No offense to noone, but next time you buy a graphic card, I advise you to read some reviews first.
The Geforce FX5200 is not that great and when directX 9.0 games start coming out more and more you will see what I mean.
Another tip: don't be misled by cards that have 256MB of RAM on it. The type/speed of the RAM is often more important than the quantity. 128MB is more than enough to run the latest games. You see, there are different companies that bring the same card on the market. Some choose to bring a 256MB version of it too, but that card could have slower RAM in it than the 128MB version of another company. Most 'unknowing' people will go for the 256MB version that costs only as much as the 128MB version of the other company, not knowing that they're being scr*wed, because the other card is much better! 256MB of RAM only comes in handy on a very fast card that can handle that much RAM, or when you edit much video and stuff.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but these are just tips for people that are looking for a new graphics card.
Finally: I'd recommend:
- Hercules (or Sapphire) Radeon 9600 Pro 128 MB
- Hercules Radeon 9800 128 MB (can be softmodded to a Pro version if you wanna take the risk
)
- Hercules or Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB (for the die-hard gamers
)
Why no Geforce in this list? I guess it's just a matter of taste and budget. Geforce FX cards are more expensive than their Radeon concurrents and deliver worse results in most game-benchmarks, but don't get me wrong, there are some good Geforce's out there too. But if you're a gamer I wouldn't go for anything less than a FX5600 (and than you should even go for the Ultra version).
Now I'll shut up and go back waiting for my new AMD XP2800+ with my new Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro in it, to arrive, to play this marvelous game with