XFX Geforce FX5200

[duncanbojangles]

Okay, well I finally bought everything I needed to build my new computer. In a few days, all of this will be in my sig, which will take the place of the COBOL joke.

Shuttle AN35N Ultra NForce2 mobo
AMD Athlon XP 2600 512 k cache Barton Core
2 * 256 MB DDRAM
XFX Geforce FX5200 256MB with all the "outs", VGA, DVI, and TV out
Awesome clear green acrylic case from Xoxide with lots of lighted fans and other random lighted things.

Well, I picked the XFX Geforce FX5200 because of its good price, $89, because it was NVidia :), and because I hadn't heard anything horribly bad about it. Well, I just found this review (http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=279) and the guy doesn't seem to happy about it. Is there something wrong with this graphics card?

It should be noted that I'm coming from a 450 MHz AMD K6 with onboard SiS graphics chipset, ugghh, so anything is better than what I currently have. I'm not really into "hard-core" gaming, though I'll occasionally play some game I've missed out on for the last few years. I'll also be doing some game programming in OpenGL.

So, now that you know what a fabulous upgrade I'm talkin' about, is this card bad?

[liquidfx13]

ok well i read the article but this is what stands out to me:

If you look at what the FX5200 is supposed to do, it does it well. It is not a card for a hard-core gamer, but it is a card for those who mostly use the computer for other things than games and only occasionally play a game. I still was pleasantly surprised when I played all the game demos. I can honestly say that as long as I stayed at lower resolutions I had no problems playing any of the demos.



no there's nothing wrong with this card. it's actually quite good for the low end cards. the only thing i'd do is make sure you get the 256MB version of the card. and even at that i can't fully agree with him on this point of view in the conclusion of the article. I know plenty of gamers that can't afford the higher end cards that will go for this card and it works quite well in gaming. if you are buying this card for use in a linux box you'll be more than happy with it.

[eyceguy]

hey i've got the straight up FX5200 with 128mb ram and I love my card, i consdider it a HUGE leap over what i had before (ATI Radeon 7200 w/ 32mb ram) anywho it works nicely i even played a bit of UT2k4 with all the details and stuff tricked out at 1024x768 and didnt have any problems it was only then that i turned around and heard how "crappy" a card it was (clock speeds and benchmarks and all that mess) anyway i found it to be great in comparison to the ATI and well, it just works

[duncanbojangles]

Whew, well that's a relief. I just got it in today, and hopefully my case will come in tomorrow. And I definitely went for the 256 MB version, I figured if I wasn't gonna drop the cash for the 5700, I might as well get the best 5200 there was. Thanks for lettin' me know. I plan on enjoying it by this weekend.

[mengle]

Yeah I've got the 256 MB version (AGP) and it works fine except that it doesn't deal with low light nearly as well as my GeForce 4 4?00 (sorry I can't remember the exact model number but it died). What I mean is that when you hiding in shdows certain features just turn black. It's certainly playable just not that pretty. I can't say much more about it because my processor is definitely the bottleneclk (PIII 933MHz) so many games like UT2004 run very slow but I don't think that as anything to do with the graphics card.

Good luck.

[MorphiusFaydal]

i have the Apollo|VGA FX5200 w/ 256 mb on it..

its okay...

i should have splashed for the 5700 though.. im a gamer and..... the 5200 just doesnt cut it that well...

[rocketpcguy]

phu! a geforce 4 ti 4200 is much faster than this FX! 256MB won't matter anyway with this low end card, silly people.

[duncanbojangles]

Well I'm not much of a gamer, so the little things won't bother me. Actually, I hardly play games at all. Just a few from The Linux Game Tome (http://www.happypenguin.org) . And no bottleneck here, AMD XP 2600.

[amgeex]

Just so you people learn something: If you know your stuff you can do wonders with it. I was able to run UT2K4 at 1024x768 with most details on at a blazing speed on my current configuration. And that is no **** people!! (Excuse the french).