Home > Consumer Reviews > XFX GF 5200 128MB DDR TV PCI

I got this card couple of months before as an upgrade from motherboard integrated graphics. Installation was straight forward. Open the case, pop this card in the PCI slot, screw it to place, power up the computer, Lo And Behold! the computer recognized it as an nVidia 5200 PCI device. Windows XP driver installation was a breeze with the supplied driver CD. With this card my ageing Win XP desktop comes alive again. I'm running this card with resolution of 1280 x 1024(naive) on my 17" lcd monitor with no probs. Now to the gaming part- NFS underground 2 looked pathetic running on this card. Its playable at 1024 x 768 resolution and low detail setting. I didn't bother trying FarCry with it. But hey you wouldn't be hardcore gamer if you are looking at this range of cards. I tried this card with Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Yoper, Linspire, SUSE etc with failure. I got kernel panic with those distros each time I fire them up. So be cautious using this graphic card with Linux though nVidia cards are said to be working well with Linux. It could also be my own hardware causing the panic. All in all this card is a good value buy for those of u have no other choice than "PCI" graphic solutions. So if you use this card for normal word processing, watching DVDs, browsing the net, PowerPoint's and every other thing except playing latest games, it's a champ. Remember the overall performance (in gaming) depends on type and amount of RAM you have, processor etc. (for reference my pc specs : Pentium 4 2.00 GHz, RAM- 1 GB DDR, mercury mobo with 3x PCI slots)

Update: Regarding kernel panic, I found out that my other hardware is the one interfering with the card and causing panic. I managed to boot Slax by disable commands in the boot screen. And boy doesn't it look wonderful at maximum resolution. So if you want to dual boot into Linux, by all means this card will work magically. I can say this because, now the distros recognize the card at boot and also I don't have to do any additional tweaking and NO driver installing for it to work at naïve resolution. Even Win XP didn't do that!

ive got a dell dimension 1100 celeron pc with an intel interaged graphics card which is a diaster for trying to play these mordern games. I have also purchased counter strike source (great game) from amazon and found out it didnt work cus my existing graphic card does not support the game.

I didnt really no much about graphic cards, so i browsed through the internet and read posts forum, articles before i purchased one because i wanna make sure i get the right one, saves me the hassle of returning it. After surfing through the net about graphics card for 2 days i came upon xfx geforce 5200 graphics card, after getting through the first hurdle i now had to find out which type of card i needed (agp or pci). After reading more reviews and articles i was positive that the graphic card type i needed was pci.

I got the product and was happy that it worked with my computer and did what i wanted

I bought this card because my Athlon 2600+ wasn't able to run many games well under my then 128mb ATI Radeon 9250. I thought that it would have been a graphics card issue - after all I have a good processor (1.9GHz - not great but not terrible) and plenty of RAM (512mb upgraded now to 1GB). Yet for some reason I couldn't play older games like Freelancer or Half Life well (both are games with minimum spec's much lower than my hardware supports).

I blamed this on my cheap ATI card and the fact that it only processed DirectX8.1 onboard, leaving my processor to do much of the work for DirectX9/graphically intensive games - maybe if I got myself a newer card that processed DirectX9 onboard then my processor would be free to run games like a charm, while my new card would display these great games in glorious technicolour.

Not with this card it won't. I bought the PCI version so that I could keep my ATI card in my computer and run two monitors - something which I was able to set up quite easily. That's where the honeymoon period ended.

You see this card has the ability to process DirectX9, but it does so at the expense of everything else. The GPU is slow (240MHz) as is the RAM (333MHz), and there are no pixel shaders or anything - just anti-aliasing.

Unfortunately this card is so basic that, although it probably could process the DirectX9 stuff given a good GPU and RAM, it can't do this under a 240MHz processor and 333MHz RAM speeds. In fact, it can't do any of the other things that take advantage of DirectX9 either, leaving my processor once again to pick up the pieces.

A complete shot in the foot for GeForce on this one.

To run newer DX9 games like Half Life 2 and Civ 4 you will need something better than this, and to run even old games like Half Life and Freelancer you still need to minimise many of the graphics settings.

I would avoid this card if I were you. There is no advantage in upgrading to this card at all - if your computer is similar in spec to mine then you'd do well to get a better card or save up and buy a new computer. If your PC is newer/better than mine then it will handle a better card than this.

Note: although there is only a heat sink and no fan on the card, I found that I could only overclock the GPU from 250 to 300MHz and the RAM from 333 to 430MHz. It made no difference and I doubt all the cooling and overclocking in the world will ever make this card good!

I'll start this review with a some specs for my PC, which may explain why I bought a PCI card in this fine year 2006AD, and help those in a similar situation. I have a Celeron 2.6Ghz, 1Gb RAM. My PC has no AGP slot and an integrated Intel graphics controller, useless for any but the most ancient games. When it came to installing the item, had a total failure the first time. The Driver for my integrated graphics card proved very difficult to de-activate and the installation instructions in the manual that came with this card were not totally accurate in my case. The old controller kept overriding any instructions to use the new card. Eventually got it sorted and a few issues cropped up:
When installing the drivers I got a pop-up saying "The Device is not recognised as an XFX device. Log on to nVidia.com for the latest drivers...etc.", but yet once I had the drivers and software suite installed it worked fine. Went onto the site and there were no updates available. The manufacturer claims a maximun resolution of more than 2000 by more than 1000 (can't remember exactly) @ 85Hz, but max that's available to me in the options is 1280x960. I'm not sure if this is to do with my monitor, but I don't think so, it's pretty good, a hand-me-down from a graphic designer friend. Although my current setting of 1152x864 is enough really. The system requirements on the box state that the card requires a power supply of at least 300W, but mine is only 250W, and it seems to work fine (fingers crossed).
These niggling concerns aside, the improvements with this card over my old controller are immense. It plays Vampire: The Masquerade with only the slightest stutter when the CPU is under high load, but this is probably more to do with the CPU than the card. Very impressive for an old-ish card considering Vampire is only a few months old. Overall, if like me you are stuck with a dodgy PC with no AGP slot and an integrated controller, this card is the only way to go.

I have also got a dell which has a disapointing intel intergrated extreme graphics cards, but with this 128mb card i can run all the games that are even out now like doom 3, san adreas, call of duty 1+2,pacific assualt was a bit crappy- still playable
but are on a medium-low quality although call of duty run like a beauty, this is not a bad card at all!!!!!
its must buy as its cheap and to be honest if you have been looking around this is what you are going to end up with anyway so stop looking and get it already!!!