TR Forums

In case you haven't noticed my signature, I was forced to retire my Radeon HD 3450 AGP because the fan died and the card overheated. Thanks to the market as it stands, I bought out of a TigerDirect.com store a GeForce 6200 AGP from EVGA and just installed it into my current PC.

What are the advantages of this GeForce 6200 over the Radeon HD 3450? And should I stay with the green team once I replace this PC with a new one I will build sometime in the future?

I have always bought NVidia but that is what I am comfortable with. As long as you pick a card that meets or exceeds what you need than either will do. What do you use the computer for?

What are the advantages of this GeForce 6200 over the Radeon HD 3450?

hahahahahahahaha

Did you just discover the secret of going forward in time? Or did I just find a way to go back in time?

Assuming this is not a troll, you just got yourself a hefty downgrade. There are better AGP GeForces out there bro. Should've come to us for advice first.

You don't do any modern gaming based on the spec in your signature - so the advantages of "new, yet obsolete gaming card" over "old, also obsolete gaming card" are pretty minimal.

The 6200 might have snazzier drivers but short of some slightly different ways to control video overlay colour adjustments and manage multiple screens - I suspect the only real difference will be the connectors on the back are a little more up to date.

I think I had an EVGA 6200 in college and had good times playing stuff like SupCom on it. EVGA is the only graphics card maker out of six or so I've tried that hasn't ever given me trouble. A 6200 is indeed a notable downgrade from a 3450 but I'm guessing you only use it for basic stuff with a small display so you probably won't notice too much of a difference; like Chrispy said both cards are really old.

.

To answer the fan vs. video card question, the fan seized up and died. The video card itself stopped sending a clean signal once I got to the Windows XP splash screen. The color would go bad and then the picture itself would deteriorate and the system would not boot at all. I then replaced that HD3450 with a really old Radeon 9600XT I had lying around in a anti-static bag and swapped the cards. The 9600XT worked fine, but the refresh rate was extremely slow because the card could not handle 1680*1050 well and it refreshed slowly. That points to too little Video RAM (the HD3450 has 512MB; the 9600XT has 128MB). The purchase of the GeForce 6200 was essentially an emergency buy because I had a lot of work due early next week and waiting for a replacement was not an option. (The 6200 has 512MB VRAM.).

It's time for a new computer, dude. That's not something I often say to anyone.

Just about every AGP nvidia offering I've seen is absolute junk. Only ATI/AMD seemed to keep the AGP flame alive into the 4xxx series. nvidia stopped at, what, 8xxx? And are so EXPENSIVE. Ugh. I went looking for AGP cards for my dad's old P4 a few years ago and the situation was pretty dire for the green team.

Get another ATI/AMD and return the nvidia if you still can.

But yeah, at this point you ought to get a new motherboad/CPU/RAM combo.

I know I will need a new MB/CPU/RAM sooner than later. This is my possible next build. Drop by and comment there please.

Scrotos wrote:

Just about every AGP nvidia offering I've seen is absolute junk. Only ATI/AMD seemed to keep the AGP flame alive into the 4xxx series. nvidia stopped at, what, 8xxx? And are so EXPENSIVE. Ugh. I went looking for AGP cards for my dad's old P4 a few years ago and the situation was pretty dire for the green team.

Get another ATI/AMD and return the nvidia if you still can.

But yeah, at this point you ought to get a new motherboad/CPU/RAM combo.

Not even that - the last mainstream Geforce in the "performance" bracket sold was the 7800GS, which functioned like a slightly faster, cooler-running 6800 Ultra. Gainward pushed out a 7900-series card for AGP but it was expensive and hard to find. They gave up a lot sooner than AMD did, but even they stopped bothering after the Radeon 4600 series.

Asking how the 6200 compares to the 3450 is literally asking, "How does this low-end graphics card that came out near the end of George W. Bush's first term in office compare to this low-end graphics card that came out near the end of his second term?" I'd guess the 6200's about 50-66% the speed of the 3450 with a worse feature set, but at the performance levels we're talking about it won't matter much. But look on the bright side - it's not like you bought a 5200...

Scrotos wrote:

Just about every AGP nvidia offering I've seen is absolute junk.

I disagree. The 6600GT was a very capable card during it's time.

.

http://anandtech.com/show/6877/the-grea ... r-part-3/2


Its amazing, the GPU in most peoples smart phone's are faster than your new GPU....

Here is a small situation for which your 6200 may have an advantage (until October): simple video decode using VDPAU in (for example) MythTV in Linux. I saw (via the shortbread) in Phoronix that AMD have released code to expose the UVD under VDPAU, and more recently, the power management too. They should be in the kernel and open source drivers in October, hopefully. I'm not sure if the 3450 had UVD, I have a suspicion that came in around the 4000 series. But, if you want to watch 720p HD TV signal from your Linux computer, you may be able to do so slightly more efficiently than with your 3450.

(This is from when I looked at it some years ago - I hope what I understood then and remember now is correct; but AGP was a long time ago and I'm not overfurnished in the brain department so may have the wrong end of the stick.)

riviera74 wrote:

To answer the fan vs. video card question, the fan seized up and died. The video card itself stopped sending a clean signal once I got to the Windows XP splash screen. The color would go bad and then the picture itself would deteriorate and the system would not boot at all. I then replaced that HD3450 with a really old Radeon 9600XT I had lying around in a anti-static bag and swapped the cards. The 9600XT worked fine, but the refresh rate was extremely slow because the card could not handle 1680*1050 well and it refreshed slowly. That points to too little Video RAM (the HD3450 has 512MB; the 9600XT has 128MB). The purchase of the GeForce 6200 was essentially an emergency buy because I had a lot of work due early next week and waiting for a replacement was not an option. (The 6200 has 512MB VRAM.).

The 9600XT,a very good card,came with 256MB of VRAM.

Dude you need a new computer. 3rd world country people have better computer than you.

atcrank wrote:

Here is a small situation for which your 6200 may have an advantage (until October): simple video decode using VDPAU in (for example) MythTV in Linux. I saw (via the shortbread) in Phoronix that AMD have released code to expose the UVD under VDPAU, and more recently, the power management too. They should be in the kernel and open source drivers in October, hopefully. I'm not sure if the 3450 had UVD, I have a suspicion that came in around the 4000 series. But, if you want to watch 720p HD TV signal from your Linux computer, you may be able to do so slightly more efficiently than with your 3450.

(This is from when I looked at it some years ago - I hope what I understood then and remember now is correct; but AGP was a long time ago and I'm not overfurnished in the brain department so may have the wrong end of the stick.)

All Radeon HDs with the (possible?) exception of the 2900 series had a UVD block. Once that support is in and working the 3450 wouldn't be bad for a home theater PC, but I wouldn't use it for much more than that and desktop compositing.

What I'm baffled by is the assertion that the 9600XT "refreshed slowly" at 1680x1050. I wouldn't doubt that the 3450's featureset is better at this point, but there's no reason a 9600XT shouldn't offer a decent experience for basic desktop use unless there's something physically wrong with it...

marvelous wrote:

Dude you need a new computer. 3rd world country people have better computer than you.

Be nice, people keep old rigs alive for lots of reasons. He asked a question, and we've all told him that he's basically downgraded. No need to tell him he's worse off than a "third world country [person]," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.

He means that people with no money, no technology, and very little opportunity to obtain either have better computers than he does. Just... just in case you didn't understand the allusion and weren't being sarcastic.

Got a used powerbook back in the day for a Kenyan who did IT-type work. Didn't hear back from him after the revolts during their election a few years back. Hope he's still alive.

Reason why I'm unsure about the last nvidia series to work on AGP is because I also was looking at PCI cards at the time. How's this for irony? THERE ARE FASTER PCI CARDS OUT THAN AGP. AMD went to the 5xxx series and nvidia went to the 8xxx/9xxx/GTxxx series. And they are stupid expensive.

Scrotos wrote:

He means that people with no money, no technology, and very little opportunity to obtain either have better computers than he does. Just... just in case you didn't understand the allusion and weren't being sarcastic.

Got a used powerbook back in the day for a Kenyan who did IT-type work. Didn't hear back from him after the revolts during their election a few years back. Hope he's still alive.

Reason why I'm unsure about the last nvidia series to work on AGP is because I also was looking at PCI cards at the time. How's this for irony? THERE ARE FASTER PCI CARDS OUT THAN AGP. AMD went to the 5xxx series and nvidia went to the 8xxx/9xxx/GTxxx series. And they are stupid expensive.

It was just an insensitive remark. Figured he needed to be called out on it.

And there are faster PCI cards - nominally - but the bandwidth limitations of vanilla PCI are horrible. Heck, I'd forgotten about them entirely...

BTW, the 8600XT I had only has 128MB VRAM, not 256MB VRAM.

axeman wrote:

marvelous wrote:

Dude you need a new computer. 3rd world country people have better computer than you.

Said the guy with a C2D and 2gigs of ram.

Maybe he lives in a 3rd world country.

riviera74 wrote:

BTW, the 8600XT I had only has 128MB VRAM, not 256MB VRAM.

That points to too little Video RAM (the HD3450 has 512MB; the 9600XT has 128MB).

riviera74


What are you on about?...the 8600XT
The 9600XT had 256MB of VRAM.

maybe yours has 256MB, but my 9600xt does not only 128MB here

TR's review sample also had only 128MB of memory:

http://techreport.com/review/5768/ati-r ... ics-card/2

None of that would ever touch the Radeon 9500 Pro, which I had with a flashed BIOS to enable the dormant memory controllers, so it was basically a Radeon 9700 that I got for like $130 less. That was the day...

I just choked on my drink!

Ah, gold!

Game_boy wrote:

What are the advantages of this GeForce 6200 over the Radeon HD 3450?

hahahahahahahaha

I think game_boy's remark explains my feelings about this thread.

I bought a passive 5500 agp, 5 years ago. And it was considered obsolete back then.

If you have to keep that computer get a PCI video card. Zotac makes a few more recent Geforce based cards. I would, however, get an extended warranty from the seller as I've found Zotac's QC to be spotty.