# Fx 5200 - performance

## vibidoo

Hello People 

I bought a Fx5200 128 Mo ddr vga card's .

Because my Geforce 2 mx400 64 Mo was strangely done after a shutdown .

I use the 4369 driver from Nvidia , and with my the MX 400 I did an average of 1500 on glxgears 

But with the Fx5200 I get only 980 

my mainboard use a chipset i845D 

any idea ?

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## Jimboberella

Seems correct to me

I've just done some testing and the Albatron fx5200 EP I used got ~830 on glxgears (AthlonXP 1900+) I think that some of the cheaper fx5200 have only a 64bit memory interface.

For refrence the three cards I tested were a Quadro4 750xgl, a GF3ti200 and the fx5200EP. The glxgears scores in round figures were 4300, 2500, & 800 respectivly.

UT2003 benchmarks show the fx5200 has about 40%-60% of the performance of the other cards at 1600x1200x32. I havent finished the 1024x768x32 or x16 benchmarks yet. Visual quality on the fx5200 seems to be good, better than the GF3ti200.

NOTES

I could only overclock the gf3 as its the only card I own   :Wink: 

I'm using the gaming sources 2.4.20-r3, Nvidia drivers 43.63, Xfree 4.3

Tests run from a terminal in KDE using the default ut2003 scripts

[img:aae7e49f09]http://members.optusnet.com.au/mossjb/test/benchmark161232.png[/img:aae7e49f09]

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## Target

The FX cards out now are not the Radeon-killers Nvidia was originally planning to produce. 

Yields were too low for the chip, so they released comparatively hobbled "budget" chips under the same name instead. Some cards based on them do have a 64bit memory bus, which causes them to fall behind even 128-bit Geforce4 MX cards in several areas.

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## Lisandro

I just installed a FX5200 in my machine an glxgears (running on background) reports framerates varying between 2000 and 5000 fps, depending on load (gotta love the 2.6 kernel  :Wink:  ). If you're getting less than that my guess is that you're using the mesa software renderer. Check your config.

  BTW, it's a very nice little card, specially for the price. 128mb, DVI, TV out, and Dx9 / OpenGl 2 (???) comptible.

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## mike4148

Not here, it isn't  :Smile: .

My FX 5200 card generally gets scores similar to the lower ones reported above (700-1000 at 1600x1200x32). AFAIK, it is using hardware acceleration (if it weren't, anything involving filtered textures would be decidely non-realtime, which they aren't); in fact, here's an interesting tidbit: if I manually switch to XFree's Mesa, in which case I should be using software rendering, ... glxgears is actually faster by about 200fps. Then again, I wasn't restarting X, so the glx module in use should still have been nVidia. Still, it's awfully strange, especially given that I consistently get numbers like that....

Search the forum system for posts on FX 5200 performance, and you generally find that most people get the crazily low scores, with GeForce 4 cards usually beating them.

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## mike4148

Just did the real test, restarting X. glxgears drops by about 400-500 fps, so we of the lowly-performing FX 5200's are officially not in software mode (unless you count the test I just did  :Smile: ).

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## davecs

I read somewhere that the FX5200 is not really any better than the Geforce4/MX440 except for DirectX compatibility which of course doesn't affect us Linux people.

It does get passed off as a fast card and people buy it, though. What I read is that you need at least FX5600 for better speed.

But I do not know from personal experience.

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## stgreek

Just to indicate how bad a 5200 is, I picked up a Geforce4 Ti4200 on ebay for £60, about the price of a new 5200. It was the Creative one, 4xAGP and 64MB, so no big and fancy specs. It scored from 4000 to 6000 fps depending on settings. I would like it to be a bit more quiet (5200 is fanless,right?) but my Shuttle has fallen in love with it so I'll keep it   :Very Happy: 

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## Malakin

Most fx5200's are 128bit and they're slightly faster then an mx440-ddr 128bit, or a radeon 9200 128bit. I was getting 49fps in unreal tournament 2004 demo using the benchmark with an FX5200, a respectable score and it only increased by 10fps when I moved to an FX5900XT. glxgears scores are meaningless, it just tells you if your 3d acceleration is working properly.

Here are some benchmarks to compare the low end cards, you obviously want to avoid any 64 bit cards if you play any games:

http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/vga-charts-03.html#unreal_tournament_2003

http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/over-2003/ut-800.png

 *Quote:*   

> I read somewhere that the FX5200 is not really any better than the Geforce4/MX440 except for DirectX compatibility which of course doesn't affect us Linux people.

 People usually refer to the functionality of a 3d card by which version of d3d it supports, this is merely a feature set, these features are also available in opengl so it certainly does effect Linux people if you play any opengl games using the newer features.

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## mallchin

I have an FX5200 to use in my old Athlon box and I'm hoping to get UnrealTV up & running and spectate a match whilst I play...

AFAIAA the 5200's are just newer cheap replacements for the MX440's and as such shouldn't really kill anything short of a blind, one-legged donkey with bad hearing.

If you want real power you'll need a high-end FX card or a slightly older TI.

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