NVIDIA GeForce 6200 AGP (NV44A) Roundup
Performance and conclusions
Prior to getting round to a detailed debriefing for each of the cards reviewed today, let's draw up some conclusions on the performance of boards built on NV44A in general.
Compared to the low-end of the previous generation - GeForce 5200 (whose price is currently about $40 for the 128Mb make) and GeForce 5500 ($45-50) - all the boards built on NV44A definitely look more attractive. The 5200 and 5500 in most cases do not demonstrate an acceptable performance level even at 800х600, let alone much higher resolutions. Therefore, having replaced the not so successful FX series boards with more powerful GeForce 6 Series in other price sectors, NVIDIA has finally got round to the low-end where inexpensive 6200А boards with support for all the modern technologies including SM 3.0 and other "distinctive features" of GeForce 6 Series are meant to expel the ghost of previous-generation cards with all their shortcomings and thus are forced to leave the bright present day and the no less bright future.
But the "bright present day" does not at all mean that such things like AA and AF as well as resolutions higher than 1024x768 will be accessible to you. To be more precise, all can be enabled but only in order to disable later and forget about it until you replace your video card with something more powerful (thus, more expensive). If you are currently short of finances, then be ready to face the performance which you will finally get. There is one thing which should make you happy - for its price, the product has proved superb and is many times superior over the low-end cards of the previous generation and even versus the relatively modern ATI's low-end Radeon 9550. So, owners of varied 5200, 5500 and 9200/9250 (including their endless number of modifications) have a very good chance to get an essential performance boost while staying on budget.
All is simpler for those users who takes games as the priority. They won't be upset by the nervous breakdowns because of the "slide-show" in their favorite DOOM3. At the same time, they won't get AA and 1600x1200. Finally, they will be able to replace their GeForce 3/4/5 with a board built on NV44A and be quite pleased without extra costs.
As regards the overclocking, the Chaintech's board proved to the best buy at that - we were able to overclock it from 385/500 MHz (standard for OC Version) to 475/600MHz. That is the best chip overclocking result of all the three specimens. The second honorable place is taken by XFX GeForce 6200 whose overclocking shortcoming is made up for by the memory overclocking - we were able to overclock it to 650MHz DDR, thus the boost proved to be 150MHz DDR. As regards Leadtek's GeForce 6200, we were able to overclock it to 450/600 MHz. Of course, these performance results can be improved through upgrading the cooling system or other modifications. But we are presenting results achieved with a standard cooling system.
In conclusion, let me say that this material is only the first part of a review on NV44A boards shipped by various manufacturers. Due to various reasons, many very interesting video cards by industry leaders have not joined this article, including those by ASUS and Gigabyte. But we'll certainly fix that annoying neglect in the next part of GeForce 6200A Roundup.
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