New Graphics Card = Worse than before?

(fattakin) #1

Hi Folks

Just Bought a Geforce 5200 card with some excess Xmas funds. Wacked it in and noticed an Immediate drop in framerate than my previous Budget Card G4 MX440. What Gives? I know they are both budget cards.

I dont Tweak my setup, just normally run everything on Normal.
With the G4 i was getting 50-70 FPS on most maps. This G5 seems to be 30-50 tops.

I d/loaded 3D mark 2001 and it speaks for itself.

AMD 1.7gig / 512DDR / 20GB HDD dunno Speed, Gigabyte Mobo. DX9

Club 3D Geforce 4 MX440 64MB:
3D mark: 5241

3D Graphics Series Geforce 5200 128MB DDR
3D Mark: 3893

I D/loaded latest Drivers etc and have tweaked on the G5 but its basically worse - any advice / opinions?

(TechnoNRGKid) #2

:bash: :bash: :bash: :bash:
Pretend the smiley getting bashed is your fx 5200 card…

Sorry man, you should of done a little more graphics card reviews before buying that.
If there is any card on the market that i wont get, honestly , it would be that one. It’s a bad card, they dropped it to that low of a price for a reason, cause they know it sucks. you should of gotten a geforce 4 TI 4200 i have it, i love it sooo much, and besides the 9500, 9700 and 9800’s, it’s the only one i want. you can get it the ti 4200 for like $80s and get tremendous results, better than your mx440.
Id suggest taking it back QUICK! and getting this or one of the ones i mentioned. 9500 is cheap and supports dx9.

If you stick to the 5200 fx, get the ULTRA, only. 5900 rules too, expensive as heck though.

btw, 128mbs of the 5200 card, still cant mess with the ti 4200’s 64mbs QUALITY DDR, really good speeds you get from it.

(fattakin) #3

Is there any point on taking it on the chin for ET and holding out with the 5200 for HL2 / Doom3?? i.e. does that card have any use? the new pixel / shader stuff for DX9 that thius card is supposed to support?

(puubert) #4

I can’t speak for the technical side, but if the card doesn’t run ET well, then it ain’t gonna run DooM 3 well. Suck it up and buy whatever he recommended.

(dJ6i8bY) #5

ok its not all lost with that card m8… it dose suck i know that first hand (my cuzin has one). If u cant take it back or cant afored a better one atm then heres something u can do. you can overclock it, and quite well from my exsperiances. I dont know the rest of your system spec’s but i got my cuzin on afrage 10fps more on ET.

his 5200fx has a larg black heatsink on wich i attached a spare old grafix card fan to (not that big but realy cooled down the heatsink). if u cant get one to sit on it… get a larger case fan to blow across the card and ull acheve the same affect(plus also cool the ram a little).

his card at defaults runs on 250mhz core and 280mhz ram wich gives him around 35fps on rail gun. Currently its running at 335core and 380mhz ram and hes gettin 48-50fps on the same spot. Quite an increase.

If u want to Over Clock your card then take care on doing it. Icrease the core/memory speeds with 5mhz then test… if thats ok then try more. When testing look out for artifacts (strage things happening 2 ur grafix).
and also… apply extra cooling if u can as u should get alittle more speed and still have the card running cooler than standard.

You will need the coolbits.reg wich u can get here
http://www.softpedia.com/public/scripts/downloadhero/12-1-31/

good luck m8 and happy fragging.

edit he runs on 800/600, 32bit color, full everyhing.

another edit nthe 5200fx cards have full Dx9 support but i wouldnt recon it would be fast enuf to realy play any dx9 game with it. I seen hl2 leaked beta running on it… it seemed ok but it wasnt using full dx9 as the shaders looked diff from the dx9 card i seen it run on (water wasnt anywere near as detailed/nice)

(fattakin) #6

Thanks Man for the overclocking advice, i’ll have a look…

I normally play 960x800 windowed mode (have to use MSN to get my dud 56k mates into games) and was getting real good FPS on the G4

I can bring it back for a £5 charge so i think i’ll just go buy a 80GB HDD from the shop as i picked up a cheap DVD burner… maybe just stick with the G4 for now and pick up a better card when its acually needed, HL2

(dJ6i8bY) #7

sounds like a good idear :P… ull need the space with the dvd burner and all :stuck_out_tongue:

(Kam) #8

If you are looking for overclocking your card, also your (good) old MX400, try the RivaTuner utility http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner&menu=8 that can give you the maximum control over your card and over Detonator Driver.
Look also for the last detonator (a.k.a. ForgeWave) that support FX Chipset and DirectX9.
The last WHQL release www.nvidia.com is 53.03.
You must use this one or at least the previous one (52.16) if you have the FX model.

Unfortunately the FX chipset is not so good if you do not take one of the expensive card like 5600 Ultra and so on.
I had an MX440 and I recently both a GeForce 4200ti (with a good brand) for only 99 euro.
This card is still the best compromise between price/performance if you do not want to get the full support for DX9 and Vertex/Pixel Shader 2.x.

Cheerio.

(SylverDragon) #9

Ok, so I’m going to parrot everyone else here. Buy a Gforce4 Ti 4200-4800. You’ll get a good bang for your buck (I get good FPS out of my Ti4600, with no tweaking); and by the time HL2 actually releases the FX cards should have dropped to a sane price. All in all, trying to stay on the bleeding edge of technology just costs way too much, unless you have the money to throw away. Just wait a little longer, then upgrade.

(TechnoNRGKid) #10

sounds like a great plan.
Im getting a new harddrive myself this friday. either 40 gig if its still on clearance sale ( 7200rpm 34.99 ) :clap:

(Computertech) #11

The Geforce4 MX 440 is really a Geforce2 engine. It’s not great but not too bad. The FX 5200 is really a MX type card. Half of the pixel pipelines, uses the Geforce4 memory engine, and does run a little slower than the MX 440 card. Believe it or not, the MX 440 is actually the better card. If the FX 5200 was an Ultra, then a little faster.


Tom’s Hardware can help seeing the difference in games with video cards:

(fattakin) #12

Thanks Folks…

I attempted a little tweaking last night and have decided to scrap the 5200, pay more attention next time and just pick up a 5600/900/Ati in the summer when i acually need it!! I cant afford the hit on ET as its the only PC game i play at the mo and for the forseable future.

I’d forgot about the riva tuner so have grabbed that again - thanks!

(dJ6i8bY) #13

dont get an 5600 either m8. I had one and quickly sold it for a fair superior 9600. I know ill probibly be called a fan boy for that comment but tbh am not. i dont care who makes the card as ive had many 3dfx/matrox/nvidia/ati cards in the past. The best idear tho before u lump cash on anything tho is to do a quick search… read some comments and reviews about what ur looking for and then decide yourself what best suits u and your budget. :smiley:

(SylverDragon) #14

Gotta agree with dJ6i8bY, when I was helping my friend pick out a new video card, the reviews I saw put the high end GForce4 cards (Ti4600/4800) as performing as well as, or better than the FX5600. Figure a FX5900 256Mb card can be had for about US$300 at the moment, give it another 6 month to a year and the price will probably be realistic (e.g. ~$150). That’s perhaps the coolest part about the competition between ATI and NVidia, they both keep putting out cool cards, which forces the price on their older models down, and it happens pretty quickly.
Of course, you can always just blow the $300 on the higher card now, but do you really needed it at the moment? I know I’m still happy with my Ti4600.