Hello,
John Lewis wrote:
Expected.........fog-effects hog GPU power.
Well shouldn't lens flare and a lot of polygons also hog gpu power?
I'm not having any fps slowdown while fightinh with tens of japanese
that have a lot of tanks and naval support with explosions and lens
flare effects (sunset and so on). But when I look quite near at a tank
that is smoking, then I get 3-5 fps. That shouldn't be GPU performance
problem.
(I
don't remember having this problem with my GF4MX440 and this was a DX7
card).
The FX5200 is a slow card. To get an exact comparison you need to
prune the effects back to those available on the MX440. Use NVtweak or
similar.
where might I get NVtweak?
You probably should have considered a FX5200Ultra or better for your
chosen screen-resolution and game software (and your FPS tolerance-
threshold)..
Well actually the situation was that I had my MX440 and was quite happy
with it (normal FPS in games and quite enough features to play games
currently available. Also did play GTA Vice City and BF1942 and don't
remember having problems with smoke).
But when it got fried around a month ago (I got periodic 10sek pauses
while gaming and so every 30-60 sek) I decided not to replace it with
the same card but to do an upgrade that wouldn't cost anything big. My
only necessity was that the card should have tv-out (quite standard
these days) and would be better than the one I had. As I practically
didn't have to pay anything for the FX5200 (40$) I decided to go for it
as it was a DX9 compatible card and all other cards would have given me
a bigger price difference (and I wasn't interested in high end cards as
I didn't see any need for such an investment currently).
You also may have purchased the 64-bit data-path variant of the FX5200
(non-Ultra).............same memory capacity (128Mbytes or 64Mbytes)
but less-expensive to manufacture..........
64-bit data-path == memory bandwidth 3.2Gbytes/sec
128-bit data-path == memory bandwidth 6.4GBytes/sec
Quite a few FX5200 (non-Ultra) manufacturers omit the memory bandwidth
on their specs and I challenge you to see that figure on the retail
box. Deliberate ?? Do not confuse 128-bit processing with 128-bit
data-path. If you do not see a clearly-stated memory bandwith spec. on
a manufacturer's data sheet, watch out..........
Well it's an ASUS V9520/Magic/T 128MB card. I don't have the box around
so I can't tell wether it's 64 bit or 128bit or if that is sai anywhere
at all
But I don't think my MX440 was a 128 bit card.
Oh and if it helps then I'm running it at AGP 4x as mu mobo doesn't
support AGP 8x.
Well-informed as to desired performance and actual video card specs
before purchase makes for greater happiness after purchase............
Well I read about the FX5200 and it seemed to satisfy all my
requirements and I knew that it was a budget card, but hey MX440 was
also a budget card so I didn't expect it to be worse than MX440 at some
aspects.
I still consider that I might have something a bit wrong as my 3dmark03
score is 860 without clocking and with some tuning I cat run at 940. At
the same time I see people having with quite the same configuration
scores from 800 - 1500. I can't quite get how the difference is so big?
I saw that some of the high end scores were with AGP 8x so I guessed
that this might be the issue, but I also found a score of 1300 with
quite the same settings and conf I had except he had memory clock at
405MHz and I have at 333MHz (maximum by asus tweak utility is 360MHz so
I can't quite understand how people get a lot more???)
So I'm a bit disappointed in the performance compared to others. Might
it be a problem with the card or is there a small thing I haven't
noticed yet?
I wouldn't be complaining if the card would be performing as it does for
others as I know it's a budget card. But as it seems to be
underperforming then I do tend to ask for help.
Just for help here are my specs:
OS: Win XP (without SP1)
driver: have tried: 44.03, 44.67, 44.90 (current and with score 860)
mobo: ASUS A7VK333
mem: kingston PC2700 (768MB)
video: ASUS V9520/Magic/T (FX5200 128MB)
my default gaming reso: 1280x1024x32
default benchmark reso: defaul (should be 1024x768x32 on 3dmark03)
if you want any more details, then just ask.
Mario