I'm trying to get a decent enough video card to get into Second Life with my laptop. Minimum requirements are nVidia GeForce 2. Is the GeForce FX 5200 better than that? Anyone have any happy/horror stories about this card?
Thanks for any help!
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Is nVidia GeForce FX 5200 good enough? |
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Tracy Candour
Registered User
Join date: 10 Jul 2006
Posts: 3
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07-13-2006 13:48
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Siobhan Taylor
Nemesis
Join date: 13 Aug 2003
Posts: 5,476
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07-13-2006 13:51
I'm trying to get a decent enough video card to get into Second Life with my laptop. Minimum requirements are nVidia GeForce 2. Is the GeForce FX 5200 better than that? Anyone have any happy/horror stories about this card? Thanks for any help! _____________________
http://siobhantaylor.wordpress.com/
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Tracy Candour
Registered User
Join date: 10 Jul 2006
Posts: 3
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nVidia GeForce FX 5200 better than ATI Radeon 9000?
07-13-2006 14:07
Dell claims that the FX 5200 is the same quaility as the ATI Radeon 9000. Could that be right? My ATI Radeon 9000 doesn't get me into Second Life at all.
Thanks! Tracy |
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Siobhan Taylor
Nemesis
Join date: 13 Aug 2003
Posts: 5,476
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07-13-2006 14:25
Dell claims that the FX 5200 is the same quaility as the ATI Radeon 9000. Could that be right? My ATI Radeon 9000 doesn't get me into Second Life at all. Thanks! Tracy _____________________
http://siobhantaylor.wordpress.com/
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Khamon Fate
fategardens.net
Join date: 21 Nov 2003
Posts: 4,177
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07-13-2006 14:50
You go girl
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Ilianexsi Sojourner
Chick with Horns
Join date: 11 Jul 2004
Posts: 1,707
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07-13-2006 15:16
I used to have a GeForce 5200, but I couldn't get both ripple water and hardware lighting after the last major update. I upgraded to a GeForce 6200 and added more memory, both as advised by Dell tech support, and now I have no problems. Getting slightly better FPS now as well. The Dell tech person I spoke to recommended the 6200 for my system (Dimension 4600) and said they advised having at least 1GB of RAM for gaming. I'm pretty happy with it.
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Michi Lumin
Sharp and Pointy
Join date: 14 Oct 2003
Posts: 1,793
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07-13-2006 15:24
The FX5200 is probably the worst card Nvidia has made in a long time. It really was not up to par, even with the 5200 Ultra or 5500.
If youre gonna go cheap, I'd at least look at the 5500. it can often be had for $7-$10 more than the 5200, and makes a big difference. 6200's also do SL pretty decently, and are about the same price as the 5200, with significantly better performance. (in shaders especially. This is probably why Ilanexsi above had problems with hardware lighting and ripple water.) The 6200 has full shader support, whereas the 5200 does not. I think Newegg has them (6200's) for $25-$30, but I may be wrong there. Note youre ALWAYS going to pay a premium, specifically with video cards, by shopping local/retail. I'm not sure why, but the markup on video cards is a lot higher in the retail stores than almost any other sort of peripheral. If you can't buy online, that's understandable - but I'd at least look for a 5500 or 6200, rock bottom. _____________________
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Subghoul Epsilon
Observer
Join date: 13 Sep 2005
Posts: 32
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radeon 9000
07-13-2006 15:59
I run SL pretty well on my old radeon 9000, with 1GB RAM, and an AMD Athlon XP 2200+. I'm sure my FPS isn't what it could be, and I've never seen the cool "new" water.
I have a 9550 that I tried to swap in, but I just couldn't get it to play nice with XP for some reason. I tried uninstalling drivers, cleaning them out completely with various utilities and swapping in the 9550 and tested it with both the ATI and the Omega drivers...no luck. Just lots of crazy ilnes all over the screen. <shrug> My plan is to build a new box in the next few weeks with 2 GB RAM, a honking fast nVidia card and a much faster CPU.  |
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Keknehv Psaltery
Hacker
Join date: 11 Apr 2005
Posts: 1,185
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07-13-2006 16:06
Yes, the 5200s will run SL quite decently. There's a 5200 in one of my computers, and I get very playable speeds, although ripple water will not work.
If you think a 5200 is the bare minimum for SL, you haven't really tried. SL will run at about 8 FPS on a 750 MHz with a Geforce4 MX 440, which is enough so long as you don't go anywhere with lots of prims and avs. _____________________
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Tracy Candour
Registered User
Join date: 10 Jul 2006
Posts: 3
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Thanks!
07-13-2006 16:20
Thanks everyone for all the info! I've got a Dell laptop (Inspiron 5150) and it looks like the best card I can get for it is the FX 5200. I don't mind missing the water effects, if I can actually get in-world.
- Tracy |
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jrrdraco Oe
Insanity Fair
Join date: 28 Oct 2005
Posts: 372
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07-13-2006 16:46
I was FX 5200 before Michi, now I am ATI 9600 (after Michi) It is not top notch ATI video card, but it was cheap and works fine.
And the answer is no. 5200 is not good, it is too slow worse than my older Geforce 2GTS _____________________
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Yiffy Yaffle
Purple SpiritWolf Mystic
Join date: 22 Oct 2004
Posts: 2,802
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07-13-2006 17:24
The FX5200 is probably the worst card Nvidia has made in a long time. It really was not up to par, even with the 5200 Ultra or 5500. My older PC uses this card (128mb). It runs SL decently. It's the 5600 you gota worry about... My old 5600 blew out fast (256mb). :/ It also overheated since the day i bought it and repeatedly would freeze/reboot the PC. Right now my Better PC uses a 6200 (256mb) and its acceptable. i can run mostly everything except shaders. my draw distance cant go higher then 256 or i'l lag. _____________________
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