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  XFX GeForce FX 5200 128 MB

  Soham Raninga, Nov 13, 2003 0000 hrs IST

  With full feature support for DirectX 9 and a reasonable price, it is the perfect match for the occasional gamer.

  Well priced, Direct X 9 support

  Average performance, Poor software bundle

  Expert Rating :

  

  

Page 1 - Introduction/The package Page 2 - The Test Bench Page 3 - Aquamark Page 4 - Quake III Arena Page 5 - Return To Castle Wolfenstein Page 6 - Serious Sam/Unreal Tournament Page 7 - Performance/Conclusion

The FX line of chips from Nvidia replaced the GF4 chips, and with the FX chips Nvidia has made an attempt to cater to all categories of gamers, right from the hardcore to the occasional. The FX 5200 chip is an ideal replacement for the GF4 MX chip. With full feature support for DirectX 9 and a reasonable price, it is the perfect match for the occasional gamer.

The brand XFX might not sound very familiar to start with, but the fine print "A DIVISION OF PINE" right below the brand logo does bring in some familiarity. XFX is a division of PINE Group that specializes in video cards and motherboards. PINE is the leading technology company in Hong Kong founded in 1989. It engages in the design, development and manufacture of high quality digital audio, video devices and computer peripherals.

The Card and the Package
Going on to the chip, the FX 5200 is powered by the Cine FX engine with advanced vertex and pixel shader capabilities plus the DirectX 9 support. The core GPU is clocked at 250 MHz and the max memory bandwidth supported is 200 MHz DDR (400). These are the specifications of the FX 5200 chip; now let's see how they have been implemented.

The XFX 5200 is an 8X AGP card, equipped with 128 MB 64-bit DDR RAM clocked at 333 MHz and the 256-bit GPU runs at 250 MHz. Looking at the specs, it is evident that the memory bus has taken some hit in order to cut costs. Whether it affects the performance in a big way or not is what we shall soon find out. The build-quality is fairly good for a budget card. A large silver heatsink protects the GPU. Understandably so, there isn't a fan provided, considering the clock speed, the heatsink would suffice for cooling. The RAM chips are left in the open without any protection, indicating the fact that there is almost no room for over-clocking this budget card.

The card has a DVI connector as well as a TV-out to it. The software bundle is the bare minimum with drivers, utilities and some trial software and games. A video cable is supplied with the card for using the TV-out facility. The package is pretty much in compliance with the budget tag it carries. Let's move on to the test process.

Page 1 - Introduction/The package Page 2 - The Test Bench Page 3 - Aquamark Page 4 - Quake III Arena Page 5 - Return To Castle Wolfenstein Page 6 - Serious Sam/Unreal Tournament Page 7 - Performance/Conclusion

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