Poor Performance of the FX5500

TheGreatGrapeApe · Mar 17, 2004

Well most of us thought the FX5500 would find itself somewhere between the FX5200 and the FX5600.

In fact it seems to be far too often BELOW the FX5200 and below even the R8500 and GF4ti in most cases. Sad thing is that the UT2K4 demo puts the R8500 ahead of it in all 'playable' situations. And the GF4ti is right beside the R8500 (depending on resolution they swap spots). Tomb Raider is unplayable using PS2.0, and forcing PS 1.1/1.4 the Older cards run all over this ill-prepared contender.

Not really worth a second look when there are still GF4tis out there.

<A HREF="http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?lp=de_en&url=http://www.hartware.net/review_386_1.html" target="_new">Translated (through babel) German site with the review</A>

The ModFathers thoroughly trounce it with the seemingly out of place FX5950, FX5900XT and FX5700;

<A HREF="http://www.themodfathers.jolt.co.uk/?page=&action=show&id=8264" target="_new">http://www.themodfathers.jolt.co.uk/?page=&action=show&id=8264</A>

- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp (or internet account) ! - RED GREEN GA to SK :evil:

baldurga · Mar 17, 2004

I know low end cards are this, LOW end cards. But I was expecting some serious performance increase with new generations. As tech advance, design improves, good solutions are found, etc. ALL range of GPU should benefit.

At least even the GF4 MX vs GF3 performed with better ratio than FX5500 vs FX5200. Incredible, I never though I could say something positive about MX series!

IMO now is even more worth to spend extra $ to buy a middle GPU, were performance is more reasonable, and if you ONLY want to surf internet, do some Office, or just a looking for a corporate PC, take a look at integrated solutions. They perform ok for these tasks, are cheaper, and you can always upgrade lately.

Still looking for a good online retailer in Spain :frown:

Spitfire_x86 · Mar 17, 2004

[-peep-] ATI/NVIDIA!

In reality, I don't care how high-end/midrange cards perform. They're always way beyond my budget. The last time we saw real good low end cards in R9000 Pro/9000 age, that's 1.5+ years ago. New performance standard for High-End/Midrange cards set in this period, but no improvement for low end at all. In fact, ATI/nVidia made things lot worse for low end consumers. Market is flooded with 64 bit memory cards. Currently, the best low-end card is R9200, which is slower than R9000 Pro and only as fast as R9000 NP (but more expensive). It's really hard to find 128 bit R9200. All R9200s in my country are R9200SE. I don't understand why R9600 NP can't cost $70 or less. It doesn't require expensive memory and can be cooled without active cooling.

BTW, I don't consider Ti4200 as real low end card, despite it's sub $100 price in USA. In many places of the world, it still costs well over $100 ($135 is the lowest priced Ti4200-8x in my country). Moreover, it was never meant to be a low-end card.

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phial · Mar 17, 2004

why the FCUK did nvidia put a higher number rating than the 5200u if its clocked lower in both mem/gpu, and is the same core?

really, i really honestly dislike that company. sure ATI is no better in some cases (9200le) but, stlil at least MOST of their low end cards actually perform better than their predecesors

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Spitfire_x86 · Mar 17, 2004

really, i really honestly dislike that company. sure ATI is no better in some cases (9200le) but, stlil at least MOST of their low end cards actually perform better than their predecesors

ATI's newer low-end cards are SLOWER than their pervious low end cards.

They only have 2 low end cards at this moment, R9200 and R9200SE. They replaced R9000 Pro and R9000 NP with these cards. R9200 and R9000 NP is exactly same card. And R9200SE is a completely fv©ked up card.

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cleeve · Mar 17, 2004

I believe the clock specs of the 9200 are a couple Mhz more than the 9000 (non-pro).
A 9200 PRO was planned to enter the market later but never emerged. Instead, they gibbled the 9200 into an SE version.

I can't express how completely pathetic it is that the 5500 can't even surpass the 5200. That extra 20Mhz on the core is a joke.

Regardless, Ati and Nvidia really have to get a grip on their partners. All this pathetic 64-bitness is really dragging the industry down. The really stupid part is that the partners are shooting themselves in the foot in alot of cases:

When Joe Shmoe hears what a great card the 9800XT is, and buys himself a 9800SE because as far as he can understand it looks to be basically the same thing, the card maker is losing money... Joe Shmoe might very well have layed down the extra dough on a better card if he knew the difference.

Instead, we've got a market flooded with crippled vomit. This might make some short term cash, but in the long term it's completely irresponsible to market your crap under the same model number as your segment flagships (9800XT/9800SE and 9600XT/9600SE, and the PCX 4300 and GeforceFX 5500).

I pity the poor sonofabitch that upgrades to a 64-bit 5500 from a 128-bit 5200. You just know it's going to happen... damn it, at the very least they could mark them as "SE"s so as not to prod people so far up the keester.

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pauldh · Mar 18, 2004

9200se, 9200 are surely low end cards. But was the 9000 Pro and even the $100+ 9000 really released as true low end cards. Maybe so, i just thought that the abundnce of 7000,7200, 7500 cards selling at the time were ATi's low end, and the 9000 was replacing ATi's formerly high end 8500 series as more of a midrange card. When the first 9000 pro test came out, the R8500 was ATI's fastest card and the 9000 pro was not that far behind. DX9, 9700/9500's were still months away right? Hard to imagine it was to be marketed as a truely low end card. Does this make sense?

ABIT IS7, P4 2.6C, 512MB Corsair TwinX PC3200LL, Radeon 9800 Pro, Santa Cruz, TruePower 430watt

TheGreatGrapeApe · Mar 18, 2004

The funny thing (pathos kind of funny) is that people really only find out how crap their cards are after visiting places like this (until then they likely think the games they play must really be demanding), and really they could have avoided the crap purchase by visiting here first.

I think the whole low-end/entry segment is simply naivete waiting to be exploited. You're right about the R9800SE and FX5700LX/XT/SE giving the company a black eye. Because they $crew over the consumer for the quick buck and despite what we'd like to think it's not only the ill-informed who get stung. People like Powercolor and Gag-n-puke abuse the naming scheme to get one time purchases to build their company (volumes and coffers), so much so that one of them feels the need to change names (I still think PC is keeping Club3D as a boutique brand to bring when PC's rep. is totally used up).

Purchasing a graphics card shouldn't be this hard but it is, the best thing is for people to KNOW what's going on before they buy. However expect a "Why doesn't my FX5500 perform better than my old FX5200Ultra/GF4ti/R9000PRO/etc." question sometime in the near future.

- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp (or internet account) ! - RED GREEN GA to SK :evil:

pauldh · Mar 18, 2004

However expect a "Why doesn't my FX5500 perform better than my old FX5200Ultra/GF4ti/R9000PRO/etc." question sometime in the near future.

LOL, yup it will be fun to see how long that takes.

I sure do feel bad for the people though. Nothing worse than finding out beyond the return period that your hard earned cash just got wasted. At least if it's a reputable retail chain like many of these people would shop at, they should have 30 days to return it.

ABIT IS7, P4 2.6C, 512MB Corsair TwinX PC3200LL, Radeon 9800 Pro, Santa Cruz, TruePower 430watt

Spitfire_x86 · Mar 18, 2004

I believe the clock specs of the 9200 are a couple Mhz more than the 9000 (non-pro).

Not at all, R9000 = 250/200, R9200 = 250/200. The only difference is AGP 8x. And R9200SE is not even 250/200-64bit, it's 200/166-64bit. I don't know if ATI specs differ from card manufacturere specs, but there's not a single R9200 that is clocked higher than 250 and has memory faster than 200 MHz. Heck, there's even R9200 with 64 bit memory, you can call them FAST R9200SE. I can't remember any 64 bit memory R9000.

Gigabyte importers here are now importing and selling only Radeon 9200SE and 15 months ago, they were used to sell R9000 at the same price. Same thing applies for other card brands.

I at least hoped that there would be no 64 bit memory version of FX5500.

GRRRRRRRRRR, 64 bit memory cards make me SICK!!!!

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Spitfire_x86 · Mar 18, 2004

At January 2001, you could find R9000 NP at ~$70. R9200 NPs are selling for the same price at this moment. 15 months = no performance boost for low end, no decrease in price.

R9000 Pro wasn't exactly a low-end card, but it was a lower midrange card. Not a midrange or high-end card. There was cheaper version of R9000 Pro with 64 MB VRAM and little extras.

Even R9000 NP was a great performer for it's time. It was almost as fast comprared to a 1 year old midrange card (GF3 Ti200)

If ATI/nVidia released a value card now that is almost as fast as R9600 Pro, then I would call it a truly good successor of R9000 series.

I really don't understand why R9600 NPs can't cost $70. They aren't more expensive to make than R9200. The performance difference with R9600 Pro is big enough to justify the low price of R9600 NP. Instead, ATI is selling us the R9600 Stinky Edition for this price, which is often slower than R9200

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cryo · Mar 18, 2004

The funny thing (pathos kind of funny) is that people really only find out how crap their cards are after visiting places like this (until then they likely think the games they play must really be demanding), and really they could have avoided the crap purchase by visiting here first.

Tell me about it

. I am trying to show some people how crappy the 5200 are, and to prevent others to buy them, and they are very convinced that they made the greatest deal of their life, and I am just stupid and jealous... Really jealous on their 5200 with my Radeons, 9000 Pro and 9800 Pro :lol:
The funniest thing was that they gave me the link to Tom's Hardware, to show me how good and praised the 5200 was here... after that, I began to doubt that they are able to really understand english :lol:

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- The Wizard of Oz, talking to the Scarecrow

cleeve · Mar 18, 2004

Not at all, R9000 = 250/200, R9200 = 250/200

Yeah, that's how it played out. But I think I remember reading a bunch of material that stated when the 9200 was launched it was supposed to have a faster core than the 9000.

In reality, none of the partners bothered to clock it higher.

ALso sinteresting: If you look on Ati's site, under "gamer" products, they still have the 9200 PRO listed even though it was never made.

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cryo · Mar 18, 2004

hmmm, that's why I never found 9200Pro's on shops.... I was really looking for one, to compare it to a 9000Pro (even if they were supposed to be almost identical)

"I cannot give you a brain, but I can give you a diploma"
- The Wizard of Oz, talking to the Scarecrow

HardWareBoss · Mar 18, 2004

CRAP :frown: New vid card from nVidia. Waiting before I buy. Will it be better than my TI 4200. It should be since it's a FX5500 and it's brand new. The number is higher than FX5200 SOOOO it should perform better Joe Avg. I'll run to the local store and buy it. Wait KNOW you tell me my TI4200 is a better CARD. Those dirty Rats at nVidia. Messing up the Vid Card market again. With another piece of CRAP

Looks like I'm going to buy ATI.

HardWareBoss · Mar 18, 2004

Waiting on ATI to lower 9800Pro to $150 US.

TheGreatGrapeApe · Mar 18, 2004

They are the embodiment of BATHOS not PATHOS.

There's a little English for them. :evil:

Yeah, seriously it really peeved me when people linked to the VGA Card Buyer's Guide to try and show how the FX5600s were better than the R9600Pro. Seriously that review alone caused so much BS confussion it wasn't funny. Look at the results/recommendations of that in comparison to what we in here were saying at the time, and compare that to what we find to be the case in real world performance now, and see who more closely predicted the future.

FX5600 as a best buy, hah! Freakin' thing crawls along, that's why they redesigned the FX5700 with 3 vertex engines, couldn't make that dog of a chip design work even with a revision and super fast memory.

- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp (or internet account) ! - RED GREEN GA to SK :evil:

TheGreatGrapeApe · Mar 18, 2004

Waiting on ATI to lower 9800Pro to $150 US.

That may be a long wait. It may quickly hit those levels just before being pulled off the shelf. I wouldn't expect it to last or be replaced at much below $200. With the new cards coming in they will focus on the price drops of the R9800XT I would think.

If it's going to happen it will likely happen around April when nV launches the NV40, so that ATI can have a PR boost from NEWEGG offering them at $150. It'll be something like that, but don't expect them to last, so you better check the bargain flyer/newegg/pricewatch every day once April hits.

- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp (or internet account) ! - RED GREEN GA to SK :evil:

pauldh · Mar 18, 2004

Do you really think they will hold off on 64-bit versions. Me hates them too, but I for one doubt they will be extinct anytime soon. How would you like to spend $100 US on this beauty? <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-170-039&depa=1" target="_new">http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-170-039&depa=1</A>

ABIT IS7, P4 2.6C, 512MB Corsair TwinX PC3200LL, Radeon 9800 Pro, Santa Cruz, TruePower 430watt

kinney · Mar 18, 2004

This naming scheme stuff is typical marketing faire.
We all know this is how companies in capitalism do things. Should be used to it after living with it for 20, 30 or 40 years of our lives.
Is anyone truly surprised?

Thats why we have a saying
BUYER BEWARE

The only thing I'm disappointed about, is that the performance of the low end cards seems to be stifling.
It'd be nice to see gains across all segments, but if they can make money doing things cheaper then they will.
There needs to be more competition that is willing to boost the lower end, if the market wants it.... everyone will offer more performance in the lower end.
I just dont know if the lower end DEMANDS (with their money of course) more performance unlike the high end, so they get away with it.
But again, oh well.

I didnt expect my supercharged 2003 Chevy Monte Carlo SS to outrun my 1968 Chevelle SS 427.
Sometimes markets change and others gain instead.

Bottom line is- companies profit off of stupid people, and smart companies STILL profit off of smart people.

2sense.

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Support the terrorists, vote democrat

Spitfire_x86 · Mar 18, 2004

How would you like to spend $100 US on this beauty? http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-170-039&depa=1

*vomits*

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TheGreatGrapeApe · Mar 19, 2004

And that's really the thing, we expected the FX5500 to move the FX5200 ahead a bit. And nothing.

Considering that in far too many situations the FX5200 will lose to a GF4 MX 460 and the likes it's crap the the FX5500 has simply maintained that status quo for the low end. Brutal!

Seriously the FX5200U performed ok for the low-end but was priced above the FX5600non-ultra(non-SE) in most cases. Seriously the low end people are getting the short end of any performance gains and technology improvements.

The FX5900XT/SE/PV/LX/ElCamino are very nice when properly, and great for the mid-level user. But the low end sucks all around. MAybe with the introduction of the RV370 then nV will have something to compete against in that range and we may see that segment get some performance focus. But if the FX5500 isn't better than the FX5200, then that means it's going to suck in next gen games, and compared to the FX5200 it's supposed to be a next gen card! Another F'in 'DX9' card that can't actually do anything with DX9 is not what the market needs. Seriously why even bother, just keep selling the FX5200. Of course marketing is the answer, people will get sucked into thinking that the FX5500 is better than the FX5200 (when in fact it's the same or worse and an FX5200Ultra would kill it dead!), and they will get all the uninformed consumers who have been waiting because they DID do their homework and knew the FX5200 sucked.

I agree Caveat Emptor, but seriously often it takes a while after the cards are out to get good reviews like the one above that shows it against the R8500/FX5200/GF4ti,etc.

Seriously if you're a GF4mx owner and they only compare it to tthe FX5700, FX5900, R9600 and R9800, how the heck would you really know that it's not a worthy upgrade. Hopefully more benchies like the above get out there, and more people read them. But it does suck that the GF4ti, for yet another generation, is the only good buy from nV at the under $100US level. I wouldn't recommend an FX5200 or 5500 over the GF4ti 4200 to ANY GAMER, EVER. The FX5200/5500 is only good for someone who want to see DX8.1/DX9 demos (not make them look good), and needs the clarity of the 400mhz RAMDACs (but then I'd suggest the R9XXX series again personally for image issues).

Really it's gotta be the great unwashed who are making this profitable and continuing the stupidity. Hopefully the Intel EG3, ATI RS4XX, and new SIA and VIA integrated grpahics will kill this crap level of performance.

HEHE Monte Carlo! :tongue: GrandNational-Wannabe! :tongue:

The new Dodge Hemi powered MagnumRT Station Wagon is ridiculous fast, and redefines the under $30,000 market. But then again we've got the new Mustang and GTO to look forward to too.

Markets change, but the FX5200/5500 SUCK! It affects the whole market. Like I said hopefully the new integrateds and RV370 shake up the segment a bit, because none of these crappy cards (R9200 inclueded) are going to make any kind of dint in the lastest games, let alone the HL2/D]|[ generation. 20FPS in x2 at 1024x768 probably sounds like it's barely acceptable, but that's an AVERAGE, that means that it's highly likely that the framerate spikes/valleys take it well below 10fps which will be extremely noticeable. And don't forget TombRaider at 10fps/24fps AVG and 32fps n UT2K4 sounds OK at first, but it doesn't bring any card to it's knees. Imagine these things with FARCRY, COD, and other truely intensive games. Brutal, just BRUTAL! I have no doubt that this poor performance WILL affect game sales to those who got $crewed over thinking they got a 'capable' card when they bought it. While a game may no longer SUPPORT the GF4mx, I doubt the supported FX5200/5500 will play any better.

This part of the industry disgusts and depresses me because there is no bright side to it.

EDIT: Bet you wish your Chevelle was an SS LS6 - 454. :evil:

- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp (or internet account) ! - RED GREEN GA to SK :evil:

Edited by TheGreatGrapeApe on 03/18/04 05:45 PM.

TheGreatGrapeApe · Mar 19, 2004

Could be worse you could be buying <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-121-167&depa=1" target="_new">THIS</A> for $66, or the <A HREF="http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20040217200357.html" target="_new">PCX version</A> for twice as much!

- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp (or internet account) ! - RED GREEN GA to SK :evil:

pauldh · Mar 19, 2004

Cool, the 4000, that's like almost as good as 4200 right. And The 4300 is a step above both? LOL :lol:

Edit: Me thinks the $100 5600 is the better deal since it is 1000 higher than my friends 4600, and his computer is fast!

ABIT IS7, P4 2.6C, 512MB Corsair TwinX PC3200LL, Radeon 9800 Pro, Santa Cruz, TruePower 430wattEdited by Pauldh on 03/18/04 08:15 PM.

GeneticWeapon · Mar 19, 2004

Could be worse you could be buying THIS for $66, or the PCX version for twice as much!

It has a really good looking box...they'll sell ton's of 'em.

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Poor Performance of the FX5500

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