Graphics Geforce FX 5700: cheap card for half life 2?

I was looking for the cheapest card that could play half life 2 when I came across the nVidia Geforce FX 5200 series. (I was hoping to pay like $50), then I noticed a local shop had an FX 5700 on sale for about $125, and it has some cheesy features as well, like a TV tuner and a remote.

What do you think? Worth the $125? and will it play Half Life 2?

(keep in mind I'm upgrading from a generic Geforce 2, so its not like I'm wanting to max out anti aliasing/etc anyway)

 

FX5700's are pretty lame to be honest. For that sort of money, you could probably find a 9700Pro on ebay or something, which would just blow almost any Geforce FX out of the water.

$125 aint bad for a Personal Cinema FX5700, but if you need to the tv tuner etc, I would reccommend a 9600XT AIW, due to ATi's better HL2 performance.

 

FX cards r extremly poor.

Even Nvidia admit that the fx range was a flop.


Get ur self a 9600 9600pro or 9600xt

i was just playign hl2 on my OCed 9200SE and it manages all the relective surfaces and shadow just fine...

 

I haven't researched ATI's performance for HL2 specifically, but I'm trying to stick with nVidia for now due to driver support in linux.

I'm just trying to find something that can play new games without crashing my system. I'm not a huge gamer, and will probably be using the card specifically for network games of counterstrike with my coworkers. (I use my xbox for gaming.)

Any better nVidia cards for around the price? (and unfortunately I'm still not used to eBay, and only buy from retail stores or trustworthy sites like newegg)

 

if you dont need a TV tuner then may i suggest a 6600 normal version from
here

though you dont get a TV tuner this will play HL2 alot better with more eye candy

 

I think I've changed my mind entirely... I'm tempted to look around and buy some $50 cheapie with directX 9.0 since I would rather spend my real $$ on a PCI-e capable mobo/cpu/graphics card. Either way a $50 card nowadays probably way outperforms my GeForce 2 hand-me-down from 4 years ago.

 

well if your sure..

EVGA FX 5500 $69
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-130-207&depa=0

XFX FX 5200 $45
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-150-041&depa=0

you better have a good computer to be able to play this at 800* w/ med settings no AA/AF and get decent FPS. Other wise it will play like at 640* w/ low/med no AA/AF...

 

You don't want a 5200, they're pants. Here's a good example for you: a buddy of mine that I play Halo with all the time (online or LAN) runs a 5200. His processer is a P4@3ghz, 1gig of RAM. Halo just barely runs at the minimal settings on his machine. [EDIT]As a good comparison, my spare kicker rig has an 8500LE with a 366mhz processor, and it runs Halo a lot better than my buddies system. Now thats sad.[/EDIT]

If you can get half life 2 to run on a 5200 with anything less then a bleeding edge AMD system that's going to cost you several thousand dollars, your lucky

 

well there is suttin wrong there as my mate can run halo on a 5200 no probs on a 1.6 P4. and that same guy is running HL2 with that no problems. it all depends on if u care about image quality

 

Lo,

I would suggest a Ti4200. It's an "average" card, but it makes it surely playable at 1024x768, I can play battlefield vietnam fine with it at that res, with medium detail and quality settings, then reboot into dual head Linux just fine. It set me back £25 brand new. So I'm sure you should be able to pick one up for under $50. I can give HL2 a go and see how it goes on mine. Bear in mind, HL2 is designed to play on a range of hardware, not every end user will have a latest gen card.

 

Well, once again I'm not quite sure what I want to do.

I am running my AMD 2500+ Barton with 512MB ram and old GeForce2 and it still plays counter strike:source rather nicely.
(nicely meaning it looks like an early Nintendo 64 game)

I think since it does run, and I can't notice any flickering or redrawing of the screen, I'll stick with what I have for now, and work on upgrading my motherboard and processor.

I'd rather upgrade mobo/cpu first so I can go pci-e anyway.

Thanks for the tips though.

 

well, the radeon 9500s can be flashed to 9700. Those aren't expensive and would yield pretty OK results. However, I hadve no clue about linux driver support

 

ATi, so no good really. If you really are happy with your current performance, wait and upgrade everything in one go. But if you want a bit of a boost until then (and have to have linux support), I would also recommend a Ti4200 or Ti4600. Can be had pretty cheap on the boards, and will definitely be an improvement over a Geforce 2

 

2nd the Ti4600, it runs HL2 beautifully on a 2600 barton. Definatley worth £50. You can get them cheaper than that too!!

 

i 3rd it . the ti4x00s are great cards (but no DX9) and can be had for very cheap. If not, then i wouldn't go for anything less then a Radeon 9600 vanilla/normal..

 

Okay, new question, i'm browsing Newegg because I discovered the local shop's sale went off, and I waited too long, so now it's online instead of impulse buy...

Which would you choose, specifically for playing counterstrike:source;

RADEON 9800SE
-or-
RADEON 9600XT

I'd probably be going off-brand, I'm thinking Saphire since that seems to be fairly popular among the non-ati ati boards. The two cards are within $10 of each other, and I've heard SE's are pretty crappy on memory speed and whatnot... just wanted to know what the feature balance was, so if the GPU is so much better it makes the SE not so bad...

what do you think?

EDIT:
I've decided to take the risk and bought a refurbished *gasp* item from newegg.com I've heard good things about their service, specifically on refurbished items, and I've had good service with them in the past on OEM products. (And my PC ran 512MB of refurbished RAM for over 3 years from another place!)

So, I went for an ATI AIW 9800PRO. I figured, why not just grab a good card at a good price? Sure, it may not come with the remote, and I may have to spring for a DVI>VGA adapter, but who cares? It's not like I have cable coming into my office anyway. I just want something better than a GeForce 2 to play HL2/CSS with.

I'll post in General Discussion later about how I feel about their refurbished items.

 

UM, NO. You want atleast a 9800/5900 or a x600/6600 to play at anything decently playable

 

oh dear... i feel for you mate. i used to have the geforce fx5200 until my upgrade 2 months ago. please please please dont go there!!!!! its not worth the solder on the board its printed.... it honestly will look terrible

 

I just nabbed an FX5700 Ultra, with GDDR2 mem, for $100 w/ shipping from someone here on Bit.

The thing stocks at 520/700, and I have it at 650/1.15Ghz on the stock cooling...

The thing runs hl2 at around 50fps @ 1024*768 4AA/4AF, and a few things at high detail. All in all not bad for a second machine .

EDIT: Just read that you bought a 9800Pro AIW. Stick a better cooler on there (have an Arctic Silencer rev.3 on mine right now) because the stock heatsink is pathetic, and you can get a decent overclock out of it. Running 2048*1024 @ 8AA/4AF and all high detail in hl2 right now, not too shabby at all . My question is, is the one you bought the full 256-bit ATi one, or the cut-down 128-bit version?

 

Just to clarify, I did get a 9800 PRO instead, so don't worry.

Bought refurbished, as that's what the budget allowed. I guess I'll just have to stress test it during the first few days before the warranty runs out.