How good is a Radeon 9200?

[delorean700]

Ive read threads on here, and not very many of them are about the 9200. I have a GIGABYTE ATI RADEON 9200 Video Card, 128MB DDR, 128-bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "GV-R92128DH"
which seems pretty good to me, but not many people buy it. Is it good, or does it really suck?

[Mr.Radar]

They really suck (though the SE edition sucks even more). The Radeon 9100 & 8500 are much better cards (for cheap) or the 9600 for DX9 support.

[delorean700]

well, its good enough for me, your probably just jealous

[DDR-PIII]

whatever man, if you didnt wanna hear the truth about your card why did you even ask ?

i knew by not even looking at your profile about how old oyu were, just simply by your reply.... live with it, your card sucks, deal with it.

[Cyrix_2k]

Yeah, the 9200 & 9000 suck. They're crippled DX9 compatible versions of the 8500 if I recall. The only thing worse is the SE's or sh*tty editions.

BTW, we're not jealous, especially witha 9800pro... I have an AIW 8500DV and an AIW 9800 Pro. All I can say is that the 9800 kicks my 8500's ass. It's faster then what I ever expected it to be stock. Soon it'll be even faster when I get my Peltier setup on it...

[Valk]

Its good enough if all you want it for is generally GUI accelleration, video playback accelleration or light gaming. they nutered it for dx9, but it can still play the games. albiete at a lower detail level.

An 8500 would be a better card, but they are difficult to find. I have one on my desk here that needs to be repaired, but trying to find one in the classifieds is horrible. people want like.. over $100 for one and its just not worth it when a 9200 pro or somthing similar is cheaper than that.

I think you might have been better to save up and get a 9600 series, but in reality, if the card makes you happy, then who cares if somone else thinks it sucks. You have what you need/wanted and high end computer parts are a waste of money :P

[Agent_Mull]

Yeah dude. If you didnt want to know how bad your card is, don't ask. And stop giving us 15yr olds bad raps.

[Cyrix_2k]

Originally posted by Agent_Mull
Yeah dude. If you didnt want to know how bad your card is, don't ask. And stop giving us 15yr olds bad raps.

Yeah, the 9200 is honestly a fine card IF IT DOES WHAT YOU WANT. But in comparison to other cards of it's price range you could of done better...

BTW, I keep forgetting I'm 15 now, lol. B-day was 12 days ago.

[johan851]

Wow...you guys could be a little easier on him. You don't have to tear him down...shoot, it's a video card! *shakes head* I'm a little surprised. A defensive answer wasn't the best one, but if I was in his shoes I'd likely do the same.

Sure, it's not a very good card, and better choices could have been made. I'm pretty good at this computer stuff by now, but you know what I built when I wanted a sweet computer? A K6-2 533mhz. This is during the cheap Duron 1GHz days. We all start somewhere.

Now matter how old he is, I can't blame him for being defensive. His VIDEO CARD (stay in perspective) might not be top notch, but offer some constructive advice. You can always upgrade, you can always sell the card in the classifieds, and heck, you might still be able to return the thing.

Valk - thanks for being decent.

Delorean - Welcome to the forums. I'm sorry your welcome wasn't better. Learning about hardware takes a while, and you've got a fair ways to go. It's not like any of us weren't in your shoes. :) The first step is hanging out in a positive forum, like this one almost invariably is.

[sleepyzman]

I started out with a 9200. I will honestly tell u it IS a poor performer save a couple of bucks and upgrade you will definitely see a improvement with a 9500 or 9600 for a few dollers more than what u probably paid for the 9200 sell it and upgrade!

[DDR-PIII]

haha i was just kidding about the age thing guys ;), but i could tell he was "younger" :)anyway who cares:) i may have been a bit hard with my answer/post :) sorry.

[delorean700]

Well, actually im only a new "member" to the forums. Before I registered it would always say "Sorry but that e-mail address is not aloud" or something. About the 9200, (trying not to be defensive) what made me mad was that some people assume that I want the card for "Hardcore Gaming", sure I play games, but I'm not a hardcore gamer. The 9200 is actually wayyyy better than I thought it would be, but thats coming from a guy who had a 345mhz, 4mb integrated video memory. But I did make some good decisions on my first build, maybe I didnt put all of my money into the video card, but I did buy 512mb PC3200 RAM, and I love this 2500+ Barton, once again this is still coming from a guy who used old-school machines for years. Next time I will buy a better card. I just dislike the fact that I always wake up in a cold sweat to find that my hardware is out-dated :P. The 9200 was good back in its day I guess.

[Agent_Mull]

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

[Cyrix_2k]

Well in that context the 9200 must be feel like an Enzo (0-60 in 3.6 secs if I recall correctly) to you!

BTW, I still use an OC'd Cyrix MK-II @ 300mhz w/ 4mb ATI RageIIc integrated graphics. It's actually an old emachines. It still works fine, and even runs well with XP PRO installed :eek: I don't even think 3dmark would run on that thing...

[galador]

God, now I feel old, my first computer was a Comadore 6400 ( I forgot how to spell it, must be age catching up to me, LOL). I did have alot of fun on it though.

[delorean700]

I had Win XP on my old 345, it ran ok but not the best. I tried to oc my 9200, but the screen was choppy and broken up like a checkerboard, so i had to set it back to default.

My first computer was a 1993 Packard Bell, 66mhz, 1mb video memory. Thats not too long ago, but im still fairly young at 15yrs old. But that was still 10 1/2 years ago, i was about 4-5yrs old when i had it. I was very young then, but i would always play my fav game "Microsoft Space Simulator"

[Sophisticated]

you can find an 8500 128mb at www.pricewatch.com look under cards- video...it isnt hard at all to find

[stratcatprowlin]

8500?
Nah,If hes gonna upgrade,which I dont think he is because he's content with what he has,he should at least go with the 9600 series.

[Valk]

The problem with the low end stuff, is that you really have to realize, the developers arent going to do you any favours if your looking to buy their low end stuff. in many cases, they are simply stock that didnt conform to the standards placed on the mid to high end components.
why would you engineer three or four chips? it costs money to do that, when all you have to do is say, oh, this one wont run at this speed, or with these specs, squish, sell it as this or that.
the company still makes money, even if they are selling defective parts ^^;;

I dont know, If i had the money in my hands and a way to order online, i would buy a 8500LE. I have had like 3 8500LE cards and they are fantastic cards. the only thing that will ourperform them in their class is the ti 4600 *at stock* Ti 4200 cards can, but generally, have to be overclocked to win by any great margin.
Thats another topic that i think really needs to be mentioned.. its all well and good to quote this pricewatch site for prices and stuff. however, i want to state, from my own experience that its not always possible to order stuff online.
Not all parents are willing to buy stuff online for their "15 year old kids"

but, even with that said, I can say i wouldnt mind a 9200 now. Compared to my geforce 2 onboard, it would be godly, and it woulndt suck my main memory down. but, money doesnt just grow randomly.

Getting your start in computer hardware is time consuming. it really takes patience and a lot of reading to pick it all up. first thing you will want to do is disregard all the passionate opinions. the only thing that matters is the facts.

[delorean700]

Well actually, I did buy all the parts from the internet. From newegg.com. I used my own money, which I saved for years. this thing only cost me $450 to build, thats including everything. But why do 9200s suck? Give me a more reasonable answer instead of "They really suck". At the time, 9600s and 9800s were wayyy out of my reach.

[stratcatprowlin]

Dont let these guys get to ya man!

It dont suck If you like it.

[David]

Originally posted by delorean700
Well actually, I did buy all the parts from the internet. From newegg.com. I used my own money, which I saved for years. this thing only cost me $450 to build, thats including everything. But why do 9200s suck? Give me a more reasonable answer instead of "They really suck". At the time, 9600s and 9800s were wayyy out of my reach.

Suck is the wrong word. 9200s are just simply not as fast as a lot of cards out there. Now, a 4MB PCI card would suck :D

As stated a zillion times here (warning: possible slight exaggeration) if it does what you want it to, then it doesnt suck. Heck, I still run a 64MB AGP4x DX8 Ti4200 in my main rig... :eek: ... but it works fine for me.

EDIT: The reason there arent many threads about 9200s here is because they aren't generally bought if people are into heavy intensive gaming. Most people here who are overclocking cards and so on are looking for as much performance as possible.

[PottaCoola]

why doesnt someone give him benchs for the 9200 so he can see how it performs himself. i manaeged to find this bench test with a 9200 in so you can see how well your card performs.

edt:

http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030311/geforcefx-5600-5200-03.html#unreal_tournament_2003

and heres another bench, yours is the R 9200
http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/vga-charts-03.html#unreal_tournament_2003

[delorean700]

Well, by looking at those frame rates, I can see that p4 had a slower frame rate on the 9200. I have an AMD 2800+. I don't play games such as halo, unreal tournament 2003, etc.... I like to play nfsu, medal of honor, flight simulator, vice city, etc.... And my settings are usually 800x600

[theELVISCERATOR]

Originally posted by delorean700
Well, by looking at those frame rates, I can see that p4 had a slower frame rate on the 9200. I have an AMD 2800+. I don't play games such as halo, unreal tournament 2003, etc.... I like to play nfsu, medal of honor, flight simulator, vice city, etc.... And my settings are usually 800x600

those were diff benchmarks with diff results.
they are not comparable.

nevertheless the 9200 is at the bottom end of things

[Cyrix_2k]

Just to give you an idea of performance, Tom's got ~7k '01 3dmarks with the 9200. I hit 12k on my OC'd AIW 8500DV. The AIW 8500DV is a pretty slow card too...

[bigdaddyyc]

I have a sapphire radeon 9200 128bit 128mb just like yourself. Only reason i have this thing because i dont want to spend $500 on a video card, even though it doesnt allow me to play newest games with the eye candy enabled. I was happy with it like yourself last year when i bought it, but now with games like farcry i have to settle for putting all settings the lowest possible and it just completely ruins the game expierence.

overclocking: They dont overclock all that well since most ati card makers just put one heatsink with no fan, since they run cool as it is.

[delorean700]

Mine has both heatsink and fan. They are both stock. It came with a program called V-Tuner, I don't use any of the overclocking tools that come with it, but I can control fan speeds with it.

[UnseenMenace]

Wow some of these answers and attitudes are a little harsh to say the least, not to mention a little incorrect imho... The origional question was how good is the Radeon 9200 and it seems strange that nobody has yet asked at what ?

Nvidia along with ATI are the major producers of graphical chipsets, this does not however mean that the card in question is being used for a gaming purpose. Before stating that any card sucks or is worse than another I would suggest that the what the user requires from them is taken into consideration.... I for example can not tell the difference in performance between my Gainward Geforce 3 Ti 500 Golden sample and my Sapphire ATI Card due to the fact that I do not play games and I prefer to use Linux... What difference does DX9 capabilty or performance have to me ?
In fact I personally prefer Matrox cards as I personally believe that they produce a better desktop image and crisper fonts.

A little more thought or consideration in this thread would be nice, not to mention people backing statements up with information rather than remarks which serve no purpose

[Xr400r]

From my new and very humble opinion...I bought an ATI 9200 from Newegg
card (http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=14-125-113&depa=0)

This was just to get me by about a month and a half
Install was easy and overclock was easy and decent for my newbie effort
futuremark (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7851846)
futuremark (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=2556131)

I don't play as much as some but Call of Duty looks good, Sacred looks good, Mech Mercs is great.

I downloaded both Farcry demo's and played through them on the auto detect settings, pretty much all low and 1024x768x32. I really did not think they would play at all but the framerates were decent. Highs in the 90fps's dipping to the mid 50's. Very playable but with almost no special stuff :( Start turning stuff up and framerates fall pretty quick.

[Xr400r]

309/231 on the overclock FYI.

[PerlAddict]

I actually thought about picking up a 9200 to let my girlfriend's brother play Halo and BF:V on my secondary rig.

512MB Ram, NF7, DLT3C 1700+, and ... a Leadtek TNT2 Ultra 32MB video card right now.

So if you want to talk about sucky video cards (and I just upgraded from that card to a 9800Pro in my main rig a month ago), I can tell you all about them. I made a jump similar to yours (hadn't upgraded for 5 years), and when you're being thrifty, "way better than before" is definitely worth the price of "the most awesome ever" in terms of how it compares to what you're used to.