nVidia GeForce 6200

[luke88]

I was wondering, is the GeForce 6200 any good? I know it's a cheap card (around 55 GBP), which is why I want it. It seems to be the best card I can buy on my current budget. (Yeah, I'm poor).

[Jeff]

Nope, that card is the bottom of the barrel. Nowadays, you could get a Radeon 9600 Pro or Geforce 5700 Ultra for cheap ($50 probably).

What do you guys think?

[Joonas]

If you're poor, you should grab it as the tech (SM3.0) will keep it alive for quite a long time.

Surprisingly, while it indeed is the weakest card of the Series 6 generation, NVIDIA finally learned not to make it suck after receiving enough beating from the owners of 4200, MX and 5200 FX cards. So it's quite fine if you can't afford a higher ranking card in that card family.

[TerminX]

Joonas said:
If you're poor, you should grab it as the tech (SM3.0) will keep it alive for quite a long time.

Surprisingly, while it indeed is the weakest card of the Series 6 generation, NVIDIA finally learned not to make it suck after receiving enough beating from the owners of 4200, MX and 5200 FX cards. So it's quite fine if you can't afford a higher ranking card in that card family.


What? The GF4 Ti4200 was a quite decent card in its day.. about equivalent to what the 6600 GT is to the 6x00 series.

[Hudson]

luke88 said:
I was wondering, is the GeForce 6200 any good? I know it's a cheap card (around 55 GBP), which is why I want it. It seems to be the best card I can buy on my current budget. (Yeah, I'm poor).



Save for a 6600GT, you won't regret it.

[Mountain Man]

TerminX said:
What? The GF4 Ti4200 was a quite decent card in its day.


Decent? It was a great card for the money! Only reason I got an FX 5700 Ultra was because my Ti4200 died and I couldn't find another Ti4200 to replace it. Interestingly enough, the Ti4200 was a more consistent performer than the FX 5700 which tended to give me erratic performance.

Just yesterday I finally upgraded my system to a 6600GT, and so far, I've been very pleased with it. It doesn't give me the blazing fast framerates I was hoping for, but it does give me solid performance with consistent framerates, which I think is most important. Plus it handles DirectX 9 without a problem which the 5700 was wholly incapable of even though it was supposedly a DX9 card.

6600GT's are pretty cheap these days, too. I picked up an EVGA brand card from NewEgg.com for $150.

[dark_angel]

luke88 said:
I was wondering, is the GeForce 6200 any good? I know it's a cheap card (around 55 GBP), which is why I want it. It seems to be the best card I can buy on my current budget. (Yeah, I'm poor).



Make sure to get the 128-bit version of it and not the turbo cache one.

You can unlock the extra 4 pipelines and you will have a Geforce 6600 wich has some decent performance in all games http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Mountain Man]

Of course, soft-modding hardware is not a guarenteed solution.

[Cerberus_e]

Hudson said:

luke88 said:
I was wondering, is the GeForce 6200 any good? I know it's a cheap card (around 55 GBP), which is why I want it. It seems to be the best card I can buy on my current budget. (Yeah, I'm poor).



Save for a 6600GT, you won't regret it.



I'm also thinking of upgrading within a few months (when all prices lower because of the 7800) but won't that card not be outdated by then?
of course it's capable of running every game this year, but I'm afraid it will grow old fast.
would a 6800 be a better choice by then? I'm not as poor as luke88 http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[dark_angel]

Nah don't get a Geforce 6800 you won't gain a great performance over Geforce 6600 GT.

if you can affoard getting a Geforce 6800 GT go for it.

I have this card and it is just a monster VGA http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif, in size and performance!

[Mountain Man]

Cerberus_e said:
of course it's capable of running every game this year, but I'm afraid it will grow old fast.


Depends on how aggressive you are with visual settings. Learn to live with something less than "Everything to the right!" and you'll be fine.

[dark_angel]

ah! this is how you have survived with your Geforce FX card http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Cerberus_e]

dark_angel said:
Nah don't get a Geforce 6800 you won't gain a great performance over Geforce 6600 GT.

if you can affoard getting a Geforce 6800 GT go for it.

I have this card and it is just a monster VGA http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif, in size and performance!



so first you say I should get a 6600 instead of a 6800, and then you recommend the 6800 again? http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif


Mountain Man said:

Cerberus_e said:
of course it's capable of running every game this year, but I'm afraid it will grow old fast.


Depends on how aggressive you are with visual settings. Learn to live with something less than "Everything to the right!" and you'll be fine.



I fought the guardian boss of doom 3 in hell with 7 FPS and you tell me to "be happy with less that the maximum"???
aaargghhh http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tinyted.gif http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif


dark_angel said:
ah! this is how you have survived with your Geforce FX card http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif



no, I learned to live with 15-20 FPS in doom 3 and 10-15 FPS in the chronicles of riddick http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Laplacian]

Mountain Man said:

TerminX said:
What? The GF4 Ti4200 was a quite decent card in its day.


Decent? It was a great card for the money! Only reason I got an FX 5700 Ultra was because my Ti4200 died and I couldn't find another Ti4200 to replace it. Interestingly enough, the Ti4200 was a more consistent performer than the FX 5700 which tended to give me erratic performance.


I third that. I loved my old Ti4200. I played UT2k4, DX2, MP2, and more at max/near max settings with no real lags. I bought it for ~$150, when the FX cards came out and it served me very well. At the time I didn't have a PSU capable of handling the 9500Pro, so I had to get the Ti4200. Call me crazy, but I have a soft spot for that card. Great performance for a great value. I hope I'll feel the same way about my 6600GT.

[8IronBob]

Hopefully, if you can afford it, go for the 256 MB GFX 6600 GT, that's perhaps the best I can think of. According to NewEgg, you can only get the 6600 GT in the 128 MB variety, but there may be some 256 MB varieties of cards in some fashion. I'll just have to squeak it out of NewEgg or TigerDirect to cough up prices for the 256 MB ones. Not too sure if there's a chance they may carry those, too.

Edit: Oh, okay, here we go, it's actually a 6600 XFX w/ the 256 MB, which appears to be just under $145 at Tiger Direct. Seems to be okay to me, dual DVI outputs, and to me, it's worth every penny, from how it looks...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1212072&Sku=P450-6600

[Cerberus_e]

I heard it's not a good idea to use a videocard that's rare, with 256 mb ram, like it's "unoficially modded"?

[dark_angel]

Cerberus_e said:
I heard it's not a good idea to use a videocard that's rare, with 256 mb ram, like it's "unoficially modded"?



Did you hear that from steam forums?
http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[Mountain Man]

8IronBob said:
Edit: Oh, okay, here we go, it's actually a 6600 XFX w/ the 256 MB, which appears to be just under $145 at Tiger Direct. Seems to be okay to me, dual DVI outputs, and to me, it's worth every penny, from how it looks...


From what I've read, the XFX card is pretty poor. The 6600 architecture is apparently not designed to take advantage of more than 128MB (or something like that), so having more RAM actually slows the card down.

[Odin]

Mountain Man said:

8IronBob said:
Edit: Oh, okay, here we go, it's actually a 6600 XFX w/ the 256 MB, which appears to be just under $145 at Tiger Direct. Seems to be okay to me, dual DVI outputs, and to me, it's worth every penny, from how it looks...


From what I've read, the XFX card is pretty poor. The 6600 architecture is apparently not designed to take advantage of more than 128MB (or something like that), so having more RAM actually slows the card down.



Agreed. I have an XFX card and I hate it.

[Cerberus_e]

dark_angel said:

Cerberus_e said:
I heard it's not a good idea to use a videocard that's rare, with 256 mb ram, like it's "unoficially modded"?



Did you hear that from steam forums?
http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif



no, mountain man one post under yours is an example http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif odin's too http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[dark_angel]

Mountain Man said:
From what I've read, the XFX card is pretty poor. The 6600 architecture is apparently not designed to take advantage of more than 128MB (or something like that), so having more RAM actually slows the card down.



Generally speaking, a larger memory allows games to be played at higher resolution but 256MB versions do typically have slower clocked memory than the 128MB models ( Low and mid range cards ).

So having slow ( not more ) RAM actually slows the card down http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Mountain Man]

Ah, well, that's why it's so inexpensive for a 256MB board; they're using cheap RAM.

As they say, you get what you pay for.

[Joonas]

TerminX said:

Joonas said:
If you're poor, you should grab it as the tech (SM3.0) will keep it alive for quite a long time.

Surprisingly, while it indeed is the weakest card of the Series 6 generation, NVIDIA finally learned not to make it suck after receiving enough beating from the owners of 4200, MX and 5200 FX cards. So it's quite fine if you can't afford a higher ranking card in that card family.


What? The GF4 Ti4200 was a quite decent card in its day.. about equivalent to what the 6600 GT is to the 6x00 series.



Yes, it's decent. And in my opinion the 4 series has the best cards ever. 4600 Ti sure is one of the best cards ever. I just meant the difference between the x200 and the rest of the cards in that generation. Or I could release that card from accussations and burn the 5200 at stake.