It's good enough for real time strategy games. 😄

Also, on my FX5200 I was very surprised that by installing a later NVidia driver I could enable dual monitor use (VGA + DVI), as the manual claimed it could only use a single port at a time.

I have an nVidia Geforce FX5200 128MB (Dell P118) AGP video card in my Dell Dimension 4300S, it actually feels like an upgrade compared to its original ATI Rage 128 Ultra 32MB Video Card, because I jumped from a DX6 card to an early DX9 card, there's a wider variety of games I can play on here (especially games that use T&L), and some Direct3D games from 1997-2002 perform better on the FX5200 compared to the Rage 128; What made me toss the FX5200 into this machine was the fact that it was the only spare low-profile AGP video card I had laying around.

Most of the complaints I've read about the FX5200 (and the FX-series cards in general) were concerned about XP-era gaming and its premature NT6.x WDDM driver performance, neither of which are my concern because that Dell is being used as my Windows 98 gaming computer, I have a better computer (AMD64 rig w/ a BFG 7800GS) for XP games anyway.

Also, I have another FX5200 based AGP card (BFG ASLM52128) that's getting recapped since my dad recently got a soldering iron so we may as well test it for that purpose. 😀

yawetaG wrote:

It's good enough for real time strategy games. 😄.

I agree. I once built together a GF5200-equipped PC for my sister.
Indie games, like Sonic Robo Blast 2, where no problem. Same for Aero Glass.
But commercial titles, well.. Sonic Heroes (or was it Adventure DX ?) was quite slow.
And the game "Spore" had graphical glitches, also. Older games using Direct3D 6/7 should work fine, though.
Same should be true for less sophisticated Direct3D 8/9 titles. So perhaps a GF5200 could quite be useful for a 98SE machine.
Or for a PPC Macintosh running OS X 10.4 "Tiger" (because of the new OpenGL and accelerated CoreImage for special effects). 😉

If im not using 3DFX i used a FX5200 PCI in my AMD K6, works great cause the drivers are pretty solid for Win9x and it has good DVI support upto 1600x1200.

For some Games you have to use the right Driver Version... e.g. for CMR Rally on Win98SE i use one of the 44.xx versions. Other Driver versions have glitches in the Main menu.

And with a FX5200 you can use dgvoodoo under win98 so you can play 3dfx games too, without a 3dfx card.

Need For Speed 2 se, Screamer2 / Rally, Carmageddon.

I used to have tons of the stupid things. Probably one of the worst GPUs I've ever used. :x Poor Win98 support, poor performance for XP era games, there's simply better options out there.

Nice video!

The crippled 64-bit, low clocked 5200 is absolutely terrible. It's worse off than an MX 440! People say that the 5200 Ultra fares much better, which would make sense since it has 3 times the bandwidth and is clocked significantly higher on the core, so it might be worth taking a look on a future video 😀.

It's still a step up from something like, say, the ATI Rage Pro or even a Voodoo2, isn't it?

Sammy wrote:

For some Games you have to use the right Driver Version... e.g. for CMR Rally on Win98SE i use one of the 44.xx versions. Other […]
Show full quote

For some Games you have to use the right Driver Version... e.g. for CMR Rally on Win98SE i use one of the 44.xx versions. Other Driver versions have glitches in the Main menu.

And with a FX5200 you can use dgvoodoo under win98 so you can play 3dfx games too, without a 3dfx card.

Need For Speed 2 se, Screamer2 / Rally, Carmageddon.

Hmm, that sounds interesting! How does that differ from NGlide?

Just FYI... my FX 5500 PCI (not AGP, NOT PCIe) is faster than 5k in 3DMark 01 SE.
Granted, I have 270MHz Core clock and 400MHz effective memory clock on DDR 128-bit bus, but still it's PCI slot card 😁

Lastly :
First graphics card (that I bought), was FX 5200 128MB/128bit AGP for my Pentium III 800MHz/1GHz PC 😀
It stayed with me in my Celeron D setup for few months as well.
This, is how it looked : LINK
I upgraded from GeForce 2 MX 400 32MB.

I've used a 128-bit FX5200 on a P933 Win98 box and it played every game I tried smoothly. Games I remember running well:
Half-Life
Jedi Knight 2
Quake 2
Unreal

Also tested a 64-bit model in the same system. It wasn't terribly slower until you got into 32bpp in 1024x768 and higher. On average, the 64-bit model was bout 20% slower than the 128-bit in DirectX. It seemed even slower in OpenGL, but the framerates were still very playable. For example, Quake 2 got 85fps vs the 128-bit model's 156fps.

Performance-wise, the 128-bit models performs about like a GF3 Ti200. It may not do well on faster systems with games made after 2002, but it's still a great card for games made prior to 2002. Personally, I didn't seem compatibility issues. I was using driver 56.64.

NVidia made a new budget chip that's less efficient than its predecessor (GF4 MX) but has some new features that are somewhat useful if you are ok with poor performance. 😀 I don't think even the 5200 Ultra can keep up with any GeForce 3.

I have some strange fascination with the 5200 Ultra and have played a number of games on it. I would say it's ok for DirectX 7 games but you don't want to run higher than 1024x768 most of the time. I found that drivers 45.23 and 44.03 are best at compatibility with such older games.

Reputator wrote:

Sammy wrote:

For some Games you have to use the right Driver Version... e.g. for CMR Rally on Win98SE i use one of the 44.xx versions. Other […]
Show full quote

For some Games you have to use the right Driver Version... e.g. for CMR Rally on Win98SE i use one of the 44.xx versions. Other Driver versions have glitches in the Main menu.

And with a FX5200 you can use dgvoodoo under win98 so you can play 3dfx games too, without a 3dfx card.

Need For Speed 2 se, Screamer2 / Rally, Carmageddon.

Hmm, that sounds interesting! How does that differ from NGlide?

Nglide does not suppurt 3dfx Dos Games directly . It supports 3dfx Dosgames only via Dosbox.

Dgvoodoo 1.52 (beta2) dos support 3dfx dosgames via gilde2x.ovl

For static linked dosgames Dosbox is still needed.

I have an Pentium 3 500Mhz with FX5200 and it is to slow for Dosbox.
But with Dgvoodoo i can play 3dfx games on that Machine.

agent_x007 wrote:

Just FYI... my FX 5500 PCI (not AGP, NOT PCIe) is faster than 5k in 3DMark 01 SE. Granted, I have 270MHz Core clock and 400MHz e […]
Show full quote

Just FYI... my FX 5500 PCI (not AGP, NOT PCIe) is faster than 5k in 3DMark 01 SE.
Granted, I have 270MHz Core clock and 400MHz effective memory clock on DDR 128-bit bus, but still it's PCI slot card 😁

Lastly :
First graphics card (that I bought), was FX 5200 128MB/128bit AGP for my Pentium III 800MHz/1GHz PC 😀
It stayed with me in my Celeron D setup for few months as well.
This, is how it looked : LINK
I upgraded from GeForce 2 MX 400 32MB.

Yeah your 5500 is definitely faster. Looks like it has the full 128-bit memory bus.

PCI cards can get amazingly fast. I've amassed a collection of PCI cards just for the purpose of doing a video at some point on how fast PCI cards can actually get, so that will be something to look forward to. My preliminary testing has been very interesting though. Typically their performance is VERY inconsistent, depending on a large variety of factors.

swaaye wrote:

NVidia made a new budget chip that's less efficient than its predecessor (GF4 MX) but has some new features that are somewhat useful if you are ok with poor performance. 😀 I don't think even the 5200 Ultra can keep up with any GeForce 3.

I have some strange fascination with the 5200 Ultra and have played a number of games on it. I would say it's ok for DirectX 7 games but you don't want to run higher than 1024x768 most of the time. I found that drivers 45.23 and 44.03 are best at compatibility with such older games.

You sound a lot like me haha! Sometimes I get hooked on how a graphics card performs just because it's so interesting. One of the best examples for me was when I got a Voodoo 5 5500. But I'd love to find a 5200 Ultra at some point just because it's a step forward in so many ways (more advanced shader engine, more capable raster backend, etc) and a step backward in so many others (no Z-buffer or color compression, similar to a GeForce 2) compared to a GeForce 3/4.

Sammy wrote:

Nglide does not suppurt 3dfx Dos Games directly . It supports 3dfx Dosgames only via Dosbox. […]
Show full quote

Nglide does not suppurt 3dfx Dos Games directly . It supports 3dfx Dosgames only via Dosbox.

Dgvoodoo 1.52 (beta2) dos support 3dfx dosgames via gilde2x.ovl

For static linked dosgames Dosbox is still needed.

I have an Pentium 3 500Mhz with FX5200 and it is to slow for Dosbox.
But with Dgvoodoo i can play 3dfx games on that Machine.

Good to know, thanks! I'll have to investigate this some time in the future.

Ok I take it back - the 5200 128-bit / 5200 Ultra look more efficient than GF4MX and are usually a good bit faster than GF3 Ti 200.
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/over2003/index.html

swaaye wrote:

Ok I take it back - the 5200 128-bit / 5200 Ultra look more efficient than GF4MX and are usually a good bit faster than GF3 Ti 200.
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/over2003/index.html

I think at a certain point brute force fillrate just pushes past everything else.

Dear god that collection of graphics cards though... *salvates*

F2bnp wrote:

Nice video!

The crippled 64-bit, low clocked 5200 is absolutely terrible. It's worse off than an MX 440! People say that the 5200 Ultra fares much better, which would make sense since it has 3 times the bandwidth and is clocked significantly higher on the core, so it might be worth taking a look on a future video 😀.

I've never used one of the Ultra cards. Might be worth a look though.

Its real edge over the faster older Geforces are the paletted texture support and VGA output quality, likely coming from the 3dfx inheritance. Ignore the marketing campaign and don't even ever THINK about it as a shader model 2.x card (As many have made that big mistake in 03+).

A huge disadvantage though? Like the other geforces, it doesn't get along with PowerVR PCX2 cards 😁

leileilol wrote:

Its real edge over the faster older Geforces are the paletted texture support and VGA output quality, likely coming from the 3dfx inheritance.

Not sure what you mean here. Older GeForces will support that feature too.