XFX GeForce 5200 FX 128MB review

Though this card is on the lower end of the scale, bare in mind that the scale has changed a lot over the years and this card would still be considered a great performer.

If you’re not doing the intense 3D graphics a whole lot, the passive cooling will be fine. There’s no fan on this board which means it won’t be noisy. I’ve heard some video fans that were louder than the power supply fan. In an office, that is definitely a consideration.

XFX boards are generally very reliable and provide good quality video. This graphics card will actually be capable of doing a lot more than just office apps, but I still wouldn’t recommend it for die-hard gamers. I will say though that the card performed fairly well with Quake III. In fact, at 800x600 it was a close contender. On other games though, that didn’t use the Quake engine, it scored much lower, and with the passive cooling though, I don’t know how long it would keep it up at one sitting.

It does have an S-Video out and a VGA connector, it even has Linux drivers. To be honest, I haven’t seen anyone experiencing problems with this card, except a few that were strictly user oriented issues. Make sure your motherboard has an AGP slot and you shouldn’t have any problems with this card, and best of all, you’ll probably find it for about $50.

Support for DirectX 9 is there, though you won’t take advantage of it until you get a DirectX 9 game. The anisotropic filtering wasn’t too hot, but FSAA performed surprisingly well.

You can find some top GeForce cards with low pricing here

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