Geforce MX4000 or FX5200?

Appologies if this has already been brought up before.
I spent about 20 mins scanning the forums looking for a thread covering with but with no luck.

Looking for a budget video card for my lady friend's pc so she can play some of the lower class games.
No point of going ott as shes got a celeron 2.4 so a mega card would be a waste.

I have the oppertunity of either a Gefoce MX4000 or an FX5200
Both are the fanless models (this is also necesarry with the card to keep the pc silent) and both are 128mb

What card would you say performs best from these 2 budget cards?

ATI's are out of the question aswell due to being a bit poor with counterstike

PC is as follows
Celeron 2.4Ghz
256mb PC2700 Ram (adding another 256mb shortly)
40gb IDE Drive
250W PSU (limits card aswell)
MSI Mobo

Any other suggestions for budget nVidia cards are welcome but bear in mind the psu is a bit puny and also it has to be fanless and agp

 

ati 9200, which sould be the same price if you buy them online

 

"ATI's are out of the question aswell due to being a bit poor with counterstike"

Where do you get this? ATI video cards play counter-strike just as well as nVidia cards.

Out of the first two, go with the FX5200. It is definitely the better card. Also, by Counter-Strike, I assume you mean the original, not Counter-Strike:Source, because neither of those cards will play CS:S well.

 

Anyone who plays cs will tell you that unless its a really high end ati card the frames per second will be up and down all the time using one with counter strike.
They don't seem to like the half life one engine.
Even my friends 9700 pro was only getting about 30fps on most maps
ati put it down to a conflict in thier drivers and not the card itself but for easyness i decided to stick with the nvidia route

I thought the mx4000 would have performed better than the fx5200
But then again the mx can't support the full features of direct x 9.0

just came to my attention aswell that the 9200 256mb has a heatsink instead of a fan
think one of these wee bad boys would be a great difference over an fx 5200 then?
or is the bigger price jump only because thier a newer model

Thanks for the advice so far

 

I really think you dont know what your talking about; also just settle with the 128mb 9200; the extra 128mb will do no one any good with such a card.

 

I'm also considering a Geforce FX5200, this one to be specific:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814164024

I don't play high end FPS games, mostly RPG's, and RTS games, with the occasional flight sim. At current, I'm using a 16MB Voodoo3 PCI, so any upgrade would be a big jump, I was wondering if I should consider something slightly more powerful as well. I don't mean to hijack the topic, but...

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814164017 That is a much better card for a relativly good price too; do you have AGP?

 

"Anyone who plays cs will tell you that unless its a really high end ati card the frames per second will be up and down all the time using one with counter strike.
They don't seem to like the half life one engine.
Even my friends 9700 pro was only getting about 30fps on most maps
ati put it down to a conflict in thier drivers and not the card itself but for easyness i decided to stick with the nvidia route"

That's cool, but all I can say is, I have a Radeon 9800 Pro 128Mb and it runs Counter-Strike 1.6 and Source @ 1680x1050 without any problems whatsoever.

 

1680x1050? does it look like a picture frame? http://forums.majorgeeks.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

 

I know for a fact I've got AGP, what I don't know is what type it is. I'm pretty sure it's 4X. I've got a GIGABYTE GA-7VTXE motherboard. That card is a bit more than I wanted to spend though. I'll consider it, though. Thanks.

 

can you beat a 9600pro for $77.00 ?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=14-102-409&depa=1

it will smoke a 5200, and a mx4000. and it will play counter strike well too. I used to have one.

I know you want to have a NVIDIA card, but a 9600pro is a good card, dosen't need a big power supply either, and runs quiet too. just thought I
would let you know

 

"1680x1050? does it look like a picture frame?"

Nope, it looks awesome on my 20" Widescreen Dell monitor.

 

CS source uses a complete different games engine from the original cs
I used to play cs like a habbit for over a year and ended up in division 2 in the ED league.
During my time playing it for over that year i heard numerous problems of erratic fps with ati cards.
The problems could be fixed however
I eventually seen the problems first hand when i came accross a cheap 9600SE.
In order to get the fps to stay above 50 i had to edit registy keys and edit the cs config files a little.
The end result was it made cs a lot more playable but to be honest my old geforce 2 64mb mx still ran it better.
Its not just confined to that card though as my friends 9700pro is having major troubles with it at the moment and during my year playing all i heard was people with ati's complain.
It was Ati themselfs who told me what registry settings to change because they were well aware of the problem.

Might sound like some urban myth but ask anyone whos been playing cs for a long time if they have experienced or heard of the problem.

I admit though that 9600pro is very tempting for the price but it has a fan on it and thats just not an option.
Her PC sits on the floor aswell so it gets dusty inside pretty fast and knowing my luck the fan on the gpu would get clogged up within a month or so.

Heres another question though.
I myself use a geforce 4 ti 4800 128mb and i'm well aware it was out of date long ago.
I know most FX cards would blow it out of the water but what i'm wondering is what fx card would give similer performance?
I know it inialates the FX5200 but not sure about the others.
Its clock speeds standard are
300mhz gpu
650mhz ram

It runs a secure oc of
325mhz gpu
705mhz ram

So would it be worth my while say to upgrade to something like an FX 5600?

 

Are you talking about source or CS 1.6? you keep changing the terms around; it sounds like you talk bout CS1.6 first then CSS then CS1.6 again... If your looking to play CS:S on a 5200/9600SE or what not then your not gonna be doing 60fps ever, even if you play on 640x480 probably. If I recall the 4800 is a hopped up 4200/4400; they do decently well on CS:S. I guess its FX counterpart would be a 5500/5600.

 

I was talking about cs 1.6.
Someone else brought cs source into it and i was just trying to put the topic to 1.6 but i should have specified it.
Your right enough about the ti though yeah

The 4200 and 4400 use the same type of chip as mines but thier clock speeds are a lot slower
the 4600 is identical to mines but it only has agpx4
fx 5500 or 5600 sounds about what i guessed anyhows for performance wise.

Anyhows thanks for the advice everyone