MSI GeF FX 5200 128 mb worth it?

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firelance

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hello ppl,
i wuz fiddling around with the idea of gettin an FX upgrade from my previous s3 prosavage DDR....and cant make up my mind...
of all the news i've seen it seems FX is the best budget based card,excellent cooling,directX 9 compatible,lots of cds blah blah...
but the cons however....seems it doesnt hav enuf muscle power for the near future..eg doom3,1/2 life 2....in spite of the directX 9 compatibility,it just performs a tad better than the its predessesor(did i spell tht wrong?)...and UT 2004 at highest resolutions seemed to stretch its capabilities to the max.....
so now tht its demand its goin down in the gaming market shud i consider buyin it.....i mean i've seen a coupla responses sayin tht the card is sucky and the ultra version is much better....
any suggestions?
 
I personally wouldn't put that card in any of my machines. I guess the most important question is what kind of a budget are you working with? If it's around $150+ US or more then go for a 9600 Pro/XT or a 5700 Ultra or even higher if you have a larger budget.
 
my budget revolves round the price of a GeF FX 5200....under $100....think i can get any good ATI cards around the price and with comparable performance?
 
Maybe save for another month or 2 and get a better card - a longer term investment and better performance...
 
I have a 5200 in my second machine. It plays Elite Force 2 really well but totally chokes on Halo. Even though its DriectX 9 card it doesnt have the processing power. Ive seen 5600's and plain 9600's for around $100. The Radeon 8500 is a pretty good budget card for around $70. But nVidia and ATI are releasing new chips this spring so all the cards that are out now should drop in price.
 
best thing to do is save up a little more and get something that will last a while. if what you have now plays the games you play now then i would just wait for a month or two. thats what im doing, i have a 5200 and it just doesnt have enough power for todays games.
 
well...i've tried halo with the GeF 2...and it plays pretty well at lower settings...how wud the FX be any worse....wht xactly r these DIV and VIVO features tht they feature in the FX 5200 cards?
well now i'm thinkin of an ATI 9200...maybe a good performance for a lesser price...
is it true tht the amt of memory space on the card(eg..128mb,256mb) wont make much of a diff in the gamin xperience coz mem. doent play a major role in renderin...i mean how useful wud a 256mb card be over a 128 mb one...maybe a 256 one wud perform better then a 128 one in future....?
 
In the future - when games try to load that much worth of textures and other data - then maybe a 256 MB card would provide better performance. As for now your experience won't be any different between a 128 and 256 MB card in games. To be honest with you I wouldn't get that 9200 either. Is there no way you can save up another $50 and get a decent card? I can't, in good conscience, recommend either the 5200 or the 9200 to anyone. Nothing less than a 9600 or a 5700 Ultra would be at the border of acceptability.
 
hi..i just wanted to know....will my mobo agp 4X be able to support any agp 8X cards...i mean will a geF 5200 FX work on my 4X mobo....
2) ok so a 256mb card will be better than a 128mb card....but the fact remains tht any 256mb card tht comes out in future will hav more processing power than any of the 256mb cards available rite now....so buyin a 256mb card,takin into account the future of gaming is totally off the point??
 
256 card won't necessarily be better than a 128. In fact, you are better off with a 128, unless your budged is very large of course... Yes, an AGP 8 card will work in your AGP 4 mobo, it will just run at AGP 4 speeds.

Another thing, please, stay away from that darned card... It is a royal piece of rubbish. I wouldn't communicate with it if I had a 100 mile ranged remote control. You are better off saving your money and getting either the 5600 or 9600 from ATi.
 
i hav kinda figured tht i'll wait until a better card comes out...but since my onboard graphics chip has decided it wont work any longer i'll need a GPU anyways and quick..so i guess i'll go in for some low end card like GeF 4 MX....they hav 3 versions of this card..which shud i go for?
 
Is it just as a stop-gap solution (you'll be buying another one quite soon), or do you plan on keeping it for a while?

I see you're playing games, and want something that'll enable you to play HL2 and D3, but still being cheap.

A Radeon 9600SE costs only 86$ (when shopping from the PriceWatch feature on TS) and will be a better choice than any MX card. You can also get a Radeon 9600, which is yet a better card, but this costs 123$
It won't run HL2 and D3 at max settings and 1600x1200, but will allow you to run with higher settings than any of the other cards discussed in this thread so far.

I'd go with either of those cards since you want to play games, or take a look at last generation of cards.

Here is a list of GeForce 4 ti4200 cards which ranges in price from 88$ to 150$+
Or you can get a Radeon 8500 as vegasgmc suggested, which costs around 100$ (try to avoid the LE version though, as it doesn't save you anything compared with the full version)

Hope this helps you decide on what card to get.

EDIT: I hate autoparse URL's...
 
wow..mr.garibaldi..tht is one database of info i got there..thnx...
anyways i dont plan to keep the MX for too long in case i do buy it....
how xactly does the GeForce4 Ti compare with the radeon range of cards..pricewise and performancewise..i mean u said in one of ur mails tht ATI cards hav better image quality......

i dont know abt gettin AGP8X cards coz my mobo is only 4X...why wud i spend xtra moolah on an 8X card tht my mobo cant xploit to the fullest xtent...so aint i better off with a 4X card like GF 4 Ti??

and wud a radeon 9200 be a better choice to 9600?
though i do get a hang of it but i cant help askin to clear it up...wht xactly does an entry level card mean....GF FX 5200??
 
Hehe, thanks :)

Yes, the FX5200 is an entry-level. An entry-level card is a card which has a price of around 50$.
It is either a cut-down version of the current generation of video chips, or a cut-down/not-so-cut-down version of the previous generation. As such it offers a low performance but is generally better than onboard graphics, and it has it's own ram so it doesn't eat the system ram as an onboard solution does.

As for AGP 8x vs 4x.
I wouldn't worry too much about buying an 8x card to use in a 4x mobo. The reason is that the difference between 4x and 8x is so small that you won't really notice any difference. But if there is a big price differential between the 8x and 4x, I'd buy the cheapest one.

I'll get back to you on the speed and price differences, but I gotta go do some work first.
 
Well, that took a bit longer than I had expected...
Sorry about that.

Anyways, for your question if buying a 9200 would be better than a 9600.
No, the 9200 is not a good card compared to the 9600. At least not if you want to play any games.
The 9600 has more features and has a much greater "power" which enables you to play todays games with AA and AF with a decent performance.

As for the price/performance, it all depends on the price you can get the GF4's for.
Radeon 9500+ (but not the 9550) generally outperforms the GF4 ti series, and often doesn't cost too much more. This is because the GF4's are the previous generation (soon to become second previous gen), and production has stopped. So the few cards which are in circulation won't drop in price, as a matter of fact, they can actually increase if enough people are interested in them.

So as a generalisation, I'd say that the Radeons will give you more "bang for buck", but the GF4's are good performers if they don't cost too much.

When you compare them to the Radeon 8500 the picture is a bit different. There they are more on par, with the difference often being decided on what clockspeed the cards are running at.
But the GF4's often outperforms (or at least outperformed, been a while since I read a review of them) the Radeon 8500. The 8500 on the other hand has more features then the GF4, and, imo, has a better IQ than the GF4.

Did this clear anything up?
 
does 8500 havin more features than the GF4 make it a better card for overall purposes other than playin games....i mean does it provide better image quality for movies and all tht sort of a thing.....
ok so the performance of a card does not solely depend on the clock speed and memory speed..wht else wud it depend on..after all its the speed tht makes the renderin capabilities of cards different and subsequently better for gamin....
and did any of these cards u mentioned 9200,9600,9500+,GF4,8500 directX 9 compatible?
thnx
 
The 9500 and 9600+ is DX9 capable, but the rest is not.

The 8500 has support for TruForm which can give a better look in certain games, without taking a (big) performance hit.

Yes, I think the 8500 has better IQ than the GF4, but it depends on what you're used to. (If you've been using Nvidia for a long time, you won't mind the GF4, but if you're used to Matrox quality.... (But if you're used to Matrox, nothing else will compare ;)))

I'm not too sure on the video IQ part, as I've not seen that in action on the two dif cards. But from what I've read about it, then there is a small difference in ATI's direction.

If you want more indepth info on the two cards/series, i'd suggest you read this and this about the 8500, and this and this about the GF4 series.

If you want more info/background, just read whichever review that catches your eye here...
 
i wuz jus wonderin if the GF 4 ti4200 wud work better than other comparable cards if overclocked to its full potential..:p
i hav my sights set on this baby :)
 
oh and i forgot....the GeForce4 ti4200 has 2 diff versions..
the one with 64 mb has faster clock speed than the one with 128mb....does the faster clock speed mean tht it will be better for the present games tht require only the 64 mb ram?
i can always overclock the 128mb bit rite?
 
i'm in trouble...i got this GeF4 MX 8X card for my system but after fittin it in,my system refuses to boot.....the red indicator indicates the power but the green one does not light up..the monitor doesnt start up...somehow my bios does not detect the card...my mobo is ECS M925 1.0....is this an intel make?
i've been told tht the 8x card is not compatible with my mobo coz the slot is smaller than it is supposed to be.......i tried out a GeF 2 MX 4X card and it works just fine......but somehow its next to impossible to find 4X cards in the market......
my system is a P4 1.6..hardly 2 yrs old...i find no reason as to why it wont support an 8X card.....is my mobo one of inferior quality....i'm beginning to think i had been swindled.....
cud anyone offer some word of advice?
 
ok so my mobo isnt an intel make...i went to the ECS site but i cant find my mobo version there.......whts happening?
 
Well, considering the vast majority of people out there have dated systems with integrated graphics, a 5200 or 9200 would put above the curve for sure. ;)

But for a lot of the people on this forum (NOT the casual gamer) these cards are completely unacceptable.

I can understand why.. My 9600XT barely plays next generation games at high detail settings.

But if you are satisifed playing games at low to OK quality, then the 9200 should be sufficient. Just make sure it isn't a cheesy SE.

It also depends on the rest of your system. If you have a slower computer, then you don't need a 9800XT Pro Super Duper Edition with quad DDR3 memory and 64 pipelines. It just won't make sense.

But if you have a decent computer, consider getting a decent graphics card with it.

Like LNCPapa, I recommend the 9600XT (or equivelent) as a minimum for a serious gamer.
 
Originally posted by MrGaribaldi
Yes, I think the 8500 has better IQ than the GF4, but it depends on what you're used to.

Actually it's more in favor of the GF4. For example, when using Anisotropic Filtering, the 8500 only did so if the textures were at a certain angle. & even worse is the fact that once you enable AF, the filtering reverts to Bilinear. That was only "corrected" with the next generation of cards ( 9500 & above ).

Taken from -> Radeon 8500le review @ Beyond3d
The Radeon 8500's Anisotropic filtering is said, by ATi, to be an adaptive method which results in only the textures that require extra sampling actually getting it. This has lead to fast performance, though it does have a couple of drawback in that it is only limited to bilinear filtering, and, in some cases, dependant on the polygon angle, not able to perform the filtering at all. However, the fact remains that it does introduce extra texture sampling and, generally speaking, increases the clarity of the textures.

On the other hand, the 8500 has PS 1.4 while the GF4 doesn't but you won't really notice it that much.

As far as 2D goes, you have to be very carefull. If you use the DVI connector straight to your monitor ( without a DVI-to-VGA changer ), you won't have to worry about quality. Once you use the VGA output, the signal goes through filters & that's where certain companies cut back on costs. You will want to stick with a know company with a good "quality" record ( keep away from Inno3D, Point-of-View, etc ).
 
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