GeForce FX5200: Worth buying?

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

I've got a Sony Pentium 4 with 512MB RAM but stock graphics. I'm not a huge gamer, but I do a fair amount of work with video and I would like to play some of the newer stuff (esp. SW:KOTOR). I've noticed the Fry's price on this card is pretty good (under $100), but I would be willing to shell out up to $150 for something better.

Also, something with video capture (they do make graphics that do that too, right?) would be swell.

 

[Psionicist]

Absolutely not! Any geforce 3 card is faster, even the geforce 4 MX well-known for it's incredibly poor performance is a better choice. For just about $130 you can get a Radeon 9600 Pro card which is twice as fast (probably the video card with the best price/performance ratio right now).

 

[LiVeWiRe]

In case you're looking for a second opinion:

I wholeheartedly agree with Psionicist.

Couldn't have said it better myself...

LW

 

[jdavis]

The only thing it's got going for it is it's a Direct X 9 card. With a little research and some http://www.pricewatch.com/ scanning you can get twice the card for that kind of money.

Example:
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]ATI Radeon 9600SE 128MB DDR 8x AGP Video Card [/font][font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Only $99.99[/font]
http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SE-ATI9600SE-128TV

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

I'm a little confused after looking at the specs on that link, jdavis. I'm just eyeballing here (I don't have the GeForce specs in front of me, and I don't feel like looking them up /lazy) but it looks like it's basically got the same specs as the GeForce. 128MB DDR, 8x AGP, etc. Are Radeon cards just faster than GeForces?

Pardon my ig'nance here. I'm a software guy, and I know precisely JACK about hardware. Expensive is good, right?

 

[Stormfalcon]

I'm a little confused after looking at the specs on that link, jdavis. I'm just eyeballing here (I don't have the GeForce specs in front of me, and I don't feel like looking them up /lazy) but it looks like it's basically got the same specs as the GeForce. 128MB DDR, 8x AGP, etc. Are Radeon cards just faster than GeForces?

Pardon my ig'nance here. I'm a software guy, and I know precisely JACK about hardware. Expensive is good, right?

Well, it's certainly true that Radeons do benchmark faster than the FX series, but that's just scratching the surface. Generally, Radeons tend to comply with the DX9 spec better than the FX cards, but that's because nVidia decided to apply some of the tech they acquired with 3DFX (the defunct company behind the old Voodoo cards that nVidia swallowed up a while back) to the FX series. Unfortunately, that tech also came with some drawbacks (the need to hook the card up to the power supply for extra juice, heating problems bad enough to require oversized fans in the upper-end models, etc.) and overall, the entire series was held back because of that legacy tech. As mentioned before, the FX tech also didn't entirely comply with the DX9 spec, coming up short in some areas.

I won't even go into the issue of benchmark cheating. While both nVidia and ATI are guilty of this, nVidia has been more blantant in this area.

In short, the FX series fell short of the mark in quite a few areas. Spend a little extra money and get a Radeon 9600 instead. Drivers may be a bit dodgy at times, since that's ATI's weak spot, but they're improving in that area as well.

Mind you, this is coming from someone who has sworn upon nVidia cards up until the GF4ti series. With the FX series, there's more of a tendency to swear at them...

 

[Psionicist]

I wouldn't recommend the 9600 SE. Look at the table below. The SE is significally slower than the Pro and XT models.

A = memory frequency (mhz)
B = memory bus (bits)
C = peak bandwidth (MB/s)

			A	B	C
			======= ======= =======
Radeon 9600 XT 		600 	128 	9600
Radeon 9600 Pro 	600 	128 	9600
Radeon 9600 		400 	128 	6400
Radeon 9600 SE 		400 	64 	3200

 

[Goobermunch]

The only thing it's got going for it is it's a Direct X 9 card. With a little research and some http://www.pricewatch.com/ scanning you can get twice the card for that kind of money.

Example:
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]ATI Radeon 9600SE 128MB DDR 8x AGP Video Card [/font][font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Only $99.99[/font]
http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SE-ATI9600SE-128TV

There are a couple of recent threads that have great information on video cards. The long and the short of it is that the Radeon 9600 Pro is about the best thing going at your price point.

Hit pricewatch for pricing info and Anandtech and Tom's Hardware for benchmarks to verify.

--G

 

[jdavis]

I'm a little confused after looking at the specs on that link, jdavis. I'm just eyeballing here (I don't have the GeForce specs in front of me, and I don't feel like looking them up /lazy) but it looks like it's basically got the same specs as the GeForce. 128MB DDR, 8x AGP, etc. Are Radeon cards just faster than GeForces?

Pardon my ig'nance here. I'm a software guy, and I know precisely JACK about hardware. Expensive is good, right?

Well it depends, the card I linked was a SE card, the Pro cards are faster and the 5600FX Ultra cards are faster too, but it's cheaper (and twice the card as the 5200FX). It took me all of 2 minutes to find that deal on that card, I can do that price all day and probably beat it with just a little looking around.

As far as the Nvidia vs ATI but, ATI has a long history of driver problems which are fixed now and Nvidias first FX cards were crap which they have fixed now, I'd be wary of older FX cards but the new ones are pretty good. The big thing to remember here is that most of these cards will hit speeds so fast with 99% of the games out there that you won't be able to tell a difference with the human eye in rendering speed, but some do better than others in certain effects areas. The best thing to do is do a little research, it doesn't matter how computer savy you are many articles just spell it out at the end (I couldn't tell you exacty what a benchmark score means myself but I know enough to get the general gyst of what they are saying). It never hurts to pick up enough knowledge so you don't get ripped off, I've talked to a lot of salesmen in stores who didn't actually have a clue what they were talking about they were just feeding the company line on each card, they might as well be reading of the back of the box. Take a hour or two to fish around the internet for info, trust me it will pay off in the end. There is a thread around here with lots of information and some good links already.

(Back at that same site I saw a deal for the NVidia people out there too):
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]MSI GeForceFX 5900 128 MB DDR 8x AGP Video Card w/TV/DVI/VGA
[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Only $178.95[/font]
[/font]
http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MSI8929-PB

 

[jdavis]

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=73864

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=74608