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Now that GeForceFX cards are hitting the retail market,
and consequently the review circuit, reception has
been less than spectacular. With the marginal performance
gain as compared to the enormous increase in noise
levels of the 5800Ultra, we are now seeing the rest
of the line with skepticism. I have here a 5200 that
I put through the paces and the results are pretty
much in line with my expectations.
Being the entry-level card of the new line, top performance
is obviously not expected; however an increase from
the previous consumer level card would be nice. I
ran this card up against a 128MB Ti4200 at stock speeds
and with the exception of DX9 features, the 5200 lagged
the 4200 by a hefty margin, sometimes as much as 50%.
However, the image quality is great and features like
anisotropic filtering seem to take less of a toll
on performance.
The sample I received is from InnoVISION, a Hong
Kong based company that produced a fairly solid Ti
line. They now have the full range of FX cards available,
and UPS dropped a 5200 off for me just last week.
The card has its strong and weak points as we shall
see.
The box is straight forward, sporting a brushed aluminum
look with simple graphics taken right from nVidia
press kits
Inside you'll find a fairly decent
bundle. Among the six CDs there are A driver CD, 3DMark
2003, WinDVD and WinDVD creator, a disk full of game
demos and the full retail version of Comanche 4. Beyond
the CDs there is a DVI to D-Sub 15 pin adapter for
dual monitor configurations, a S-Video to standard
video adapter for T.V. out and a very respectable
manual that lays installation out in very simple terms.
Lets have a closer look at the card
itself
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