really isn't that bad for the price.
Companies REALLY should think about what they are reviewing before they throw something together to review it.
That's my flame for the day.
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I hate sigs...
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