PNY Geforce FX 5200 Questions

[DPGX]

Just a quick story & question. This weekend I went through 2 BFG 5200 Ultra's, one had bad Ram the other something wrong with the GPU itself (no overclocking, or abuse to the hardware itself... simply defective), so today I returned the second one and decided to check out a different brand. I Purchased a non-ultra 5200 from PNY, and to my surprise it had 3.6ns Hynix ram. I assume this is safe to clock to 550mhz correct? I just wanted to double check this prior to doing so, I assume so because its technically rated at this speed, and should provide somewhat of a performance boost I would think, its out of box speed is 400mhz I believe.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: DPGX
Just a quick story & question. This weekend I went through 2 BFG 5200 Ultra's, one had bad Ram the other something wrong with the GPU itself (no overclocking, or abuse to the hardware itself... simply defective), so today I returned the second one and decided to check out a different brand. I Purchased a non-ultra 5200 from PNY, and to my surprise it had 3.6ns Hynix ram. I assume this is safe to clock to 550mhz correct? I just wanted to double check this prior to doing so, I assume so because its technically rated at this speed, and should provide somewhat of a performance boost I would think, its out of box speed is 400mhz I believe.

Thanks,

Mike

You've been really unlucky to get two bad FX5200's, I've personally sold many XFX Geforce FX 5200's and touch wood none have been returned.

 

[DPGX]

Hey, I dunno if it was just the fact that they were Ultra's or heres another interesting thing. A friend purchased his BFG 5200 Ultra when I did as well, and the bracket holding the power plug down was metal, mine was simply a zip tie... Both of the defective boards were this way, and hes had no problems with his at all... Perhaps theres newer revisions mixed with older ones in the current shipment? Anyways this 5200 seems great, no problems at all so far...

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: DPGX
Hey, I dunno if it was just the fact that they were Ultra's or heres another interesting thing. A friend purchased his BFG 5200 Ultra when I did as well, and the bracket holding the power plug down was metal, mine was simply a zip tie... Both of the defective boards were this way, and hes had no problems with his at all... Perhaps theres newer revisions mixed with older ones in the current shipment? Anyways this 5200 seems great, no problems at all so far...

The Ultra versions are abit hard to obtain in the UK so I just purchased a cheap 128mb XFX GeforceFX 5200 instead. I do think some people have been abit unfair towards the FX5200, it seems they are judging it without even trying it out themselves.

 

[DPGX]

I completely agree with you, I honeslty could care less what numbers it puts up in a benchmark, it runs my games great. Im looking foward to the Det. 50s though, should give even more performance I imagine, Im really also curious what it would do for my performance if I put the memory up to its rated speed. I assume this GPU is somewhat bandwidth hungry. Thanks for your reply btw,

Mike

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: DPGX
I completely agree with you, I honeslty could care less what numbers it puts up in a benchmark, it runs my games great. Im looking foward to the Det. 50s though, should give even more performance I imagine, Im really also curious what it would do for my performance if I put the memory up to its rated speed. I assume this GPU is somewhat bandwidth hungry. Thanks for your reply btw,

Mike

I'd slowly increase your memory and check for artifacts with each increase, these video cards should be overclockabe because the XFX (Pine) FX5200 is supplied with overclocking tools after all.

My FX5200 is v0.3, do you know what yours is?

 

[DPGX]

Im really not sure, whered u find the version #? Bios ver. is 4.34.20.15

Other than that Im really not sure, if its on the sticker on the card ill check and reply again.

Mike

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: DPGX
Im really not sure, whered u find the version #? Bios ver. is 4.34.20.15

Other than that Im really not sure, if its on the sticker on the card ill check and reply again.

Mike

On the clear plastic container the card is supplied in, there should be a white sticker with details of the video card including version number.

 

[nemesismk2]

BTW:I've now overclocked the memory on my FX5200 upto 500mhz, core is now at 300mhz still with no problems. I'll logoff and benchmark quake 3 to see what kind of performance increase I get.

The video card is defaulting back to it's stock settings of 250/400 when I run any benchmarks, I'll have to try out some other overclocking tools tomorrow.