[NEWS] - Beware of GeFarce FX 5200 64MB

[CougTek]

From X-bit Laboratories :

With 400MHz 64-bit DDR SDRAM and 250MHz core-clock, performance of the GeForce FX 5200 with 64MB should be a bit higher than the speed of the GeForce2 MX400, but definitely slower than the speed of the GeForce4 MX440.

Summing everything up and keeping in mind that now any GeForce FX graphics card costs above $100, we would not recommend you to get a GeForce FX 5200 graphics card with 64MB of DDR SDRAM memory since it may utilise 64-bit memory bus and thus be too slow in 3D applications and not suitable for comfortable gaming. Furthermore, it is doubtful that these cards will be a good buy even for $79...

There's still a lot of decently fast offerings by the competition to not become desperate enough to waste money on that crippled card IMO. What the hell is thinking NVidia for bringing back such backward oddities as graphic boards with 64bit memory interface?

 

[Mercutio]

... nah, too easy.

OK. Maybe just one.

Lately the actions and decisions of nvidia have reminded me of latter-day 3dfx.

I'd call that poetic justice.

 

[EdwardK]

Lately the actions and decisions of nvidia have reminded me of latter-day 3dfx.

I'd call that poetic justice.

Maybe since nvidia bought 3dfx, the same 3dfx marketing people are responsible for this farce? :wink:

Cheers,
Edward

 

[time]

It's not the first time nVidia has tried to put one over an unwary industry:

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=28237#28237

The nVidia cards are limited by memory bandwidth, so halving it will very probably halve the peformance. Or it may be worse, as I noted in the linked post.

At least this time it has a different model number, but perhaps there will be variants with either 128 or 64-bit memory?

 

[blakerwry]

It's not the first time nVidia has tried to put one over an unwary industry:

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=28237#28237

The nVidia cards are limited by memory bandwidth, so halving it will very probably halve the peformance. Or it may be worse, as I noted in the linked post.

At least this time it has a different model number, but perhaps there will be variants with either 128 or 64-bit memory?

actually, in some situations it makes no(little) speed difference... hence the TNT2 vs the TNT2 M64. I'm guessing at lower resolutions(800x600x32) without AA you probably won't notice a difference between a similarly clocked card with the 128bit(or whatever the regular version uses) memory bus.

It's when you crank up the res and the AA that you will see huge performance drops.

Personally, I see this as a $100 piece of crap, Nvidia should be making a hell of a lot better "budget" cards by now.. What I'd really like to see is a <$50 card that can still kick some butt.

 

[Mercutio]

"Butt kicking" depends largely on point of view, blake. Radeon 9000s are in the low $60 range and seem plenty fast to me.
If all you're looking at is 3D fill rates, the fact that you can get a GF4MX (approximately the same power as an Xbox, right?) for $45 or so has got to be pretty impressive.

 

[DrunkenBastard]

MOD: DB's 43k image takes up an obnoxious amount of screen space and a has a bit too much nipplitude for the "computers" forum. -- Merc

 

[time]

actually, in some situations it makes no(little) speed difference... hence the TNT2 vs the TNT2 M64.

I believe the original TNT2 was lower clocked - that's the only reason you could mention them in the same breath. The TNT2 Pro and TNT2 Ultra were the current products when the M64 was introduced, and they really do offer twice the performance, although as you point out, I'm talking 1024x768x32 rather than 640x480x16.

 

[blakerwry]

tnt2 and tnt2 M64 aparently had no clear guidelines for clock speed, although 125core/125mem seemed very popular you could find either probably between 100-160mHz with 125 and 150 being the most common speeds.

AFAIK the tnt2 was ran at basically the same speed as the m64, the ultra and pro however had higher core and RAM clocks than either of the lesser 2 models.



Merc, I think "kick butt" to just about anybody means that you at least have to be able to adaquately play any game on the market. In addition, I would say it has to be able to play any game with a little eye candy turned on.

This would probably make such a card fall under the "reccomended" hardware list on the current generation of games' requirements.


Right now I'm thinking the mx440 or the ati9000 are the best deals in a gfx card because they do seem to be able to play just about any game out there, but I'd like something faster and at the same time cheaper. Is this not possible?