FX 5200 or something else?

[ilovetheusers]

I’m looking a new video card, most likely for running a few games on my machine and video/photo apps. My Matrox g550 is not cutting the mustard with newer games I am now beginning to get into (presently GTA - Vice City and Future DX9 using games in the future). I have a specific budget in mind and should not even be spending $$ on new toys at this time but “I got da bug”.

I have narrowed things down to an Nvidia Geforce FX 5200 as it seems to offer the most bang for the $$$$$. Seems to have DX9 support and a decent amount of speed and comparable cards from ATI (to this exact card for the same $) seems to be running for a great deal more $$. I’m just wondering if anyone disagrees with me or knows of a different card for a similar amount of $$. I’m still open to suggestions until I scrape up the $$ for this so any counter suggestions should not go $.01 over $100. (american dolars). ;)

Also to complicate things: Who makes the better card? Asus, PNY, someone else? I’m looking at the Asus card right now just because I love that company and will be using it in an Asus Mobo and though I don’t know for sure but I would hope to see fewer issues out of the box due to same manufacturer technology. Am I wrong to think that? I'm totally open to opinion here.

Which one would you get:
http://usa.asus.com/products/vga/v9520td/overview.htm
http://www.pny.com/products/verto/geForceFx/5200agp.cfm

[ilovetheusers]

Beuller, Beuller...

[confus-ed]

What's that last comment about?:confused: ... Anyways cut your moaning Mr ! My G400 max is still doing the business, GTA Vice city runs smooth as silk ! Ok I can't turn all the 'twiddly' bits on ... but it runs good ... :p

... but I too 'smell' the need for a new card shortly so I'll be interested to see what comes up here ...

Is the ATI equivalent not the 9000 series being the 'value' one ? (For value read 'cheapest'? You can buy them here for about 15% less than a GF 5200 is, a 9200 is about the same for the same mem size?) ...

As to who actually makes each card & which is best .... mmmmm .... its been so long since I bought one for me (3 years ... so I did buy the right one !) .... that manufacturers of chipsets still made the things themselves !!!

...I'm fundamentally opposed to Geforce cards of any shape size or colour just because I get so tired of fixing 'driver version' errors .... but ATI are no better ! :rolleyes: :confused:

So come on then suggestions.....

[GokuSS2]

Originally posted by confus-ed
What's that last comment about?:confused: ... Anyways cut your moaning Mr ! My G400 max is still doing the business, GTA Vice city runs smooth as silk ! Ok I can't turn all the 'twiddly' bits on ... but it runs good ... :p

... but I too 'smell' the need for a new card shortly so I'll be interested to see what comes up here ...

Is the ATI equivalent not the 9000 series being the 'value' one ? (For value read 'cheapest'? You can buy them here for about 15% less than a GF 5200 is, a 9200 is about the same for the same mem size?) ...

As to who actually makes each card & which is best .... mmmmm .... its been so long since I bought one for me (3 years ... so I did buy the right one !) .... that manufacturers of chipsets still made the things themselves !!!

...I'm fundamentally opposed to Geforce cards of any shape size or colour just because I get so tired of fixing 'driver version' errors .... but ATI are no better ! :rolleyes: :confused:

So come on then suggestions.....

The R9100 is a relabelled R8500LE, and the R9200 is a relabelled full blown R8500. The R8500LE/8500/9100/9200 all use the same core. The difference being that the R8500LE/9100 are clocked @ 250/500mhz core/memory, and the R9200 are clocked @ 275/550mhz core/memory. The main reason ATI relablled the R8500/LE to R9100/9200 is not to confuse the end users into thinking that the R9000/pro are faster than the R8500/LE, as obviously, the R9000/pro are cut down varients of the RV250 core.

[GokuSS2]

I HIGHLY recommend for your situation the 9500Pro as is very fast card and offers DX9 support. Best of all it averages $150 US.

edit: opps didn't remember the $100 requirement.:o

[confus-ed]

..... 'not to confuse' .... well that worked real good ! :rolleyes: :D

[confus-ed]

& since it seems to be the fashion to post twice when once will do ....

so any counter suggestions should not go $.01 over $100

:p

[GokuSS2]

Well don't get the FX5200. The GeForce FX 5200 isn't as capable a performer as its feature list might suggest. 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 and much better image quility.

[confus-ed]

Is there enough performance difference in any of these chipsets to make a difference if you just double the memory available .... On my local retailers list I can see all sorts of variations ... but I see cards with 64, 128 & even 256 meg (with not that much to choose in price terms) ... is a 'worse' card with more memory actually not better ?

[GokuSS2]

Games just out barley touch 128. Benchmarks done on 128 and 256 cards show no difference. By the time there is a game that can use the 256 of on board ram the card will be too slow to play it well.

[ilovetheusers]

Originally posted by GokuSS2
Well don't get the FX5200. The GeForce FX 5200 isn't as capable a performer as its feature list might suggest. 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 and much better image quility.

I was thinking ATI was probably the better bet, but the DX9 support built into the 5200 was what grabbed me. Kind of one of those no point in upgrading to obselescence things and the chip on the 5200 is the same as the one on the 5800 but just not clocked up like a bat out of heck.

I'm wondering if the DX9 support and a more advanced chip out of the box on the 5200 is better than the higher core and ram speeds on the ATI cards that provide DX8.1 support. Of course I realize the ATI's will work with DX9 but I'm wondering if the hardware on the 5200 will decoded DX9 "stuff" faster than the ATI's of present day in a similar price range.

I was looking at the 9500 and 9600's too but the extra $50 is an actual problem right now. Honestly the $$ I'm using to buy this is found $$ and it's about all I have. :( Yeah, boo hoo.

Anyway, I found that grabbing a copy of powerdesk and clocking my matrox up from 133 to 166 core made the whole world of difference but it's got major artifacts and stability issues so I turned it off. I now believe that ANY upgrade may be the key and almost all cores beat 133mhz today, even the cheapest. I'm just wondering right now wich will serve me better in the future say when doom3 coes out and I was thinking with the more advanced chip the 5200 might be the better bet despite the slower clock speeds. What do you think?

[ilovetheusers]

Originally posted by confus-ed
What's that last comment about?:confused: ... Anyways cut your moaning Mr !

:rolleyes: :D

[GokuSS2]

A time demo of doom3 that HardOCP got a hold of, that John Carmack has described the demo HardOCP used as a random code drop from a recent build of DOOM 3 and he believes it to be representative of the final game in a performance sense.

A GeForceFX 5600 Ultra was making at 1024x768 with no AA OR AF on 48.6 FPS now that means the GeForceFX5200 will probably make around 30. Thats just plain sad.

They didn't even bother benching the sub-$100 cards.

[ilovetheusers]

Originally posted by GokuSS2
A time demo of doom3 that HardOCP got a hold of, that John Carmack has described the demo HardOCP used as a random code drop from a recent build of DOOM 3 and he believes it to be representative of the final game in a performance sense.

A GeForceFX 5600 Ultra was making at 1024x768 with no AA OR AF on 48.6 FPS now that means the GeForceFX5200 will probably make around 30. Thats just plain sad.

They didn't even bother benching the sub-$100 cards.

The doom thing is a really good point. Read something similar in MaximumPC about that and some other games. The FX cards will run better when the games and drivers are optimized but for now and without additional optimizations the ATI's are running faster/better.

You're swaying me back to my original ATI roots. Now to decide which to get and who by (manufacturer).


What to do, what to do....

[GokuSS2]

SAPPHIRE is a good ATI partner.

You can get a SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9200 128MB
full DX9 and OpenGL 2.0 support for $81 on newegg.com

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by GokuSS2
SAPPHIRE is a good ATI partner.

You can get a SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9200 128MB
full DX9 and OpenGL 2.0 support for $81 on newegg.com

Sorry to recover 'old' ground ! .... I can buy that card for about the same in £s (prices here are more!:rolleyes: ) but I can also buy a 64 meg version of the 9500 for just a bit more, but I can also buy a 9000 'pro' (64) - again for about the same money give or take a bit .....

Also what's VIVO about with these cards .... seems to be the same as saying 'pro' which I take it is like 'mx' with geforce (they use it too!?) only the other way around (so x 000 is the 'cheapo' & x 000 'pro' is the full featured one ?).

I take it I also want to put any thoughts about 7xxx 'right out of my head' ... !?! :D

Oh a note for ITLU : re the matrox 'overclock' utility 10-15% is what is 'recommended' on their forums as a maximum 'attainable' overclock - which I take it means 'not much distortion' - I think the main issue is that neither your card nor mine supports compressed agp texturing ... when I installed GTA vice city the install was a whopping 600mb bigger than I anticipated as it installs 'uncompressed' textures to compensate...

[ilovetheusers]

Originally posted by GokuSS2
SAPPHIRE is a good ATI partner.

You can get a SAPPHIRE ATI RADEON 9200 128MB
full DX9 and OpenGL 2.0 support for $81 on newegg.com

This is actually what I was looking at. might grab one today. Thanks for the input!



Confused - I know about Vice installing the uncompressed files to the hdd. My machine continuously goes to the HDD to get rendering information whether people are moving or I'm running or whatever. I only hope it knows the difference after i put the new card in otherwise I'm gonna have to find the save files (the how to is in the text readme text file). Anyway, I'm at the bank robery part and it can't even keep the frame rates up enough so I can shoot at people. It's sad. Oh well, knew what I was getting into when I bought a 2D hi performance card.

Oh, I'm using Powerstrip shareware to overclock the card. Works fairly well.

[confus-ed]

Well ITLU with an older card, admittedly with 'suped up' Ramdac it runs smooth as silk .... any old resolution I give it, somethings not 'right' somewheres your end !!

The only problem I have is 'invisible' buildings .... sometimes I'm driving so fast it 'forgets' to load the building overlay & I crash !! ... z-buffering wants to be off, in the 'options' tab of the card ... matrox have their own 'interpretation' of this & try & use all 32 available bits(lovely colours but a big fat performance hit!), the game meanwhile is expecting a 16 bit z buffer .... 16 million colours as opposed to 32 has a big fat 'whack' too (it looks a little wishy washy like this, but if I want 32 bit colour my card is flagging at 1024 ...)

Mind you my fingers are likey to develop early arthritis if I keep playing ... I'm hooked ! :D .... must buy joystick that works with dx9 ... must ...

You've probably spent your dosh by now ... I'm hanging on, trying to 'eke' that last little bit of performance ! :rolleyes: :D

& edit

Get the matrox util from their site works very good, the other 'performance' setting that made a huge difference was to 'force bitmap caching' off ;)

[ilovetheusers]

I'll look on the matrox site, though I didn't see anything like that. I'll just kep looking.

It sounds like I'm not having nearly the issues that you are getting though. My system is fine until I OC it and before I do it's just slow A$$ frame rates killing the game.





Anyway, I put in for the 9200 from Sapphire. For the $$ it's the thing though the one whole driver per OS for every single radeon card they make is a little disconcerting. I'll be a happy camper in a few days I hope.

[confus-ed]

This page (http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/drivers/files/ftp_util2.cfm) has the 'Matrox Technical Tweak Utility' I was waffling about !

I think you mis-understood my post (Quel Sûrprise !) ... the game runs good ! ... when I said 'crash' I meant the car I was driving in the game (because of my 'invisible' buildings, which appear when I'm about 3 feet away!) !! Not the game itself .... ;)

All the various 'twiddles' I did were to get the frame rates up from mid 20s (like wot yours is Mr!) to 100 or so .... :D :thumbs: & the vid cards not overclocked yet !!

The only thing I don't like is that with z buffering off (or of the 16 bit variety) the colours look like 'everyone elses' wishy washy colours, I'm used to rich deep colour, matrox's cards best point !

[Budster64]

I love ATI cards and I love Nvidia both provide good cards at a decent price.
Recently I switched from a Ti4600 to a 9800 pro and although the 9800 pro is a kick-*** card I have noticed a few anomolies that aren't present with the Nvidia card but nothing that would really trouble me. Well except for the few sudden reboots which hasn't happened with my Ti4600 for quite some time. But all looks good right now.
Will I switch to the GFX 5900 when it comes out?? Well yea I will cause I really have no brand loyalty in this arena whatsoever I buy whatever I feel I wanna buy.
That said I haven't found any real significant difference between PNY, Asus...etc they all seem to work just fine and the only difference would really be the extras included in each.
Is the 5200 a good card?? yep it'll do what needs to be done just done expect to run games at 1600X1200X32 and for that matter don't expect the 9000 (which is another decent card) to do it either.
BUt either will run the newer games just fine at 1024X768X32 which if you ask me is a completely acceptable resolution.
BTW here's my opinion on switching drivers...if your machine is running happily on the drivers you currently have....LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE!! There's nothing that says you have to upgrade to newer drivers just because they are there.
The ultimately end use for a good gaming video card is ...playing the games you want to play. NOT getting the top score on a synthetic bench test program.

[ilovetheusers]

Originally posted by Budster64
BUt either will run the newer games just fine at 1024X768X32 which if you ask me is a completely acceptable resolution.
BTW here's my opinion on switching drivers...if your machine is running happily on the drivers you currently have....LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE!! There's nothing that says you have to upgrade to newer drivers just because they are there.
The ultimately end use for a good gaming video card is ...playing the games you want to play. NOT getting the top score on a synthetic bench test program.

The ati 9200 is running things at 1024X768X32 very well, you're right.

I disagree about drivers though as often times I have a great deal of issues with anything new until I update, esp. with games. The matrox utility confused mentioned works much like the ati controll panel does, letting you play with settings. They didn't supply any sort of controll for their cards beyond this tool.

Not a fan of benchmarks either apart from a baseline comparison. In the case of cards coming out today, Maximum PC and other sources are noting that ATI's latest chipset is better than Nvidias right now for a slew of things in real life performance.

Personally, I noticed a lot of graphics popping up that were not present before the new card. Lots of things shining, smoother edges, etc. I likey.

[Budster64]

Originally posted by ilovetheusers
The ati 9200 is running things at 1024X768X32 very well, you're right.

I disagree about drivers though as often times I have a great deal of issues with anything new until I update, esp. with games. The matrox utility confused mentioned works much like the ati controll panel does, letting you play with settings. They didn't supply any sort of controll for their cards beyond this tool.

Not a fan of benchmarks either apart from a baseline comparison. In the case of cards coming out today, Maximum PC and other sources are noting that ATI's latest chipset is better than Nvidias right now for a slew of things in real life performance.

Personally, I noticed a lot of graphics popping up that were not present before the new card. Lots of things shining, smoother edges, etc. I likey.

Actually you're agreeing with me...since I did say that IF your machine is running happily then you shouldn't bother upgrading your drivers. If you're having a great deal of issues you're not running happily hence the search for better fitting drivers.
Yep agreed about the latest chipset, but things change...so tomorrow who knows especially with the 5900 coming out, and then ATI will throw something new at us then visa versa. And the true winner is...us since we get to choose whatever floats our boat and fits our wallets and aside from the failure that is the GFX 5800 the 5900 is looking to be the top end card to beat. In any case we win ;-)