As far as DirectX 9 is concerned, the NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200 does not have the oomph to deliver the goods. To be fair, it could all be due to the fact it was under-clocked and its AGP sideband support was disabled. That’s why we will take another look at the Go5200 today. This time, reclocked and with AGP sideband support! Let’s see if it finally lives up to expectations! Link : Maxxing Out The GeForce Fx Go5200!
question I've been using my satellite m35 with the nvidia GPU for a couple weeks, and I've been pretty happy with the performance so far. I'm not a huge PC gamer but I like to keep my options open. Just a question because I'm new to the world of laptops...is it possible to get a new graphics card in the future like you can swap out graphics cards in a PC? Or are you pretty much stuck with what you got? Just wondering for the future. Thanks! -jonathan
Well, GPU upgrades are not possible in notebooks, not that I know of anyway. I can't even add more RAM to the Go5200 in this notebook! But the good news is at least the Go5200 has full DirectX 9 support. Game support should not be a problem. Only speed is a problem. To that end, you can always use a lower resolution and detail level. Please note that I used maximum texture detail and a resolution of 1024x768 in the tests.
i believe you could for Dells because they've custom designed their GPUs into daughterboards. but as for other manufacturers... sad but no... it's not possible.
Problem using the RivaTuner for the Nvidia FX Go5200 Hi, It seems that I can't change the speed of the Go5200 with my Dell Inspiron 8600 notebook. I tried to do as the article said, but when I open te RivaTuner I can't even change a thing. How can I make these manual changes if I can't even change a thing? Anyone ave any idea if I forget to do something? Thanks in advance!!!
read the documentation, it can appear that way, i had to rtfm before I found out how to do it properly. It isn't a very intuitive app
Re: Problem using the RivaTuner for the Nvidia FX Go5200 Hello Paxarchangel, When you open up RivaTuner, you will be at the Main screen. You will notice two different Customize... buttons. The top Customize button is for low-level settings, which is not applicable to the Go5200 due to its PowerMizer feature. Click on the lower Customize button. A selection of icons will appear. Select the first icon - System Settings. This allows driver-level overclocking features for your Go5200. Hope that helps you some!
Nvidia drivers Thanks Adrian for the reply, it did help me greatly, I was trying to change these setting in the first customize arrow, which seems to be frozen, so it did work with the second customize arrow! I have another quick question, I was wondering what is the difference between the Detonator drivers, the forceware drivers and the other nVidia drivers since I want to check if I have the lattest version of the drivers. I noticed that The Nvidia FX 5200Go drivers are available for the forceware version and the Detonator, which should I download? Thanks in advance!
Re: Nvidia drivers They are the same thing. ForceWare is the new name NVIDIA chose for the drivers. It replaces the Detonator name.
Great article-unfortunate results Hey, great article! I have a Toshiba Satellite P-15-479 2.8 P4HT (865PE chipset) w/ the FX Go5200 w/ 64mb of VRAM, 8x APG, side band addressing enabled and 1024 mb of RAM. I used Powerstrip to overclock the GPU from the stock memory speed of 200mhz to 220mhz and was able to obtain some improvement in performance, around 150 more 3DMark03 point (i.e. it went from approx 1000 points to around 1150). If I push the memory speeds to 230mhz, 3DMark crashed. I didn't change the core speed. I sure wish your insightful article had come out a couple months ago, when I bought the laptop. I definately would have rethought my purchase (I like to play games). I was suckered by the impressive looking component stats, but had no real benchmarks to judge them by. Your articles regarding the FX Go5200 provided very accurate and usable information and should be noted by anyone who is thinking about buying a laptop with this GPU for gaming purposes. For around a $100 to $200 more than I got my P-15 for, one can get a machine w/ an Mobile ATI 9600 Pro w/ 128 VRAM. The 3DMark03 benchmarks for notebooks packing those GPU's runs around 2000+ points (based on FutureMarks project ORB database). I think that is a significant enough performance difference to justify the added expense (gamer's perspective, of course). Don't get me wrong. I think Toshiba makes a great laptop and overall, I've been very happy, since I often play non-graphically intense strategy games. Still, given the Nvidia hype, I expected more. Shame on you Nvidia! Thanks for the advice and keep up the good work.
Hello canismagnus, Your Go5200's memory clock speed was only 200MHz (400MHz DDR)?? That's really slow. Too bad we cannot change our mobile GPUs, eh?
I got the memory clock speed and core speed backward on my previous posting, sorry . According to the 3dMark03 Demo program I've been using lists the GPU's memory speed at 405 mhz and the core speed at 199.1, also the Nvidia driver is version 4.4.8.9. It was the core speed I pushed up instead of the memory, whoops, I didn't have your article in front of me! I did get the increase I reported in my previous posting, but, in the end, I reverted to the default settings. Coincidentally, I had a problem with another program which led me to believe my experiments in overclocking had messed up my laptop somehow. I haven't had the courage to begin experimenting again. I think I know just enough about my Toshiba to mess it up real bad. I had better read your article(s) a few more times and download Rivatuner, instead of Powerstrip, before I tinker with the settings again. In the end, the computer seems to run games fine, albeit at medium resolutions, and performs pretty much as I expected. It is a laptop after all. Also, your salient observation that the Go5200 is 100% DirectX 9 compliant and will run current and future games made me feel better about getting it. Thanks. Not to get off topic too much, but I also just recently read your review of the Toshiba M-30 you purchased. Once again, great job! You really offered the consumer's perspective and I appreciate the highly detailed account of your purchase. I was expecting a mere one page write-up, but you shared the entire experience as well as providing very specific technical information. Awesome stuff! Thanks . If there is anything ya'll would like to know about a Satellite P15-S479, or my experience as a recent laptop consumer, please don't hesitate to ask. I feel like I owe you one. CanisMagnus
Hello CanisMagnus, Sounds like Toshiba is using the core speed of 199MHz and memory speed of 405MHz for all their Go5200-equipped notebooks. Reclocking it should not cause any problems if you do it step-by-step. Reclock the GPU and the memory separately and keep testing the system stability. It takes time but eventually, you will know what are your Go5200's maximum stable clock speeds. I will usually keep the GPU downclocked a little from those stable settings for a little margin of safety. But once you have the GPU clocked at those stable settings, you should not encounter any stability issues due to your reclocking. While the Go5200 is certainly DirectX9-compliant, the lack of power is certainly worrisome. Highly recommended that you reclock it.
Thanks for the encouragement. I used RivaTuner to overclock the GPU to 220 core/ 460 memory and everything seems stable. I was able to run the 3dMark03 demo at higher clock speeds, but the computer tended to lock-up when playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein (RTCW)-that's probably the most graphically intense game I own. In the end, I was able to acheive about a 10% increase in the 3DMark03 demo scores. Prior to overclocking I'd average around 950, after overclocking, it averages 1070. While tweaking, I was able to get it to run the 3DMark03 demo at 240 core/ 500 memory and was able to break the 1200 point mark once. Unfortunately, that amount of overclocking tended to make RTCW crash upon start-up . While browsing other 3DMark03 demo scores on-line, I was horrified to see how poorly the desktop version, the Geforce FX 5200 128mb GPU, performed. I not sure if they had other system problems or what, but the majority of desktop systems with those GPU's scored lower than my laptop! Shocking! Those consumers should demand their money back. What does Nvidia use to test their hardware? They must know that consumers would be benchmarking their GPU's. Is it an actual hardware issue that makes them perform so poorly, or is it a software/driver issue? They perform so much worse than their ATI counterparts at these benchmarks that it seems like a marketing disaster for them (and a performance disaster for us!). The other reviews I've seen regarding the Geforce FX family, mobile chipset or otherwise, have almost always been less than flattering. Anyway, thanks again for the advice! An extra 10% in GPU performance sounds pretty good to me Canis
Well, they are not particularly estatic about the results in my review but what can I say? The Go5200 really performs like that. Reclocking or overclocking is a must. If one is lucky, the Go5200 and its memory may be particularly overclockable. Unfortunately, I'm stuck at 243MHz core and 513MHz memory. I'm not sure about the power consumption, Max_87. But since my Go5200 never reached its rated clock speeds, I guess its power consumption should be lower than what NVIDIA claims.
Hi, I've reclocked the card and scored 1282 3DMarks (but not tested in games). At this moment don't have the values for core and memory, I'll post them as soon as possible. In the NVIDIA control panel my card is detected as Nvidia Fx Go5200 32/64MB but in the driver properties is written clearly that is has 64MB of video memory. So my question is: It is a 64MB card or a 32MB card?
Could Overclocking damage my Dell? I have a Dell 5150. Is it safe to reclock it as described in your review?
Re: Could Overclocking damage my Dell? I'm not sure if the Go5200 in your Dell 5150 is underclocked. You can try using Rivatuner to check the clock speed that it's running at. The Go5200 is rated to run at 300MHz. But like in my case, it can't even reach that rated speed. Your mileage will vary so you will need to experiment to find out. Reclocking has its risks. You should be aware of them if you have read the guide. But if you do things methodically, the risks should be minimal.
