Albatron FX 5200 Ultra

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

Conclusions and Final Thoughts:

Well, overall we liked the card. We honestly weren't expecting much from it in terms of performance, but it did do well in our tests. Watching the benchmarks, most users could theoretically play games that have great graphics like UT2K3 but if you are purchasing this card for you gaming machine, perhaps you should spend the extra money to get something like the FX5600 Ultra. Overall the card is good for end-users seeking decent performance at a budget price. The major features that make this card appealing is its DirectX9 support. Other features that have been provided by Albatron such as the excellent cooling allow budget users to squeeze some extra performance out the card making gaming a more enjoyable experience.

There are probably some people reading this review thinking, "These guys are idiots. How could they possibly have liked this card?" It's simple, the card does exactly what it was designed to do. When NVIDIA released the FX5200, they only had a few goals in mind. They wanted to release a card that was affordable to the average user that support the latest technology and gave decent performance with some nice features. This card fulfills those goals. It's not intended to be the fastest video card or a mind blowing performer, it's all about cost vs. performance.

As for Albatron, they have really done a nice job with this card. Adding the high quality cooling components was a good idea to aim this card at the lower-enthusiast market. There were only a few things missing from the package that we felt should have been added like the DVI to analog converter. The software bundle was not anything to write home about but hey, what do you expect for $145? So overall we are left with a good impression from this Albatron card and look forward to reviewing more products from them. They are definitely an up and coming company that is coming strong after the enthusiast market as we saw when we review their 865PE motherboard. Maybe we will get a chance to look at the FX5900 Ultra since it is the fastest video card available.

Overall 8.5/10