10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
GeForce, HP and Me
Date of Review: Dec 16, 2006
The Bottom Line: Works fine with HP computer as an upgrade! Good price for a 256MB card!
WHAT YOU GET FOR THE MONEY
Wow, for a very affordable price here is a 256MB Graphics Card that delivers great performance including Direct X-9 compatibility needed for today's better multimedia applications. It is also available in a PCI version which I needed since my computer didn't have an AGP slot (something you need to check before you upgrade). It provides display resolution to 2048x1536 @ 85Hz and DVI resolution up to 1600x1200. DVI delivers digital signals straight through to your flat panel monitor & bypasses analog conversion. Also provides DVD and High Definition TV mpeg2 decoding to 1220x1080i. If your flat panel doesn't have a DVI interface, the 5200 conveniently provides an analog interface connector in addition to the DVI. It supports dual monitors and also provides a TV out cable connector to feed mpeg or DVD back to a regular TV or recorder.
The NVDIA software driver package gives you a host of controls over your setup and monitor. It includes a color optimization wizard to help you calibrate your monitor; color correction adjustments, refresh rate and resolution settings. You can also set Anitaliasing and other settings manually or allow the application to set them. You can even rotate the screen 90 degrees (maybe you like to lay your head on your desk while working?? :-) )
INSTALLATION
In my case, I purchased an ATI HDTV Wonder card to install in my wife's HP Pavillion A1110 so she could watch or rather, listen to TV while at her computer and not have to burn up the bulb life on our DLP big screen TV. This led me down the path of upgrading my graphics card since the A1110 is a bottom end computer with built-in graphics controller on the motherboard.
From everything I read and my personal knowledge of problems with upgrading HP computers, I went into this expecting total defeat from the beginning. Perhaps because of this and unlike me, I read the instructions first before beginning the installation. The first thing XFX tells you is to "uninstall your existing graphics card". I was pleasantly surprised that they next addressed "motherboards with on board graphics".
So in another unusual moment, I decided to contact HP tech support for help in doing that. I went on line with their "Chat room" tech. I have to give HP a pat on the back for making that available to all their customers for no charge although it takes a bit of time to go through the process but better than being on hold on the phone. Another nice feature is that at the end, they send you an email with the session transcript which is really handy.
Following their instructions, I booted into BIOS and searched for the disable graphics menu. NOT THERE :'(
Throwing caution to the wind, I went ahead and installed the FX5200 in an open PCI slot, connected my flat panel monitor to the FX5200, booted up and voila... BLACK SCREEN. Panic set in because with a black screen, how are you going to load their software, etc.? Then I remembered that since I had on board graphics, I still had the video connector for my onboard graphics available. So I moved the monitor over to that and had video again. Now I was able to install the new graphics card and software. Later I downloaded an updated driver from NVIDIA's site.
The graphics has been solid ever since. Surprisingly, it also worked with the ATI HDTV card. I figured a combination of ATI and NVIDIA would never work - particularly throwing HP in the mix. But they all came together and my wife is enjoying better graphics and her TV as well. The 256MB of graphics memory takes the load off my main memory and speeds up graphics activity. So if you're into gaming, video, photography or anything that needs a lot of graphics processing, the fx5200 may be the right ticket for you. I got mine through Buy.com and the Google checkout saved some more money.
