GeForce 6200 Is it good enough?

[moshel]

I saw in this month's digit magzine about geforce 6200 256 mb card. it has no negative points, but if its so good then why is it available for cheap. should i go for it?

Currently im using the following

mercury 845gl motherboard
Celeron processor 2.4 ghz
Ge Force FX 5200 128 mb
512 mb of ram.

I can play all games in my current card. but somehow now i dont feel satisfied by its performance in newer games and i noticed that if a 256 mb card is available for so cheap then i should move to the next level.

My questions:
1. Will my motherboard support it?
2. What advantages will i have after moving to this card.
3. Will i notice a considerable increase in performance in games i currently play?
4. The most important one. Looking at my current configuration, Should i buy this card???????

 

[drvarunmehta]

1. Yes. Since you are running a FX 5200, you definitely have an AGP slot. So you can upgrade to a 6200
2. Not much. The 6200 isn't that much faster than a 5200. Spend a little more and get a 6600 (not GT) to have a noticeable increase in performance.
3. Already answered above.
4. No. Buy a 6600 (or above) instead.

 

[[lokesh]]

The 6200 is a really good card. If u are low on budget, then i recommend u to go for 6200. The 6200 is also based on the same chipset core of 6600...i.e NV43. But the only difference between the two is the no. of pipelines. 6200 has 4, whereas 6600 has 8 pipelines. Both have the same core clock speed of 300 Mhz.
Looking onto the memory clock speed, which is set by the manufacturer of the card...you have to get a card which has good memory clock speed. Even when u buy 6200, check for the memory clock speed...make sure that it has atleast (225MhzDDR)550 Mhz memory clock speed. The memory clock speed greatly affects the performance.

Moreover there is a chance of luck for you when u buy 6200. Since both 6200 and 6600 have the same core, both were designed with 8 pipelines, but in the 6200 they masked the 4 pipelines. So if the card that you buy has a core NV43 A1 or NV43 A2 version then u can surely unlock the remaining 4 pipelines in 6200 and make it a 6600. But if the core is NV43 A4, then no luck...u cannot unlock the remaining pipelines as they heavily damaged the pipelines in A4 version. So its a matter of luck. You cannnot check for the core version before buying. So don't fully depend that u can unlock the 6200 that u buy.

But even with just 4 pipelines the 6200 performs greatly. So my advice is if u are low on budget the go in for 6200. You will surely see great performance difference compared to 5200, else go in for the 6600.

And to remind you again, don't forget about the memory clock speed.

 

[moshel]

Thanks for the help guys,

i have decided to buy the 6200 becoz im low on budget the vendor has given me a mrp of rs 4100/- and hopefully i will get good money for my 5200 fx.


thanks for the good suggestion [lokesh] i will surely keep my fingers crossed for that. can u pl tell me how do i know the version. and if i do unlock the remaining 4 pipelines, will there be a long term effect on the card, and/or will it make the warranty void?

u can tell me how to unlock the 4 pipelines later if i get a good card.

Thanks again guys for the help.

 

[pimpom]

The 6200 is noticably faster than an FX5200 and is a good buy for the price. To clarify a few points -

IIRC, Digit reviewed only the PCI-E versions, and also only the Turbo-cache (TC) versions. The TC version usually carries only a relatively small amount of RAM on the card itself and shares the system RAM. This makes it slower than a non-TC version.

There are no TC versions for AGP, therefore they are all non-TC. But since the 6xxx series were designed for PCI-E, they need bridging for AGP and are therefore slightly more expensive. They are also somewhat slower than their PCI-E non-TC versions.

For entry-level cards like the 6200, the difference in performance between 128MB and 256MB is negligible. IMHO it makes more sense to buy the 128MB version and save a few hundred bucks.

 

[drvarunmehta]

Atleast find out the cost of a 6600. I think its just a little more than a 6200.

 

[mangemayur]

Best go for the XFX or ASUS 6600GT 8X card, might be bit costlier but worth it, i m using Asus 6600 GT / TD 16X on my 915 board

 

[dspmunna]

how about 6200 compared with 5700

 

[cryptid]

Please give me the Rate of XFX 6600 (Non-GT) 256mb each 1 is telling me a diffrent rate i herd the price ranging from 6500 to 8000 what is the exact rate?