Zotac GeForce FX 5200 Video Card Experience cinematic graphics power, and create special effects like Hollywood movies. Leave the dull world of integrated graphics technology behind and enter the World of Cinematic Computing. This high-performance, 4 pixels-per-clock 3D rendering engine features 128-bit, studio quality floating-point precision through the entire graphics pipeline. NVIDIA GeForce FX-Series graphics cards deliver industry-leading features and performance enabling special effects on par with Hollywood films.
Comment: I have a few years old eMachines with Intel on board graphics. It doesn't support the newer widescreen LCD monitors optimal display settings - in my case, I bought a new Dell S2309W. I purchased this Zotac GeForce 5200 PCI from Amazon a few weeks ago. The card itself came well packaged, and offers the VGA, DVI and S-Video inputs in a PCI format (not PCI-E) with plenty of on board memory. It was easy enough to plug into an empty slot and install the drivers. The included CD actually had the latest nVidia drivers, a bit of a surprise (and later on, a frustration).
When the Dell 23" widescreen monitor showed up, it included both VGA and DVI connections and cables. Naturally, DVI provides the better connection, and connect away I did. The PC optimally set the display to the 1920 x 1080 resolution. At that point, the screen sprang to life, and what a beautiful display. Only ... the graphics card can't scale to that resolution. It offers it, but the result is you see about 80% of the display, and have to pan left and right and up and down to see the rest of it. Bummer!
I didn't do all my homework! This is an older generation graphics engine, and you have to downgrade (!!) to 1280 x 1024 in order to see the whole screen at once. When you do, the graphics card then fits the image in the window, but it's squished vertically and stretched horizontally. It looks strange.
I've played with the nVidia control panel all day long, and visited the Dell forums, only to find that this card (5200 graphics engine) just can't support the 1920 x 1080 within the confines of the 23" widescreen real estate. It'll display it, but then you have to scroll off the edges, up, down, left & right.
The solution -- I'll probably sell mine and upgrade to a newer generation graphics engine (I'm thinking 8400 ...). If, however, you have a widescreen with native resolution down around the 1280 x 1024 range, this is the perfect low cost card for you!
Customer Rating:
Summary: good card for the price 2009-03-20
Comment: easy to install and it works well. whether or not the lack of a fan will be a problem remains to be seen.
When the Dell 23" widescreen monitor showed up, it included both VGA and DVI connections and cables. Naturally, DVI provides the better connection, and connect away I did. The PC optimally set the display to the 1920 x 1080 resolution. At that point, the screen sprang to life, and what a beautiful display. Only ... the graphics card can't scale to that resolution. It offers it, but the result is you see about 80% of the display, and have to pan left and right and up and down to see the rest of it. Bummer!
I didn't do all my homework! This is an older generation graphics engine, and you have to downgrade (!!) to 1280 x 1024 in order to see the whole screen at once. When you do, the graphics card then fits the image in the window, but it's squished vertically and stretched horizontally. It looks strange.
I've played with the nVidia control panel all day long, and visited the Dell forums, only to find that this card (5200 graphics engine) just can't support the 1920 x 1080 within the confines of the 23" widescreen real estate. It'll display it, but then you have to scroll off the edges, up, down, left & right.
The solution -- I'll probably sell mine and upgrade to a newer generation graphics engine (I'm thinking 8400 ...). If, however, you have a widescreen with native resolution down around the 1280 x 1024 range, this is the perfect low cost card for you!