nVidia GeForce FX 5200 256MB

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...8503&CatId=694

^^^Link to the card

I need help regarding this card. This costs around 137 CDN and it is at the top of my budget i cant pay anymore. I need a video card which should be able to play BF1942 at mdm requirements (and some games released before the second half of 2k3), will this card play those games?. Is this card a good value? Will it last for 3 years (when im not playing games full time)? What are some things i need to know about this card? Will this produce a lot of heat because it doesent have a heat sink (my dad says it will)?
And will this card work on a motherboard which supports 2X and 4X only?
Please get back to me, this is very important.
Thanks in advance.

The link didn't work, but I suspect that the card the same as I have. It is a good card. It has its own fan and runs cool enough. It is a fast card with lots of video RAM. Very few apps yet require 128MB video, but never hurts to be a bit ahead of the game.

This is not the mind-bending gamers card, not at this price point. But it is a respectable card.

Three years? There will be better, faster, cooler, more fantastic video cards out in six to eight months. Will this card work for you for a while? Yeah. Good card.

I've used my system, with this card, online in Ascheron's Call, Dungeon Seige and a number of other games. Good response and rendering.

thanks but all of my questions still remain unanswered. Anyone else want to help

Are you sure the link doesent work here try it again
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...8602&CatId=694

Anyways I found this card MSI GeForce FX5200-TDR128 128MB DDR w/ Remote the link is
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/v...=FX5200_TDR128
Tell me if this one is any good, this one costs $120 CDN 10 dollars less than the previous one.

yes that is a great one and i think you should be able to play BF1942 because i got a old Nvidia GeForce 2MX which can play it so since this is a newwer one you should get a lot better grapic too :D....damn im behind on the technology lol maybe its time i buy a new one also

yea this looks good for my first choice. But u dont know how far im in technology, can u believe im surviving on a Matrox 4MB!!!!!!

I wouldnt advise buying that card, on the surface it looks good however not having a fan will yes produce more heat, also it will lower its performance, if your looking for a card that will last you a few years at a reasonable price I looked around on TigerDirect.ca and found that this is the card that I personally would choose http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...9600&CatId=694 , it's still near the leading edge of technology and although it has less VRAM, it is faster, which will yield better results in 95% of games especially since there is currently no game on the market that requires more than 64MB VRAM, having more is not always better. The AGP 8x/4x/2x thing is just the standard, 8x gives 2.1GB/s, 4x 1GB/s, and 2x I'm not sure on, however if your board only supports 4x or 2x an 8x card will run at the maximum supported, I have had an 8x card for almost a year now but up until about a month ago the board only supported 4x so that's what it ran at. I'm assuming since you have and play BF1942 that you must have at least a P3 or equivelant AMD, so the Radeon should run nicely, as you may or may not know only about 5 or 6 months ago the Radeon 9700 was the best of the best in ATI's line up, the 9600 was basically the affordable version of that, with slightly less VRAM speed. As to how long it will last do you mean how long the card will function or how long will it be able to play the latest games? In my opinion your hardware should last 4-5 years with no problems if you don't overclock it and probably longer. It should be able to play the newest games for almost as long, however not on the highest settings obviously, I currently have a Nvidia Ti4200 vide card with 128MB VRAM and 8x AGP, I pirated an un-official Half Life 2 Beta and it plays fine on medium-high settings, I haven't tried on high although I'd assume it will play just not smoothly. There is currently no game on the market that it can't handle on high or medium-high settings, of course this is coupled with an overclocked Athlon XP 2400+ (running at 2490mhz [ 166 x 15 ] with a 333mhz FSB) so depending on your processor it the games may or may not play as well.
Sorry for the long post but I just don't think that the FX5200 is a very good video card and think that the 9600SE would probably be a much better choice, although not quite as new, for the same price. Anyway, let us know what you end up with :)

I don't like the looks of it, although I have been a satisfied user of nVidia kit for many years. The big aluminium heatsink is a clue............there should be a fan, I have replaced the heatsink on all my ones ;)

Now an ATI 9700............... :D I love it!!!

Your prices make me want to vomit! the card you mention would be about the same in GBP (£sterling) over here.

You must keep them cool, so spend the extra $10 and get an exhaust fan...........fits into a PCI slot and gets rid of about 40-60 cfm of air out of the case.

Technically, I would suggest that a 256 will last longer, but be slightly slower than a 128. I doubt if you will see the difference.........remember that a good video card will not make up for a crap monitor?

Merry Christmas

MrCoffee12: You are right i did thought it will produce more hear but i live in canada it is damn cold and i live on the 17th floor and you cant walk on the floor without slippers or socks, and wat about if i leave the case panel open. will this work out all right? Thanks for choosing that card it looks pretty good but it says SE (i think it is Special Edition) and a lot of people on other discussion sites dont like that, i personally dont know wat it means. Dont worry about my system its all right. It doesent matter about the long post (the bigger the better) Thanks

nihil: Ya i have a plan to keep my card cool. Wat do you mean the prices want to make you vommit? My monitor is all good but tell me wat more can the 256 do.

I dont think that leaving the side panel off is really a good option, it lets a lot more dust and debris in which is not good. I'm not sure what SE means either it doesnt seem to state that anywhere, if you don't get that one just make sure you know that a 256MB card is going to perform probably WORSE than a 128MB card at this point because no games are designed to take advantage of that much and 128 will be sufficient for probably the next 5 years or more as they can't put requierments above the standard consumer's computer or they lose a large percentage of sales.

So you are telling me the 265 will be completely useless? dont worrt about the dust i clean my box regulerly. But if i buy the 256 now i wont need to buy another one when games require 256 right? i just need to save money thats why is this worth it?

Have you thought that by the time games need a 256, you will need a new computer?

Balance old chap...........128 is way good enough to see out your current box ;)

Merry Christmas

woah ur right........ i never thought of that

Merry Christmas