Albatron FX 5200 Ultra

Company: Albatron
Product: FX5200 Ultra
Street Price: ~$145
Date Reviewed: July 24, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

Introduction:

Albatron has worked closely with NVIDIA since the release of the GeForce 4 line of video cards. Since then, the company has designed cards using all of NVIDIA's latest chipsets and more recently, the GeForce FX line. Albatron has been noted as producing some of the better video cards in terms of features and overclocking. Today, we are going to take a look at the Albatron GeForce FX 5200 Ultra video card. It is the budget chipset of the FX line but still offers features such as DirectX 9 support.

This may not be the ultimate gaming card for the next generation games such as Doom III or Half Life 2 but it does exactly what it was designed to do, especially for the cost. You have to keep in mind that not all end-users are gamers and that some just want a decent card that can handle most of their everyday tasks with maybe a hint of gaming. This card is capable of running some of the great looking games like Unreal Tournament 2003 but it isn't going to be able to handle all of the highest quality settings and resolutions.

One last thing before we move on with the review. We do not really have any budget cards to compare this one to. We do receive quite a few e-mails stating that the comparisons that we do are not right. Well, if we had all the hardware available we would show you the numbers, but we don't so you'll just have to bear with us.

Specifications:

• Grapics Engine: GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
• Memory Size: 128MB DDR
• Memory Bus: 128bit
• Engine Clock: 325MHz
• RAMDAC: 350MHz
• Max. Resolution: 2048X1536@75Hz
• Bus Standard: AGP 8X / 4X
• VGA Output: Yes
• TV Tuner: No
• TV-out: Yes
• Video-in: No
• DVI: Yes
• WINDVD: No
• WIN DVR: No
• WINDVD Creator: Yes
• Power DVD: No
• Power Director: No
• 3D GaMES: N/A

* Specifications taken from Albatron's website.