Did I Make A Bad Choice?

[JiveTurkey]

Did I make a bad choice? I just bought a new video card, but I've been recieving criticism from some people. My current card is a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra - "128 MB, AGP 8x/4x, 4 pixels per clock rendering pipeline, up to 16 textures per pass, blistering full screen anti-aliasing, etc. etc."
Note: From Back of Box.

The Video Card I bought: http://www.bfgtech.com/6200OC.html
Did I make a bad choice? I'm worried I spent money on a card that won't make a difference in performance.

Someone told me I should have got something like this instead:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143027

 

[PZEROFGH]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130220

120 dollars, this is the way to go

 

[shenlingstyle]

Erm ya the 6200 isn't the best card. I'm not familiar with it but I know it is very old. The 6600GT is a very good budget-lower-end card. The 6800GS/GT is the next step up, then the 7800GT. Depending on how much you're willing to spend, any of these cards would be a good choice. ATI also has some good budget cards, but I'm not very familiar with them.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Is there anything that is good but not Outrageously expensive with 256 MB?

 

[shenlingstyle]

Hmm made a bad assumption in the last post. I think you only have an AGP slot correct?

The 6800GS AGP version, and yes 256 MB, is coming out soon. You can wait for that. It should be a bit higher than 200 US dollars. The 6800GT AGP is more expensive.

Btw, the memory size doesn't matter as much as you think.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Here, I'm pretty sure this is my (retired) Motherboard.
http://intel.com/design/motherbd/bv2/index.htm

 

[shenlingstyle]

Good news: you have an AGP slot
Bad news: it only supports up to 4x

The most recent AGP cards are capable of running at 8x. I think the 4x cap is going to limit the performance you get out of a good graphics card. Have you considered getting a better motherboard? Or perhaps even a system?

Post the rest of your specs, and what you want to do with your system (i.e. games, graphics, surfing, etc).

 

[PZEROFGH]

4x doesnt limit performance, there really is no big performance difference between 4x and 8x AGP.

get the 6600GT. 256MB of mem doesnt really matter, the Fx5200 cant even use that much it shuold have like 64mb lol it bottlenecks the gpu LOL

 

[JiveTurkey]

I have considered getting a new Motherboard and Processor, and I'm going to get those next.
Motherboard: http://intel.com/design/motherbd/bv2/index.htm
Processor: Celeron 1.7
RAM: 512 MB (2x 256), Soon to be 1 GB(2x 512)
Video Card: GeForce FX 5200 Ultra 128 MB
Hard Drive: 74 GB
Anything else?
Basically, the only thing I want to use this for is gaming. Right now, I can run every game I own except BF2:SF with little problems.

 

[shenlingstyle]

It's not that much of a difference but for a lower end card like the 6600GT, a few more frames is always better, than compared to a 6800GT.