hey, im looking to buy a GPU for my little brother because he's allways complaining that the frame-rate is too slow on his games.......he's about 12 and not very technical and therefor doesnt realise that the pc he uses is total Cr*p for playing all the new games hes buying ! The PC he uses is a compaq 1000Mhz amd system with about 300MB of 100Mhz ram.......alls i want from a card is to improve the frame rate (and maybe a tad on the detail) we are looking for a card he can afford so were talking between £50 and £100 and he's 12 so he won't be OC'ing or twaeking advanced setting, were talking plug and frag here......he's probably not even going remember its there after a week! but i was wondering if a 64/128 MB gpu would make any difference to the system when plaing games such as C&C generals or Rome total war as is it faily slow anyways.......what sort or improvement are we looking at here?! anyone had any experiance
if i was u i'd go for either a 9200 radeon or a FX5200 geforce the system would be the let down at anything higher and as for the 64mb or 128 then go for the 128 cause i upgraded and i saw a 20% increase on the same GPU (9200)
so that leaves the FX5200 pci for £70 or the 9200 pci retail- lite for £40 why the price difference? whats £30 do to a cards performance? or is it just that the FX5200 has dual head and the 9200 doesnt?
this is the 9200 http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=63943 this the the FX5200 http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=61650
normally i'd say go for the ATI but in this case i have to say the 5200 due to the 9200 being a SE (second edition) which has slower ram and slower clock speed for the GPU
ok thanks, look like he'l need some more pocket money or something...... does one know where some specs for the FX5200 can be viewed? im interested in this now.......
Do you really have any idea what you are talking about? There will be no noticable difference between a pci radeon 9000 or 9200 or 9250, se or not, or any flavoured fx5200. Stop giving unreliable advice.
I used to have a FX 5200.... nice lil card too. A 12 year old will love it. I gave mine to my lil bro
I don't know where you got that from Xen0phobiak. The 9200SE and 64bitDDR 9250 are a lot slower than the 9000, 9200 and 128bitDDR 9250 because the memory bandwidth is halved and often the clocks are slower too! The FX5200 is easily faster and superior to the 9000-9250 but we're not talking loads of difference so don't pay through the nose for the priviledge. For example £70 vs £50 means you're paying 40% more for only a small boost, but as said before seriously avoid the SE variants. If there are concerns about PCI limiting these cards it shouldn't do much at all, they're slow cards so their actual speed shouldn't be harmed much at all so the biggest downside is that the card's own RAM will be a hard limit as it can't utilise the AGP Aperture in order to borrow system RAM when needed. For that reason you should definitely buy a 64MB card, 128MB would be more ideal but if a game wants more than 64MB it will probably be unplayable on a 1ghz with 9200/FX5200 anyway. Other PCI options should be GF2, GF4MX or Rad7500 which are all viable options, about the same speed and may be a lot cheaper. These are all DX7 not DX8 though so far from ideal. However in DX7 games they aren't hugely behind the likes of the 9200. For reference the GF2, GF4MX and Rad7500 are all about the same speed and capabilities, the GF2MX is a tad slower. The Rad9000, 9200 and 128bitDDR 9250 are again virtually identical, 9200SE and the 64bitDDR 9250 are a good deal slower. Here's some benchmarks, old but still of some use ... Guru3D GF2MX PCI vs AGP: http://www.guru3d.com/review/guillemot/3dprophetii-mx-pci/ AnAndTech Voodoo5 PCI vs AGP (Aug 2000): http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1292&p=6 Firing Squad Voodoo5 PCI vs AGP (Aug 2000): http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/v55500pci/default.asp Sharky Extreme Voodoo5 PCI vs AGP: http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/reviews/video/3dfx_v5_pci/9.shtml Rad7500 PCI: http://www.viahardware.com/pci7500_1.shtm (dead?) PCI GFX CARDS COMPARED: http://ocelot.web1000.com/pcicard.html (seems dead, haven't checked through these in ages)
I got it from the fact that they are pci cards we are talking about. And a somewhat dubious claim on another thread.
u must realise that since its a PCI based card both r bottleneckd by the PCI bus. yes if they where the AGP versions u could tell but we r looking at PCI cards which is a heck of alot slower than agp. i agree with Xeno any bandwidth the AGP cards had extra r gone due 2 PCI. so 64/128bit is null as PCI can only support 133mbit where 128bit memery is somethin like 2+gb (correct me plz)
But if you aren't sharing system memory the benfit to a fast interconnect it dramatically reduced, even a Rad9800Pro is optimal with AGP4x (4x66=266mhz), it simply doesn't need the extra bandwidth offered by AGP8x or PCIe x16. Of course perf will be hurt but we're talking slow cards anyway and the archy, bandwidth and clock speeds within the card are still the most vital, hence 64bitDDR = bad. Still without any actual real world testing this is all still just theory.
