Nvidia's Most Hated Card - The FX5200 Story
Vložit
- čas přidán 7. 09. 2024
- Hello and Welcome to another Budget Builds Episode where today we'll be taking a look at one of Nvidia's most hated cards of all time, and no we arent talking about the GT210, that would be far too powerful compared to this little piece of terrible silicon.
So join us today as we take a deep dive into the story of the graphics card, find out just how terrible it was, and see just what happens when you take a really bad graphics card, and throw some demanding titles at it.
Enjoy watching!
Simcity 3000 - Building
Simcity 2013 - OST
Wii Sports - Golf OST
MGS - Hidden Jazz
Why not become a Patreon you get to:
-Vote on the Next Video
-Support the Channel in an Amazing Way
-Get Previews to New Videos
-Exclusive/Unfinished Content
/ budgetbuilds
Twitter: / budget_builds_
Specs:
CPU: Pentium 4 Northwood @ 2.6GHz
GPU: Nvidia Geforce FX5200 128MB
RAM: 2GB DDR RAM
Windows XP and Windows 7 Debloated
THIS VIDEO IS MADE AS A HOBBY AND NOT TO BE REDISTRIBUTED OR REUPLOADED
"Terrible piece of silicon" are you sure they didn't used recycled milk bottles
@@nicolausteslaus Remember when this was a mediocre joke about a budget graphics processing device from a decade ago
Well u know this is a bad graphics card when they made a game bundle and the game included couldn't hardly even run my 5200ultra came with splinter cell and it ran it at about 10fps what a POS!! And I tried my best to get a refund and spend my 150$ on something better
You know a card is beyond terrible when it's worse than the built-in graphics it's supposed to replace...
and often times it was..
nope it was the only upgrade i could get with my 82845g igpu back then😂
Bullshit.
I had Intel extreme integrated graphics on my HP desktops that could barely run a browser back in 2007.
I upgraded to Chaintech fx5200 256mb in the pci slot & it was kick ass compared to the integrated garbage.
Backthen iGPU was never powerful, especially this thing was in Pentium-4 era. Those iGPU inside north bridge chip are around SIS-300~Radeon 7000 level of preformance and it's no where near this FX5200.
It wasn't worse than intel extreme graphics 2
I remember when an old boss of mine "upgraded" from a Ti4600 to a FX5200. I told him that was a step backwards, he was like, "the number is bigger, it has to be faster..."
I remember when I "upgraded" from a 1GB 9800GT to a 2GB GT520 for Battlefield 3, back when I was in Middle school and didn't know much about PCs. And today all I can think of is why the fuck did that card have 2GB of Vram, when it caps out far before my old ass 1GB 9800GT
Kohaku Jesus christ Bf3s graphics were sooooo good, they even hold up to todays standards
Even going from GF3 Ti200 (much slower than Ti4600, about half it's speed) to FX5600 (quite faster than FX5200) was a downgrade in a lot of games. Going from Ti4600 to FX5200? That was a *huge* downgrade. But I find it hard to believe someone did that, because if you owned a Ti4600 means you had the money and you were buying the fastest card. Someone who had Ti4600 back then would step up to FX5800 Ultra or FX 5900 or 5950 Ultra.
On the other hand, not too long ago I went from a GT 8800 to a GTX 1050 Ti, massive, much needed leap
@@smogdanoff7053 Have you actually played any new games at a resolution higher than 1920 x 1080? If you had, you wouldn't say that.
I can relate to this video, especially "buying the FX5200 and finding if it's a good one when you get back home" part - I've spent my hard teenage savings on crappy 64-Bit version of 5200 that came in a super shiny box, but couldn't run anything decently. Trauma for life.
i almost did the samething with the 6200 but i returned it and got a radeon 9600 at a later date.. suffered with voodoo2 and s3 virge a bit longer radeon 9600 was great eventually gave way to a ati x1650 and never looked back at spending on nvidia. i'll take it from the trash but i aint payin for nvidia stuff still to this day. intel also ended up in the same boat.. i wont pay for it but i'll take it from the trash lol
it was terrible it ran company of heroes and world of conflict at 5 FPS ... i couldnt even run lord of the rings battle of middle earth 2 even good ... i think you could run warcraft 3 and thats it
GT 210 : Finally, a worthy opponent
geforce MX420 on first day, when unsuspected user bought geforce 4 generation card thinking he will have new generation 4 card faster than his geforce 2: Hold my beer. (happened to me, with MX440 actually, I was going from voodoo2, could get geforce 4 4200 by 50$ more, and +50% performance, but didn't know, thought everything from 4th generation will be good)
radeonhd5450: *blocks your path*
@@rangerdanger1922 it's an excellent card to run extra monitors on, perfectly stable and consumes very little power.
@@h2oaddict61 truuee but thats its only use
@Dr ROLFCOPTER! Didn't mention Nvidia
Damn, the FX5200 can barely run Morrowind and then you have 11 year old me playing Oblivion on it. Yes, it was terrible.
Hey man! I'm right there with you! I played Morrowind, C&C Generals, early WoW and an f1 2004 mos.
It sucked. Imagine, I had that paired with a 2.4ghz prescott p4. One of the few things I was glad to replace after a house fire.
I had a Palit FX 5200 Ultra. As a kid i was happy to simply have the games running. Finished Morrowind, Far Cry 1, FEAR and many other games on it, so it brings me nice memories.
When Oblivion got out i upgraded to a 6600.
Bruh that's so funny cuz I literally bought this to play oblivion (it couldn't run it out of the box) I had to lower the graphics past the lowest settings with mods.
I was a very happy camper when I upgraded to a new rig I built at 12
Nforce 780i Mobo
8gb ddr2 ram.
Started with gtx 9800+ ended the rig with two gtx 260 core 216
Started with e8400 core 2 duo. Ended with q8300 core2quad.
1k psu.
Wow So this card is actually worse than a Via chipset iGPU. HAHAHAHAHA! 🤣
15:04 FX5200 shedding a single tear while being dissed
It's just like that meme with the cartoon bear on the ice cream carton that looks like it's sweating, lol
Too shit to cry any more
So I actually have a pile of the PCI version of these, and they're fantastic for one thing - windows 98 support in computers with no AGP slot. They're one of the fastest PCI cards that still has driver support for 98 :)
I had one in my "toolbox" at one time. It was great for troubleshooting.
I had a Radeon 7000 PCI. Probably not nearly as good as an FX 5200
There's actually a PCI version of the less crippled 6200.
yep my friends celeron 2.8 ghz had to use one of these.
Bought it off him for €30 and paired it with my celeron 333, which had no AGP. 384mb ram. I ran XP on that thing quite well.
Trying to find a decent pci card, its a bloody minefield on ebay with too many clueless idiots incorrectly listing pci instead of pci-express!!!🤬
hmmmm nvidia and memory bandwidth starving..... where have we seen that repeated *stares at gt 1030*
The gt 1030, used as mx150 and mx250 in laptops are very efficient. You can play neary every game with that card under ~30w.
That and the naming fiasco that still goes on to this day
*intensely stares at the GT 1030 DDR4*
tbh 1030 is not that bad for very budget setups that consist of upgrading OEM system with core i processor and you don't need to upgrade PSU for that. It can easily run all popular esport titles.
@@Gajaczek93 nah i dont mean it like that, they released 2 versions.... the ddr4 version being almost 2x as slow as the regular card
@@borsalino5539 What is your point? Being energy efficient does not mean it isnt memory bandwidth starved. And dont even start of the DDR4 model.
Well, don't forget Apple found a way to help Nvidia get rid of their FX5200 stock by shipping them as standard in many models of their Power Mac G5 towers.
Yep, I had one of those in my G5, which I immediately replaced with a Radeon 9800XT, and I took great pleasure in throwing the FX5200 in the firepit.
@@DJdoppIer worked well for DAWs tho, the G5 was smoldering hot, how did u manage it with that monster XT?
@@Brukner841 Never had an issue with the heatsink after I applied fresh thermal paste to it. However I did add some custom mini aluminum heatsinks to each of the VRAM modules, as those tended to get rather hot, and the original card didn't have any thermal protection on them.
That explains a lot. I have a Powermac G5 with an FX 5200 in it. Didn't think about it that much until now.
I had ordered a G5 way back then too. That was one upgrade I did straight from apple, I ordered it with a Radeon 9600 (can't remember if it was the XT or not).
Actually I had one 14 years ago and I loved it because it could play NFS 2002-2005 games, GTA Vice City, Counter-Strike...etc
Before it I had a GeForce2 MX200 which is way worse lol
Of course I was a kid and I didn't know anything about PCs hahaha
Love the video btw ♥
Same here, I actually could play all the games I needed back then. CS 1.6, Warcraft 3, NFS underground.
My FX5200 blew up while playing RedAlert3. Caps popped like popcorn when the fan stopped working. I replaced them and still have the thing working in an old pc. It was my first graphics card.
The fx 5200 is such a meme that its hard to dislike.
@@SouthPlanObservation so its not that bad after all xD
@@sobolanul96 whoa really? Mine got broken by me overclocking it to the DOOM! lmao my fault it was.
I had one of these :( all I can say is, owning one really made the upgrade to the 6600GT seem so, so, sweet
that GPU is a beast compare to this
Me too.
Hahaha I went from the tnt2 to the 6600gt.
Eventually sli'd that card before upgrading to a 7950gt and then 7950gx2.
Me too. The 6600GT felt like a 3080 compared to this crap pile.
Imagine being able to play Battlefield 2 at 100FPS and it actually looked decent?
The moment he shorts the startup pins with a usb stick really got me
I do that when there’s no screwdriver around 😂
Three years ago a friend of mine moved to another city and left me an empty PC case and a box full of old PC parts. I managed to build a retro PC from like 2003-2004. A Pentium 4 @ 3.2GHz (with HyperThreading), 1GB DDR1 RAM, a 60GB HDD (not even a SATA) and the box inside had a FX5200 with 128MB of VRAM. I installed Windows XP on it and since I already knew that the FX5200 was terrible I wanted to see by myself so I tested a few games on it.
GTA SA even on lowest settings was terrible. Half Life 1 wasn't much better either, Medal of Honor Allied Assault runned almost decent for reason but when lots of enemies were in sight or explosions went off the framerate would shit itself. NFS Underground 1 topped at about 20FPS on lowest settings. The heatsink was so hot I thought it was going to explode or something. While the CPU for these games was good, the FX made a huge bottleneck. Hell, even my old Lenovo laptop from 2007 with a GM45 chipset GPU did better than this.
It's OK for very basic things, but anything beyond a bunch of polygons on screen is too much for it.
If you read this: I appreciate the effort you had put into this video. I also have a slow internet access and I also try to make the best out of it.
0.2mbps masterrace
@@BudgetBuildsOfficial Side note...Also I want to let you know, that according to my recent tests: CZcams finally ditched AAC in favour of Opus!
@@BudgetBuildsOfficial Just curious, but why do you have such abysmal speeds? I live in the middle of nowhere and have 150mbps/15mbps, just surprising to me.
@@coochie8670: a tree has knocked down my line,
@@BudgetBuildsOfficial and now, he must use his data on the 1g network running off a DynaTAC.
When I was a teenager, I had this paired with an otherwise pretty decent pentium 4 2.8ghz, a decent motherboard and RAM. It was the first pc I ever built myself and me and my dad picked the parts. We both didn't know a lot about pc hardware but it was super fun building our own system. After a while though I started to get horrific performance in games, and I always thought it was because the games were just getting extremely demanding. little did I know, it was actually this PoS holding back the PC. It was years later until I figured that out
Imagine a fake gt 210. It would be THAT.
GT210 IS 7 GENERATIONS NEWER BUT STILL IS BOTTOM OF GT2XX SERIES SO YEA IT'S KINDA TRASH ANYHOW
@@dezeekat WHEN DID I ASK
It just 5 generations away. After GeForce FX they have GeForce 6-series, 7-series, 8-series, 9-series, and then 200-series. Those GeForce PCX are just GeForce FX in PCI-Express interface, and GeForce 100-series are OEM card which had almost no difference from GeForce 9-series, so they can't be considered as difference generation.
@waffeltek hello
The problem with 5200 was not that is slow, as all cards eventually get potato slow as software develops.
The real issue was that it's marketing and selling was downright a scam! Marketing was extreme, but boxes never told you what version you were buying.
The reason I hate the FX 5200, is because mine had exploding capacitors at stock settings
Also there are different variants of the FX 5200
and they are:
*FX 5200 LE (The worst variant)*
•128 MB
DDR 64-bit
•NV34 A2
•4 ROPs / 4 TMUs / 4 Pixel Shaders
•GPU Clock
250 MHz
•Memory Clock
166 MHz
332 MHz effective
*FX 5200*
•128 MB
DDR
128-bit
•NV34 A2
•4 ROPs / 4 TMUs / 4 Pixel Shaders
•GPU Clock
250MHz
•Memory Clock
200MHz
400MHz effective
*FX 5200 Ultra*
•256 MB
DDR
128-bit
•NV34 A2
•4 ROPs / 4 TMUs / 4 Pixel Shaders
•GPU Clock
325 MHz
•Memory Clock
325 MHz
650 MHz effective
There was none Ultra one with 256megs, at 266MHz (that was something, card for BDSM kind of people)
I had 64 bit version, it played GTA:SA good, switched from 9200SE (another cut-off), ATi drivers at that time were terrible.
I actually had 2 good experiences with this card. My Acer laptop had a mobile version which played need for speed underground 2 well and even up to cod 4, the pc version I had was a PCI one that was all i could get for my p4 slim system. gave me many happy years of gaming and introduced me to fps online gaming.
"Display adapter"
Oh dear god this card.
I had this on my first "true" gaming computer. The first one that wasn't hand-me-downs.
I played through all of Half Life 2 on it. And I was on that phase that I think every young gamer goes through where they crank up the graphics to max even though the game runs like garbage.
And now these cards are actually getting slightly desirable due to their reasonable quality as a retro (Windows 98) gaming graphics card - old enough to do "table fog" (whatever that is), but very powerful compared to graphics cards that came out in 1999; powerful enough to run Glide wrappers.
I had one in 2003 and remember playing COD2 on it! 800*600, DX7 mode, obviously :P
My first “GPU” was the FX5200. It ran windows aero effects great!
my first one was the fx5700VE, ran windows 7 aereo great as well, just had only drivers for vista RC2, not proper w7, then after a while my old 775 motherboard died and i scrap the pc, but i keep the cpu p4 630 for his "affective value"
Lol, I was literally about to comment, "But will it run Vista"?
Every time there's something with fx in its name, its bad
Original AMD FX was alright, but that was against the Pentium 4, which is a potato
😳
3dfx wasn’t bad back in the day...
still using my AMD FX 8350 here
@Z80 Doesnt a sandy bridge i5 beat the fx though?
The first PC I built in 2004 I installed an FX 5200 128 MB card on a PC Chips T12 Tidal Wave motherboard, running a Celeron Prescott core 2.93 GHz CPU, 512 MB DDR 3200 memory, and an 80 GB SATA hard drive. I didn't have a lot of money at the time, so this was all I could afford from Tiger Direct. The FX 5200 was the cheapest card I could buy that would support DirectX 9? 10? at the time. I played a lot of Second Life with this setup as well as some other games I can't recall at the moment. No complaints with this card, not like an MX 4000, at least.
I recently got a FX 5200 for a DOS build. They have great DOS compatibility.
Wouldn't something like a 6800 Ultra or 7800 be better?
Huh I guess the card does have a use then. The other use would be for a....retro server I guess....
@@dustarma Even if those things worked fine with DOS, it's like recommending to use excavator to plant some flowers.
Phil's Computer Lab often promotes these cards. Everything else he recommends increases eBay prices but there are so many of these and they're so undesirable otherwise that they remain under the radar.
@@alexdhall They make for a fantastic Win 9x option as well, they were so awful at launch and not worth it at all. But high production for OEs and a bad rep makes them very inexpensive.
There are many good things about those cards (largely not mentioned in the video):
As long as you get a 128meg version or better, it has an awesome driver set (universal drivers), allowing it (or pci/agp/pci-e variants) to run on many an OS, ranging from win98/me/2k/xp (with server 2003 to 2008) to vista which thereby includes win7 and win 8.1 so you can use it in server2012 _(and none of that hypermemory rubbish an AMD cheap card would demand, or nvidia equivalent)._ And yet it is higher spec than the typical matrox you'd get in a server2012 PC, so you can run aero and html5 web-pages.
Also it has older linux drivers but also open-source drivers in linux as per 'Nouveau'. Furthermore, that means the Nouveau drivers use the pci to pci-e translation chip (BR02) which is a very clever bit of nvidia hardware to allow fx series pci cards (or agp) chipsets to run on pci-e. Not to be sneezed at when you see the alternatives. Also, even the lower spec 64meg fx5200 cards have a nice usage (with low power) as they (especially PCI) can be used in a KVM cisco emulating mboard (e.g. a domestic level Gigabyte or ASUS board you rig-up with an fx8350) to allow the uefi bios to post past the 8meg video-card limit. And the fx5200 cards use up basically none of your iommu bandwidth slots (so you can use those for vmdq etc.). They can be underclocked to run silent (and are low-profile). Then you can have ut2004 running in the background so it uses basically no resources (and patched, ut2004 is far better than ut2003 and has great mods to adapt it into sports games or ww2 etc.).
The fx5200 can also display in a reasonable high resolution for spreadsheets etc. If using cpu-only in dolphin-emulator, the card still works. The ubiquitous nature of the card means you can get spare parts such as cooling. The svideo out is in PAL (Perfect At Last), which is nice for amiga retro emulation or even on a CRT (and you can route it around your house's coax if its in such a server).
One of the main things the video missed is that there are games that simply won't display graphical effects correctly on on some AMD/ATI cards and so an nvidia (even an fx5200) is better. NeverWinterNights is a game from the era (which would commonly run on a computer of 1GHz or 2GHz as many people owned such rigs with an fx5200, be it singlecore or dualcore). The same computers (with or without upgrades) would continue to run the game for years while expansion packs were released such as Shadows Of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark (let alone the community expansion pack that went on for years). A Radeon9800pro (no matter the drivers you tried) would not display correctly graphic effects such as doors breaking open, and yet a fx5200 would do it just fine. It may seem all very well to slag off the fx5200 for being "slow" but actually the effects (which the reasonably speedy RAM would handle) actually worked where as a 9800pro (a very popular card) would break the game's special effects graphics, and the card "being faster" simply makes a faster broken game. The 9800pro btw had a great many drivers. The particle effects such as colourful lasers (in other games too) would stiil run fast enough on such a card for people who are not interested in high polygon count requiring cards with an expensive FPU.
This review pits the card for jobs it is not really intended for, and the game's graphics setting should have also be tried for the purpose of the card for which people bought it (when planning a careful budget build). Also, those cards, when overclocked (which you are not meant to do unless you take responsibility for maintaining the hardware and cooling) were meant to have kits installed such as ram heatsinks and fans you mount of the PCI screws in the computer case. If a person wants better graphical effects, they put copper heatsinks on the RAM with good paste and overclock the RAM ever so slightly, whereas the GPU and its FPU are not so important. The video did not do that. One of the reasons to have later versons of the fx5200 (and the 6200 and 7100/7200) was not to have a faster card on the GPU but for faster RAM to be available for those aformentioned special-effects in games that relied on the RAM. The card is also capable of decoding some video codecs.
Gamers were often very happy to play a game with a low polygon count but a high resolution on some dualcore pentiumD (with a heavy PSU power-draw) without the need to upgrade the PSU when using a low-power fx5200, and so they would overclock the RAM just a little for a few fancy sparkly effects, and to hell with the high count of polygons or draw distance. Not all games are about draw-distance.
Not only does the video compare the card to solely a ATI card (which does not have the same effects standard), but the era of the card's competition is ignored in terms of intel GMA graphics (which btw ran farcry water effects) and matrox cards, and some voodoo cards. The video seems happy to complain about the effects problems on the fx5200 (and in graphics glitches in Twighlight Princess emulation of another video unrelated to the fx5200) but ignores the effects the card CAN do whereas other cards fail to (such as the NWN example). The video also ignores the competing and complementing platforms such as the playstation2. While the ATI radeon series may well have run doom3 in the way an xbox owner would have liked, the fx5200 was never marketed as that game's strongpoint but instead would be found on playstation2 titles cross-platformed to the PC. An example is "Over The Hedge" (a disney animated movie game) which clearly says on the box that an fx5200 would be required. And guess why? Because the Special-Effects were important, not draw distance. Likewise "Hola Pinata" is a family/kids game that could use it. Some people just want a pick-up-and-play fun game without needing heavy commitment. As with UT2004, the dualcore patch (v3369 etc.) meant that the fx5200 (on say a dualcore circa 2GHz) would perform very fast with the proper effects as advertised to be _"Nvidia, the way it is meant to be played"._ Even ut2004 only needed 64meg graphics.
Also the video is not a fair test of the card but instead conflates the card test with a test of the pentium4 system which is by no means the system such a card would be limited to, especially considering its many variants (pci-e etc) and the card's longevity in being sold and produced. A PCI-e system would easily use such a card when competing with onboard intel graphics GMA (such as a 945 or 950) of the era, and so those mainboards would commonly accept a pentium4 and pentiumD range, including singlecore and dual (or even quad) core processors, for core2duo at say 1.8GHz, or even a cedarmill/presler dual-core at about 2GHz or more. Definitely a fx5200 would commonly be found (just as would a 6200 or 7200LE) in a dual-core machine playing ut2004 patched for dual-core performance.
A lot of this video was very unfair and wasn't especially knowledgeable as to how, in the past, it would be purchased sensibly by those making good builds in the day and the video lacked knowledge on how to deploy tweaks to the cards and systems to make it run at its best, all on contemporary hardware. It is a pity because some parts of the video were pretty good. You have to be careful taking potshots at technology because if you don't know the full story, you end up looking silly. It is all too easy to be impulsive and jeer at something rather than look at its pros and cons. Don't come crying if you get jeered back. Just giving you a heads up, kindly.
Yours dynamically instanciated,
Marjorie Digluconate.
I remember the FX5200, a Advent PC world computer had it in, could not even play half life 2 at the lowest settings.
Yup, nvidia trying to get Valve to program for its 16/32bits half path didn't work out long term so it was kicked down to dx8. And sadly the fx 5200 sucked at dx8 too!
P4 (2.0ghz), 512mb RAM and a 5200 - ran HL2 on the 5200 (128mb) with low details, I was surprised by how well the engine scaled to what I had. It worked.
Gold source hl2 runs even in tnt card I remember...
I beat HL2 and even Episode 1 on FX5200)
What? I had an FX5200 in my old Dell I got back in like 2004 and it ran HL2 just fine on medium-ish settings (granted it was at 1024x768 resolution, but hey it was like 2006 and that wasn't that unusual).
Hilarious thing is I remember my MSI 5200 coming with a copy of Morrowind.
It was completly ok to play morrowind.
It also had a demo CD that had like 10? or something demos on it.
I got burned with this one, upgraded my previous NVidia to this and was appalled as framerates plummeted with this new card.
I still cry thinking about the money I spent on this card way back when.
It's red so it must be pretty fast
9:10 just reminded me that my first card was actually a Matrox Millenium P750.. It hit straight home when you mentioned that "at least all the textures are there". I went from that to an FX 5200, and it was such an upgrade. One of the first games that I booted up was Far Cry since I couldn't wait to play it with proper textures, and I was amazed how good it looked.
This was around 2008-2009 I believe. My family couldn't afford a new computer and I was 11-12 years old, so I got an old one from one of my friends which had a grandfather that did CAD work and changed out his PC. Pentium 4 2,8GHz, 1GB DDR RAM, Matrox P750 and afterwards a FX 5200.
I've been years behind on technology ever since, as I've gotten used to not having the newest stuff. Only exception was when I upgraded my i5-3470 (2013) to an i7-8700K back in 2018, and got a Titan X (2015) at the same time. Those are going to last me to 2026 for sure.
I kind of get the feeling the FX name is cursed, even though the Athlon 64 FX was pretty good
No... 3dfx was great
@@Midiatize but what happened to Voodoo?
The fun thing is, Geforce FX series was designed by the engineers from 3dfx after Nvidia acquisition of them.
Wasn't FX just added to imply that while in reality it was way too early for that to be possible?
Bulldozer FX was tragic as well. Hopefully nothing will bear the name in the future...
Ah, the FX5200 was the very first GPU I personally bought with my own cash. I was a kid at the time trying to replace the integrated chip in my Dads budget Pentium 4 Dell. I ended up with the FX5200 because
A) It was dirt cheap. And I was a highschooler with no money.
B) It ran on a PCI slot. AGP wasn't an option since for some reason Dell decided our Pentium 4 wouldn't need that.
C) I needed a small form factor card that could fit on a BTX motherboard.
It ran UT2004 and Halo CE on minimum settings and allowed me to use 800x600 resolution instead of 640x480, which was pretty underwhelming. But to its credit it was able to render Halo's shaders (the integrated intel chip couldn't even do that and left master chief in greyscale). Unfortunately it had a bulky oversized fan that defeated the point of needing a small form factor card. The fan broke from being jammed into a slot where it didn't perfectly fit and started making horrible noise. I ended up replacing it rather quickly with a 6200 which functioned much better while still being small and cheap.
I remember going from this to a 7600GT and was like "holy shit" lol,
I did the exact same upgrade, 7600GT was a good card.
Even going from this to an integrated 6200 was a huge leap forward. You mean, it's possible to have pixel shaders it supports that it DOESN'T suck major ass on?
I went from this atrocity to a 9800 GT. It was a bit like getting a lawnmower after 5 years of picking grass with your bare hands.
@@ChrisBlackTV I remember the 9800GT! Haha That was a beast of a card. I still have an nVidia GeForce FX5200 Ultra. I'd like to get an old 9800GT just for the nostalgia.
@@jonathankeith524 Damn right. I used to play the hell out of Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Portal, Left 4 Dead, CS:Source (although i much prefered 1.6) and all of the Half-Life 2 games on that thing. It was extremely good value back in 2009. Felt really good to own a 9800 series GeForce card 😄
My first pc had a 400MHZ AMD K6 and a Nvidia TNT2. My second PC had a Athlon XP2400+ and a Geforce 5200, 128MB. It ran about this well. I remember the DAWN demo impressing the heck out of me. A few years later i got a FX5500 BFG 256MB card and it was a big improvement. I remember having over 200+ FPS in quake3 at 1024x 768.
fx 5500 were basicilly the quality version of 5200 -10% better in everyting with double memory _ I saw 5500 sold as a card for business since it were so much more expensive
A potato can literally handle more heat than this gpu
Holy crap. I gotta tell a story about my 2004 Toshiba Satellite Pro M30, that got a Pentium M 725 and the FX Go5200 - in 128MB, 128-bit! It was clocked at 200/250 (core/mem) and with driver 44.64 (latest official Toshiba driver) it was slow. Even with the CPU overclocked with ClockGen and using a USB sound device because sound turns into garbage above 1757 MHz core (the PCI timings are also overclocked so yeah)
Upgraded the driver to 83.60 from Guru3D inf and it ran GTA:SA at full screen resolution (1280x800) at a completely playable framerate, at maximum draw distance - that nVidia startup logo wasn't for nothing, perhaps. NFSU2 ran good at full screen resolution but at low-ish settings. NFS: Most Wanted (2005 of course) ran well...but only at 800x600 or lower. Flight Simulator X was a mess.
Loaded Rivatuner (Afterburner's daddy, same developer) and started ramping the clocks. Was able to play Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault (which required Shader Model 2.0, which the FX series were bad at) in 640x480! NFS Carbon now also ran well and completed the game. An attempt to run ArmA was done...and nope...not even with hacking to get the resolution to 320x240 and mess with quality settings...FPS was single digit at average. Clocks were now at 266/400.
The last stand was a visual novel, Rewrite. Drivers became an issue, as soon as I start the story intro it launched a BSOD would pop up (driver stuck in infinite loop) and had to take the last version (175 or something) and mod it. That took days...then tried going back to 83.60...then DNA-Force drivers...then plenty of restarts to safe mode to use DDU...finally figured it out!
It needed all the overclocking and all the cooling I could (with a Delta 90mm blower sucking all the air out of the thing) and just as I completed the game story the GPU gave up. It ended up with half the VRAM missing, only 64-bit, then limping it two more years where it became 16MB - sometimes even failing to get past the BIOS screen without artifacts.
What a journey with that laptop. Played plenty of Command and Conquer: Generals on that thing. Played competitively on LAN, along with Counter-Strike. All the Illusion games where possible. Three hard drives, one worn out, one dead after an Olympic worthy flip, other one still in. RIght now, that laptop sits right below my newest laptop, a Dell Precision 7510. Can't bring myself to take it and put the thing into storage for some reason...
Didnt knew these were that bad. I used to play NFS Carbon and GTA SA just fine with it. I had a Pentium 4 at that time
Now im using it for Windows 98 SE and, of course, overclocking.
16 years ago I obtained PC with such card as gift to birthday. It was Intel Pentium 4, 2.7 GHZ (no HT), 512mb RAM, GeForce FX 5200 128m, 120gb Seagate Barracuda drive, and for me it was running very well for that days. Half Life 2 and episodes, S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chornobyl, Mafia, Doom 3, Hitman:Contracts, Hitman:Blood Money (it was lagging hardly but I was able to finish game), GTA 3, GTA: Vice city, GTA:SA, and a lot of other games was played on that computer. And that PC is still alive, nobody is using it nowadays, but it's just still alive.
That was my very first GPU.. I couldn't play almost anything (not exagerating), BSoD's everywhere, drivers issues etc... Powered by XFX...
PS: 4:14 there you are you son of a ..........
I think it was this card someone gave me when I was attending ATI in Dallas for Network Administration back in '05. I was so very excited because my graphics card for my main computer back then was two or so years older than the GeForce 5200. It was a 64MB variant with just a passive heatsink on it. Believe you me, I was so very desperate to play Doom 3 and some other games on it back then. Turned out the best FPS I could achieve on that card with Doom 3 was less than five frames per second. That was with the lowest possible settings. I managed to get maybe half way into the game before I lost my temper to the point of swearing off the game for over a year straight. I think the card finally crapped out on me with a permanent BSOD upon booting into XP Pro. Got a new graphics card. I think that was a GeForce 7600 GS. That card was almost immeasurably superior to the 5200 FX I previously had. I was able to get for the most part a stable 30 fps with Doom 3, but with most of the graphics toned down instead of off. Man... the GeForce 5200 FX brings back memories... and not a single one that just so happens to be positive unless if you count it's eventual demise to be a positive memory.
Oh god, someone listen my screams of help, I'm not the only one, that was my first gpu as well and I'm also in the Doom 3 5FPS squad.
I had one, when i was 14. I loved it, it was way better than the integrated graphics of my first PC. So i have good memories using this GPU.
I used to have thas card in the first pc I built when I was like 12 years old.
It was shit but at least it run CS 1.6 and Gta san andreas
My god I had this card, I remember my dad buying me a PC back in 2005-2006 for 600usd or so, with a celeron 2.8, FX5200 128MB, 256mb RAM ddr. I remember playing games even though they lagged hard I was happy as a kid.
I had an ati 9600pro card at the time, upgrading from a tnt2 if I recall. Great card that Radeon, excellent value. I dodged a bullet with nvidia that year.
It came in my first pre built, allowed me to play NFS Underground, COD, Counter strike, FIFA, Vice City and, San Andreas and many more.
Think it's already been said by others here but these cards work fine for Win98 and lower builds. You won't really have many games that should stress the card too bad. I tried one of these in a P4 I ran with 98 and it performed well. The nice thing about these cards is they are new and cheap!
Also Morrowind was very good looking game for it's time. Especially considering the scope of it.
Having 3 young kids at the time who wanted to play Halo, I had to upgrade 2 of the computers so it could run properly. They already had decent CPU's (Athlon 2500+ and 2200+ if I'm not mistaken) and plenty of RAM, so this was going to be a "cheap and easy" upgrade. One of the computers got a ATI 9600 pro, the other a FX 5200. I remember having to lower everything on the computer with the 5200 while the ATI was able to play with much higher settings smoothly. Both were approximately the same price at the time. Thank goodness the kid with the FX was a good sport, and was happy playing at 640X480. He was rewarded a short time later with a Radeon 9800 Pro. The Radeon 9600 and 9800's went for a while in those computers, the 5200 went to a friend who quickly replaced it as well.
I remember having this in my first computer and it was awful. I can't believe I had it for 7 years. But it can run Bejeweled 3 so I was happy.
Mine was a BFG Asylum GeForce FX 5200 128-bit 256MB - an overall weak card, but what I could afford at the time. I had hours invested in SimCity 3000, Homeworld, and The Moon Project. That last title had plasma and electricity weaponry that looked so pretty on the screen. I replaced it with an AMD Radeon 9600 XT which was a major upgrade. I was coming from a GeForce 2 GTS which was included on my first ever computer bought with money from my high school graduation. The computer came from Cyberpower PC and included an AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz Thunderbird, 512MB of DDR RAM, the GeForce 2 GTS, and a huge 19 inch CRT monitor. It was a dream. The GeForce 3 was out, but was priced way out of my budget. This kicked off an era for me as I would later find that building my systems was the only way I would do it from that point forward. So glad I did.
This was the generic "upgrade" that best buy sold for like 6 years straight. I got it thinking it could run tes:oblivion. Nope. My broke ass learned how to use "oldblivion" and like it.
Yup, that's the game that finally made me get a new card. Lowest settings, 800x600, and it could barely squeeze 8-10 fps.
I still remember when my friend got a fx5200 and could play Heroes 5 with REFLECTIONS (early 2000s ray tracing) and I had to settle for unsparkly poligons on my MX440
Oh wow, I remember having this "GPU" in my first PC and despite me being an almost total newbie in computers at that time, I can recall that card being trash af. The IT guy who built that machine, told me it was a great deal for gaming..... in 2005. I had 128mb of DDR RAM with it and a Sempron 2600+ (total price 450€) and I was sad because most of my games lagged a lot. I was surprised when CZcams recommended this video to me tbh, that made me think I wasn't wrong about this card.
128mb ram in 2005? yeah the fx 5200 wasn't your only issue lmfao
I bought it back in the day because I got an offer for 128-bit version for a price of the lower spec. What attracted me was the passive cooling (I had a super tower from an old server then, excellent cooling with chimney effect). No overheating effects (I installed a massive home-made copper heatsink). Replaced my MX200. Very good picture quality - who ever used VIA integrated card, will confirm! It was very compatible and affordable card, run every game in its day. Had it for many years, actually gave the whole computer away then, in 2018 the new owner was reportedly still using the machine (retiree, just office work) with W7. I insist it was a good purchase for budget-oriented gamers. Would do it again
PCI version was actually a life saver in 2004 when Half-Life 2 came out and your MB didn't have AGP port, and you wanted to play DX8.1 and take a glimpse on DX9.0. This card is very nostalgic for me, it made me happy back then.
No AGP in 2004?! I had an AGP card in 2001. In Poland! :D
@@Tome4kkkk Not everyone had a rich parents :D. In my family we had to choose - either we have something to eat OR AGP motherboard
@@arthurvin2937 Dude, you're dramatizing a bit :) AGP were mainstream by 2002 and in 2004 they were hitting the low to mid tier motherboards. Not to mention you know squat about how my family provided a PC for me.
@@Tome4kkkk Dude, I had less than 100 bucks to spend on PC (including monitor and peripherals) in 2001 in Latvia. I was only 13 y.o. and my parents told me "this is best PC you'll ever have period". In 2004 I was collecting empty beer bottles for months to buy this FX5200.
@@Tome4kkkk There was no AGP in cheap Dell Dimension computers. They butchered upgrading intentionally. The slot pins were on the motherboard but they disabled it and never soldered the actual plastic slot on. FX 5200 was the ONLY option for a computer like that.
It does support DiectX 9.0a, and I have this card (FX5200 PCI 128mb with 128 bit interface) in one of my retro Windows 98 computers. I use the Nvidia driver version 43.45 along with nGlide version 1.05 to run Windows 95/98 era games, and the card is quite capable in this role. But, some people insist on testing the card in operating systems, and on games it was never meant to run! My second Windows 98 rig sports the FX5700, 256mb AGP card for again windows 95/98 games using Nvidia driver version 56.64, and nGlide version 1.05, and games like Quake 3, and Unreal Tournament look glorious! Games like Halo, and Unreal 2004 I run on my high end Windows XP machine, because these games deserve that much love!
I think I even outperformed it with my ti4200. Also these videos make me feel old... :)
Ti4200 is much more powerfull than FX5200, I have both of them.
I never understand why this graphic card was so hated, i had one XFX GeForce FX 5200 128mb paired with an AMD Sempron 2800+ (socket 754 if i'm not wrong) and this PC allowed me to play tons of games in those years (circa 2004-2009)
Bought a 5200 Ultra IIRC, benchmarked it, returned it, got a 5600 instead. Still a mistake.
Awesome video! I never would’ve known there were so many others had the same beef with this card. It was in my first computer (older hand me down by the time I got it). Seeing the OG Far Cry for the first time in so many years being played on the same card actually triggered a mini deja vu for me.
I hoped throughout the video to see you cover GTA:SA, it was so much worse compared to Vice City. I recall completing most of the storyline on it. Can’t recommend that to anyone. 😅
My dad had one of these to get an extra monitor connected to the computer iirc, TF2 and gmod really chugged.
If Source games can't run on it, something's gone wrong lol
I know this isn’t a well regarded card, but I was fond of it. It might have been a piece of sh!t, but for me it was the right piece of sh!t a few times over.
My standards were low - it was the first card I had with *any* 3D acceleration.
My family didn’t get new computers often. We got an Amiga 500 in about 1989, and then got a PC in 1997.
I was lucky to get a no name P4 tower when I went to uni.. For my next birthday, my uncle asked me what I wanted. I asked for a graphics card with TV out so I could watch movies and play retro games on my charity shop CRT TV. I didn’t want to take advantage, so I asked for the cheapest one from a manufacturer I recognised. It was the FX 5200. Bonus, I could play all the games that my family pentium 233MMX PC couldn’t handle, like Aliens Versus Predator. They were old, but they were brand new to me.
Fast forward, I’ve graduated and I’m teaching myself HTML and CSS. One rubbish monitor wasn’t enough to edit and test without a LOT of alt-tabbing, so I checked out the options. Wouldn’t you know I could just get a PCI version of the same card for next to nothing, and I could be reasonably sure they wouldn’t conflict. Happy days.
2009, and my XP install stopped working for…reasons and I put Linux on it. The drivers worked with the card no problem.
2010, and my mum called. The family had upgraded their PC a few years ago, but the graphics were glitching. Could I help? I had a widescreen monitor by then, and didn’t need two cards, so I just dropped in the PCI FX 5200. Worked like a dream until they moved on to laptops.
Imagine this with a fx cpu
The ultimate fx pc 😂
Well, the FX-55 was basically the fastest back then and basically killed every Pentium 4 available.
And of course it deserves something much better than a measly FX5200.
Ahah I got both a AMD fx 6300 and I got also a Nvidia fx5200 unfortunately is an agp version, or is better at least, the bottleneck potential can destroy the entire world. :)
Bumbo my 3900x is crying.
@@MrOoh50 lmao
At the time, the FX5200 was readily available for £30-40 brand new and for desktop use was perfectly adequate. They were often available fanless for when noise was an issue, and were a cheap way of running dual screens, running Aero, DVD playback etc. I worked in a school and we bought loads of these for these purposes - they weren't great for games, but they were dirt cheap! I'm sure by the end we were only paying 20 odd pounds. A serious gamer wouldn't be buying a card in this price range anyway.
They even did a PCI version which was useful, as some of the Dell PCs we had at the time only had PCI slots on the motherboard. At the time a PCI graphics card available new off the shelf was a bit of an oddball item. IIRC we chose these over the Radeon at the time as nVidia's drivers were more stable than ATi's, so long as you downloaded the generic drivers off the internet and ignored the ones on the bundled CD - they tended to BSOD.
Even the Matrox cards had a good use - they were amazing at producing perfect colors for print/production when paired with a couple good monitors, like the older Sony Trinitron ones. The FX5200, though? Couldn't even handle multiple monitors without choking, and if you had 2 separate model screens? Good luck EVER coming close to a color match screen to screen...
also they had DVI connectors in time when it was pretty rarely seen on nvidia or ATI cards
@@Pidalin Oh yeah, I'd forgotten that detail, thanks! It's been so long since I saw it, that bit slipped my mind.
@@ArtemisKitty I was just recently playing with some G450 or what was that, some 32MB GPU from like 2000 and it has ONLY DVI, which means that you already needed LCD in that time or adapter to DSUB. 😀
Good going producing a video a week now! I luckily only one have had to use a FX5200. Maxxed out a P4 Dell Optiplex GX270 to run Windows 7 on it. Put in 2GB of DDR which made a ton of difference, but I really wanted to get Aero working. So I decided I might as well try the old FX5200. And lo and behold it actually ran Aero. Having said that, that is about the only good thing I have to say about it. The whole story around the different FX5200 versions gives off the same vibe as Nvidia was doing a while back with the DDR4 version of the GT1030; severely crippling performance, but still selling it under the same name.
Yep. I would like to cover an ATI Equivalent, but other than very low end X Series GPUs having a confusing name they do seem to be a tad less confusing when it comes to marketing utter garbage.
back in day, i was tricked to buy this garbage instead of Radeon 9200, and it drives me crazy.
Returned mine n got a Radeon 9000, the FX5200 came with Morrowind but couldn't even play it, it's pretty bad when you can't even play the pack in game lol
I had one of those back then... on win XP
Mafia, GTA VC and SA ran very well... on a AMD Duron
I swear I have so many of these things, I have ACCIDENTALLY bought some a few times
Back in the day,Walmart used to carry PC parts and this was one of the things I bought from Walmart to upgrade my pc.
Had a FX5500, was not that bad, used to play GTA SA just fine
At least the FX5500 had more power then the FX5200 and better memory handling.
Masticina Akicta Funny though since the FX 5200 Ultra is typically faster than a 5500. The entire lineup was a mess though. ATi was killing it.
Jam shame of the ATI drivers not being as good and stable as the Nvidia ones
cody kamminga They were always fixed a month or so after launch, then they consistently demolished the Nvidia cards. But nvidia outperformed or nearly matched at launch (except FX lol)
I had the a FX 5200 128bit 64MB. It came with my HP with a Athlon XP 2400+ and 512MB RAM. Back in the days I had to overclock it to play GTA San Andreas on 1024x768 in my 15" CRT. My friend bought the 128MB version but got one with 64bit, so it was a real pain.
My card went up to 320MHz core (250MHz stock) and the memory also jumped up from 200MHz to 270MHz, which was 540MHz DDR clock. Imagine a modern card could be overclocked like this.
I will retest it on my Core2Duo AGP mainboard in the next days.
After the FX 5200 I bought a GeForce 6800 NU whith unlocked vertex shaders and pixel pipelines and a good OC. Really big improvement.
I used to have this around 19 years ago.. to try and squeeze something oit of it i tried overclocking it.. smoke started coming out of my pc case and it burned my gpu, mobo and some other components...
Good times lol
Liar, the card didn't even exist 19 years ago
Great video, I don't know why but I do have a thing for the fx cards, haha!
I remember buying an FX5200 Ultra in the early 2000's when it came out. I didn't remember it being that bad at all. May have been a TI, but don't think so.
I remember it being green and purple with a bionic woman's face. Got Myst 4 / Uru, Unreal, Doom shareware and some random other programs.
Always wanted the Fx5800 ultra, the hair dryer. Good times!
Food for thought, many video things from the 2000's era I found run better on a CRT at 1024 X 786 if your video card has low memory, or display issues. I'm not a gamer, but I have realized pushing a video card to run a 1080 or higher monitor and then expecting it to run video, from DVD or worse yet from the web like CZcams you will find weakness. So it would play well in a window, but much better in what used to be called a pop-out. But if you took it to the normal full screen, it would run with more drop outs or stutter. So besides the pop-out option that not all web video had, your other option was to run your monitor at a lower resolution. So I know many games will offer that idea in the settings but it is not the same as changing your monitor setting on the video card first to that setting. This way your video card is already in a less taxed mode and will be just as relaxed when playing a game in that matched setting.
That is the driest thermal paste I've ever seen.
I bought this card when I was building my first PC. Had it a grand total of two weeks before I got rid of it. Terrible card. Couldn't even run the games it came with well nor the tech demos that come on its driver disc. Found a deal shortly after to get a Radeon 9800 Pro for $200 and jumped on it. Absolutely worth it as that 9800 Pro crushed the FX5200 in every way. Managed to sell the FX5200. I took a loss but I was at least able to recoup some of my losses. That experience with the FX5200 was so bad as my first experience with Nvidia, I ended up exclusively buying ATI cards for several generations until I increased my hardware knowledge and took another chance on Nvidia.I still tend to prefer AMD cards, but I now buy Nvidia cards as well.
I remember "Upgrading" my G4 4200 Ti to this and it being worse in almost every way.
I wonder what was in your head?, replacing what it was the cheap version of the HIGH-end range of the g4 series with a LOW end range of the g5 series? Not even the mid range
Of course it was worst in every way
The 5200 was the equivalent to the 440mx not the 4200ti
@@javiermarcosesturillo4984 First getting into PC's at the time and got snookered by the local store. It was a nice learning moment.
It's funny. I feel a lot of nostalgia for this card, because I had several of them and daily drove one for some time... but that's because I got them as hand-me-downs or salvaged from recycling centers, and it was the first time that I had 3D hardware acceleration, allowing me to play Quake III: Arena. I didn't have access to 2000s PC games for some time, so it's a shock to me to hear that it wasn't just a budget card, but was poorly received and didn't perform well in the applications that came out in the time period. Interesting.
Hey guys, which card is better? Geforce4 MX440 or FX5200?
5200 as it supported all Dx 8 pixel and vertex shaders... the MX did not only the Ti series
Kevin Spurrier The MX440 does perform slightly better in some DX7 games though :)
My first decent computer upgrading from a Pentium MMX 266mhz up to a P4 2.4ghz 512mb ram and a 5200fx with a windowed black case with blue neon and black 17" CRT. It used to run Half Life 1 perfectly, Half Life 2 ok, Doom 3 on lower settings, Vice City and San Andreas again on lower settings with a bit of glitchiness (but nothing i wasn't used to), Warcraft III perfectly, and my favorite game of all at the time, Command and Conquer Generals. My next upgrade was an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, Athlon 64 3500+ 1gb duel channel DDR ram and a 6600GT graphics card with a full tower Cooler Master case that I'd cart around to LANs with a brand new $350 17" LCD
This is the first and only time in history a gamer could legitimately and proudly say "I own an ATi".
My PC build at the time I bought this card: AMD Sempron 2800, 256 MB DDR(I think, it might have been SDR), FX 5200 from Palit(cheapest I could get). It ran most games I played back then at a playable level(for me). My strategy back then was turn every settimg to max except shadows and fog, whenever possible I would just disable or set to the lowest possible settings. Games I played with this setup: GTA Vice City, Need for Speed Underground 1 and 2(2 ran like shit until I upgraded to a FX 5500 and even then I struggled, but hey, it worked). C.S 1.6 , Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy(these were old titles even then so they ran fine) KOTOR 1 and 2(these 2 struggled and were a nightmare whenever anyone used a gas grenade or mine RIP my framerate) I’m I played more games but these are the only ones that are popping into my mimd right now. After the FX 5500 I moved to a 6200GT I think and that finally enabled me to play Doom 3 at max settings.
I've played Half Life 2 on an FX 5200 :P
I remember one day my father got home with a FX5200 and I was crazy about having a offboard vga. That time I was playing Need for Speed Underground 2 and I was excited about having more video quality of the game. Honest, I probably got 5% more of performance. As a kid I was kinda happy, but nowadays I see how bad it was
It's good for a budget retro gaming PC.
my first video card was a PCI (that's right, PCI) FX 5500 128MB. i remember it being completely crushed by Guildwars 1 and Lineage 2. it honestly wasn't that much better than the intel GMA 950 onboard that the system had.
5:44 PEGGLE EXTREME
A month ago I was playing Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, City Skylines, Supreme Commander Forged Alliance, PUBG Lite on HD7650 512MB! on APU of AMD. It was crazy! Most games on 720p High settings with 8GB ram. Old games can run on max settings. Now I bought a system with an A8-7600 pro APU with R7, board, DVD, PSU, case for $38! It can run most games before 2015 on 1080p max settings and you get 30+frames!. I watched 4K Infinity Wars on it today. APU was 100% busy while playing it flawlessly. It is crazy! Because I built a gaming rig back in 2008 when I was in gamming PC company, for £2500 with Core2Duo E8600, 4GB hyper DDR2 and 2GB 9800GT, 850watts CM PSU, 500GB Raid+ 1TB, DVD, DVD RW, Cosmos S, tens of 120mm fans etc. I almost went broke to build it as I was a student.(I did that to play Crysis 😕)After that I never built a PC. I gave that PC for free in 2012 as real life shits kicked in and I had no time to play. But I kept the Cosmos S and 850W CM PSU. And I hope one day I would have money to build it again with Ryzen 7 in it or atleast Ryzen 5 APU ☹️. I believe in miracles.....✌️
I had one. I used to have a Radeon 8500 and the performance was ok on NFS Underground. I loved that game and when I bought the 5200 and it ran Undeground much smoothly than the radeon, I sold the 8500.
I had its big sister the MSI Geforce FX 5750 ultra and well, at first it went well, but I think it's possibly one of the graphics cards that have lasted the least (and I don't do O.C.) and that have given me the most problems. A friend had the MSI Geforce FX 5950 Ultra and his experience was like mine, initially fine, but his ended up out of service even before mine because it started giving him problems before mine did.
Like a previous person commented, I bought my FX5200 (128MB) to replace a dying GeForce 2 MX200 (32 MB).
Although I forget exactly when I bought it, what I do remember is that at about the same time, Valve (through the Steam game store) was giving away their hit game: Portal as part of a promotional campaign for the (back then) upcoming sequel: Portal 2.
If memory serves me correctly, I believe I paid about $35 for the card at directron.com and I was fairly happy for it since it had the best specs / price of the few gfx cards they had which were compatible with my pc at the time - Pentium 3, 850 MHz, Intel SE440BX2 main board, 0.75 GB PC100 SDRAM, Win XP SP3
I’m super fascinated by those underhanded optimisations in far cry.
In France, we had a weird scam on ebay and leboncoin around 2010, where some PCs sold as "gamer" contained a Pentium E5200 and a FX5200. At the end the FX was replaced by... a GT210 or GT230.
I had a 5200 I bought for an old Athlon XP 1600+. Hated every minute of that thing. Sure, it was better than the MX440 it replaced, but not by much. I believe it was Final Fantasy online that forced me to upgrade. I simply couldn't OC it enough to get it to handle the lowest settings. Moved to a 5700LE Optima from PNY, and absolutely loved that card. It OC'd to double its shipping clocks, and ran everything I threw at it with ease for a fair number of years. I wish I still had it for my retro build, as it was fantastic.
Got my first PC with fx5200 (128 MB version). I've overclocked it quite hard ( over 400 MHz on core) and played Battlefield 2 on it for many month - still game was unplayable for todays standards (15-25 fps. 800x600, lowest possible settings), but i didn't care much about fps those days.