FX 5200 - First Try

[Splash]

Okay.. the FX just arrived in the mail today.. Some quick fittling and it was installed, running the latest drivers from nVidia. We jumped right into R4 without testing the card on anything else GL or DX based, and R4 hard locks the machine on loading..

One reboot later, testing a GL based screen saver from Really Slick.. Lattice runs, and quite smoothly, I might add..

Trying a fresh (non crash) reboot now.. Then R4 again..

Aaaand it crashes again.. It dies at Announceblur.r4 -_-

[Splash]

Okay.. after fittling, we've figured out it didn't like something with the MB chipset drivers in XP.. we're in the process of dropping the machine back to 2000 and doing a fresh install.. Hope it works this time!

[Splash]

Alright! After much fighting and several OS reloads, we've narrowed it down to faulty motherboard chipset drivers, and the card works fine.. I'll be happy to give any tests you'd like on it and record the results.

I've been playing with the SVID in on my computer, and the SVID out on the FX, and I can indeed capture R4 to video, though it's a bit blurry, getting dropped to NTSC standards.. Anything in particular you'd like tested?

[rabidhamster]

[rabidhamster]

[Rovastar]

[Splash]

okay.. running current drivers and dropping back to Win2k, we get pretty stable holding at 60fps for about half the scenes, the other half, and all the transitions, droping to 30 or 20fps. (running 0.15)

My old GeForce2 MX 400 isn't much slower.. that's pretty bad ;>

[Rovastar]

Ummh actuallt thinking about it isn't the FX5200 actuallya slow card anyway.

Graphics cards area total nightmare for numbering version and what is better than what but I have been doing some digging.

I beleive the FX5200 is the slower cheaper budget version of the FX series
For the GF 4 there where GF4Ti and the GF4MX the mx range where basically the same as the old GF2 series of cards.

The GF4Ti range where the quick ones and more expensive.

I understand taht the FX5200 are like the MX range of cards for the GF4. So actually they will not be running all that much more quickly than the the old GF2MX range.

So this to to be expected really.

I beleive that the 5600 is about the same as a GF3 card and there is an ULTRA version of this too probably the same as the GF4Ti cards.

The FX5700- same again.

FX5950 - FX5900 - FX5800 the same drill but super quicker. I hope taht explains.

Sadly price says it all.

From scan.co.uk today

MSI Geforce 128Mb FX 5200T Tv Retail £45.25 £53.17
MSI 256Mb FX5600XT-TD Tv/DVI £85.25 £100.17
MSI 128Mb FX5600 Ultra VTD £144.25 £169.49
MSI 128M FX5700 TD Tv/DVI £110.00 £129.25
MSI 128M FX5700-Ultra TD Tv/DVI £131.75 £154.81
MSI 128Mb FX5900TD Tv/DVI Retail £225.00 £264.38
MSI 256Mb FX5900TD Ultra Tv/DVI Retail £299.00 £351.33

[rabidhamster]

hmm. thats crap. Makes me feel good about my GF3 ti550 tho' - it still bitches virtually everything and i've had it for ages.

Also makes you wonder about the merits of 3DMark 2k3 - i get a score of 1200 or something, and someone with a 5600 will get a few times that. But when you actually compare them on real stuff, they're the same, apart from the pixel shader features no-one uses anyway.