Image Is Everything (Nvidia Inno3D GeForce FX 5200)

Member Name: SlyClone2k

Product:	Nvidia Inno3D GeForce FX 5200
Date:	11/08/03 (4072 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, reliable, easy to install, high performance card, Direct x9 Compatible

Disadvantages: Already nearly a year old

**Update at the end**

~**The Whys and Wherefores**~

I guess everyone knows that technology advances, the ravages of time and demands of users and gamers alike means that computers must keep advancing and programmers keep on filling up the gap. To this end the life of your PC is limited. But all is not lost, there is no reason why you should purge your entire machine and shell out hundreds for a new one. Rather you should and can replace the parts that are becoming defunct.

For the most part any avid gamer will see two things become redundant, the processor and the graphics card. Faster and more powerful components are released at a rate of around one every three months. So a machine that was top of the line three years ago may now be feeling a little slow and clunky and probably barely satisfy the minimum specification requirements on the back of the boxes of games in the future. So it is with me at least.

Now a mate of mine recently lent me a copy of Command and Conquer Generals, no great shakes thought I, no reason my trusty machine shouldn?t be able to handle it, but I was wrong. The game ran like a slug, missing frames and running at about half the speed it was supposed to. Lots of graphics you see, lots of graphics and lots of data. I mean it says it needs a CPU to be an 800 MHz Intel Pentium III with 128 MB of RAM and a video card of 32 MB video card using the Nvidia GeForce 2, ATI Radeon 7500. My system falls short on all but the extremely cheap to buy RAM!

Clearly I wanted to play, and I wanted to play at the proper speed so I had to decide which of these components should be upgraded first. Now upgrading my processor (CPU) to the latest technology would also mean upgrading the mother board it sits on, a quick look on kelkoo.co.uk shows this would be about at the very least a £100 investment and I feel if you are going to do these things its best to go as near to the latest technology you can (so probably more
like £200 to avoid shelli
ng out again too soon!). This is fine because the two parts can be bought separately, but this means waiting two months as I can only spare around £100 but I needed one thing immediately. So it was the graphics card I went for. It was on the recommendation of my boss who is a Computer design graduate that I chose the graphics card I did. The one in the op the Inno GeForce FX 5200 128mb card.

The GeForce range, and more note-ably the nvidia chipset (as opposed to the ATI range) have been going strong for nearly four years. Fighting off much of the competition in terms of cost and reliability to become the most respected of the cards. This means you are less likely to have trouble with obtaining updated drivers and even if you do the older ones are quite likely to work with the games you are likely to play. Something that wasn?t always a given in the past.

The FX5200 comes in three flavours, ranging from 64MB to 128MB DDR RAM with 8x AGP. It also harbors a 256bit graphics core! Already I can see your eyes glazing over so let?s try and explain!
1. RAM: Well RAM is simple, just like on your PC it provides memory that is exclusively used for graphics by the graphics card. The more you have on the card the more information your card can store without having to resort to other means.
2. DDR: Means double data rate, this is the speed at which information can pass into your RAM. The previous version is SDRam, if possible you want to avoid that (same goes for your machine RAM!)
3. AGP: Accelerated Graphics Port; An interface developed by Intel which allows a graphics card to access memory directly which, along with the wider bandwidth, helps improve models and detailed textures. Obviously the higher the throughput the better! Leaving you with uninterrupted data flow, smoother video streaming and faster, more seamless game play.

So you can see it?s not just all about maximizing those numbers although that?
s a go
od place to start.

So what else prompted me to buy the card? Well it?s been on the market since November 2002, so it?s been about a bit. But it can still handle the latest versions of Direct X (9). Couple with the advantage of coming in at about half the price (£60.99) of more recent models, the 128MB version is only £5 more than its less powerful 64mb brother. A quick look at www.nvidia.com shows that there are three other versions in the FX5x series, and their prices are nearly double that with little to show in terms of improvement in specification. But, and perhaps most importantly, did I mention its Direct X9 compatible? Many aren?t!

All of the FX series provide an nvidia CineFX engine which attempts to emulate the spectacular visions you expect to see in the movies. This should mean that your games produce sharp visuals with powerful rendering. This is provided by the 128bit graphics pipeline, essentially this opens the scope for literally millions of colours on the red, green, blue and alpha (grey scale) channels allowing your card to produce images as real as life.

~**The Bundle**~

Along with your graphics card Inno/Nvidia also kindly include some additional software;
? Comanche 4 ? Novalogics stunning combat helicopter sim beautifully shows of the power of the card.
? WinDVD 4 ? Unfortunately my DVD player has decided to pack up. So I haven?t been able to test it, but that said it all looks very good and its free.
? WinDVD Creator ? Requires a DVD burner but turns you home videos into DVD format movies!
? Games Tryout ? Gives a selection of demos.
? 3DMark 03 ? A trial version of 3DMark allows you to test the performance of your card. The unregistered version has one ?Battle of Britain? style demo that simply astounds. The information it takes can be saved to various formats to for later perusal (more on t
hat later!)

~**Installation.**~

Well installation is simple.
Remove your current graphics card from your hardware (within Windows). Take it out of your computer and pop in the new one. Restart your machine go to the hardware wizard, pop in the driver CD and bobs your uncle. I can hear you saying, ?it?s never that simple though is it?? Well actually it is. The card comes with an extremely clear booklet that provides the instructions and photos needed for a trouble free installation.

It clearly indicates where your card is going even if it isn?t going in exactly the same spot as your old one. The written instructions provide the precise steps you need to take. Follow them and you aren?t going to find a problem. Now you?re going to say, ?oh, well that?s all very well, but you know about computers.? Well to some extent that is true, but I?m hopeless when it comes to hardware and I found it no trouble!

~**Performance**~

It seemed prudent to install and test 3Dmark on my old card, a GeForce1 32MB Prophet (cutting edge November 1999!). Even before looking at the physical results the visual results were incredible. My old card could barely lift the frame rate above 3 frames per second (frames per second indicating how smoothly you see the image, you should be aiming for 16fps at the very least) and the shading and texturing were still quite poor. Having seen the same thing again with the new card I received a 28fps return texturing and shading were just incredible.

3Dmark also provided a host of other results that don?t mean a huge amount to me, but outlined many of the things I didn?t actually know about my system. It also highlighted that I would still need to improve my CPU. Also it showed that I needed to increase the AGP on my motherboard! (A simple procedure that involves accessing the BIOS when powering on the machine and looking for the AGP
setting!)

Aside from the software test how did C&C Generals perform? On the whole admirably. Given that they recommend a processor that
is twice the speed of mine I was surprised just how much better it handled it. I had been running the game on minimum graphical specification and could turn it up to middle graphical specification with no impairment. Also I tried ?The Sims?, which had been slowing down and found I could turn everything up to full, also ?Warcraft 3? comes across absolutely stunning! All at 1024x768 display modes.

~**Anything Else?**~

Well yes, the software drivers also provide several aspects that don?t relate to games, the ability to increase your screen resolution up to 1600x1200 provides you with the ability to have an immense desktop. Though I don?t go much above 1024x768 as text becomes extremely difficult to see anything past that, however for proper (CAD) graphics designers I suspect this is going to be more than enough. It also provides extra desktop functionality that makes your windows that much more browse-able amongst them;
? The ability to make drop down boxes and dragged windows transparent,
? Capabilities that allow you split the screen across multiple monitors
? A TV out so you can play on your TV at 75hz (previously it was difficult to output directly to TV as PCs display units run so much faster.
? NKeystone that allows configuration for new flat screen displays
? Zoom functionality to ?get into? the picture

~**Conclusion**~

In closing I have to say I?m whole impressed, I?ve obtained for myself a budget card that is comparable to more highly spec?d models and produces results that are extremely pleasing. As far as I can tell it has very little going against it and I?d thoroughly recommend it to anyone looking for an upgrade that?s likely to keep them going (
at the current rate of improvement in technology) for around another two years.



**Update**

Well, the graphics card was good, I compared it with several other 5200s and found that my FPS (Frames Per Second) rate was excepti
onally higher than others of its type. On the down side it burnt out after exactly 12.5 months. Was it overclocked by the manufacturer? Are others of the Inno range overclocked by the manufacturer? I guess I'll never know, but given the evidence I'd say there's a pretty good chance..

**Final Conclusion**

A good gpu for the price and undoubtedly cheaper now. But. Beware. It may not last long.

Summary: