Albatron GeForce TC6200Q Review

[MikeC]

Steve Angelly has completed his review of Albatron's PCI-Express GeForce TC6200Q graphics card.

http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/albatron_geforce_tc6200q/images/index.23.jpg

In preparation for this review, Steve has spent the past two months using a reference GeForce 6200 16/128MB with TurboCache on a daily basis.

Steve puts the TC6200Q through Doom 3, Call of Duty, Half-Life 2, Halo, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Far Cry.

Does he survive or does he end up in the looney bin?

You can find out here:
http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/albatron_geforce_tc6200q/index.shtml

[SH64]

Steve puts the TC6200Q through Doom 3, Call of Duty, Half-Life 2, Halo, Unreal Tournament 2004, Far Cry, and Doom3.


Why did he test Doom3 twice :confused: ... :p

anyway nice review Steve .. & WOW .. when i look to these numbers i really feel how the med/high-end video cards are a must to play the new games .
from your benchies only CoD & UT were playable on the 6200TC i guess , other games shown some really bad performance .
but i think that wont matter anyways because those who will be getting a 6200 might only use it for regular basis rather than playing games in it .

[Clay]

Crap that typo is my fault...correcting now. :D

[Rytr]

After the review I felt like I played it more than twice. :D

As far as playing 'other' games it was surprising as they were playable, for the most part. You are limited to lower resolutions and use of AA is a no-go as the hit on performance, which overhead is already limited, is just too much.

As I stated in the review even the TC6200 with just 16MB (capable of rendering 128MB of system memory) played HL2 all the way through with no problems (other than the sound stuttering bug on a couple of occasions). The Albatron with its 64MB local memory and ability to render up to 256MB of system was able to give good play up to a resolution of 1024x768 (I played about 3/4 the way through HL2 with this card). Overclocked could go 1280x960 or 1280x1024 with no problems during a couple of 2-hour sessions.

I agree, it is suited more for all around use and light gaming for the most part but from my limited use of entry-level cards and incorporated motherboard video applications it is a significant improvement.

[jAkUp]

Nice review! Not half bad for the price :) Sad that it dips into system ram however... Curious on the performance between the Turbocache versions, and the regular 6200.

[MUYA]

Good stuff! Something for gs2mx owners to erm...upgrad too? :p

WHat u get is what u pay for really and this card or rather GPOU implementation should find low cost computers around less developed countries. Yay SM3.0 for for everyone!!! :)

[Mr_LoL]

Wow its very impresive. I am assuming that if you put a fan on it it will overclock futher becuase it seems that when overclocked it make a huge difference to framerates?

[ragejg]

Hmm, so, overclocked they offer ~FX5600 performance... not bad. Well, not GREAT, but it could be worse... it's nice that the entry level baseline is now along the lines of ~GF3 performance levels...

[BrianG]

I wonder if they have a few out there with HDTV component out. It looks like the Albatron has the enhanced S-Video out with the extra pins for it. No fan and enough power for 853x480 gaming at 20-30fps, looks like an option for an HTPC with my EDTV plasma.

[Rytr]

Thanks for the comments!

JakUp,
"Sad that it dips into system ram however... Curious on the performance between the Turbocache versions, and the regular 6200."

From what I have seen I would go for the 6600 over the 6200 non TC because of the price of around $100. TurboCache is a cost-cutting implementation by limiting local ram to 64MB vs. 128MB as found on the non-TC 6200.
It would be interesting to compare a TC6200 to a non-TC 6200 but MikeC would really have to twist my arm to do it! :D

MUYA,
"Yay SM3.0 for for everyone!!!"

I agree, nice move on Nvidia's part this time around.

shrek2,
"I am assuming that if you put a fan on it it will overclock futher becuase it seems that when overclocked it make a huge difference to framerates?"

A noticeable performance difference was experienced by overclocking in several games. I pushed the memory to limit on both cards. I did purposely hold back once I reached +100MHz overclock on the gpu, mainly because of the passive cooling. I think there is more headroom for the gpu as I did not note any significant temp increases by the gpu overclock.

ragejg,
"Hmm, so, overclocked they offer ~FX5600 performance... not bad. Well, not GREAT, but it could be worse... it's nice that the entry level baseline is now along the lines of ~GF3 performance levels..."

Believe we see a lot of these cards as OEMs in low cost pc's. That is an improvement over the 5200 and exceeds the competition's offering.

BrianG,
"I wonder if they have a few out there with HDTV component out. It looks like the Albatron has the enhanced S-Video out with the extra pins for it. No fan and enough power for 853x480 gaming at 20-30fps, looks like an option for an HTPC with my EDTV plasma."

I did not get in to that aspect but it does provide a possible excellent choice for those who have a home theater as indeed it does appear to have the capability. I just had no means to check this option out for this review.

[Mr_LoL]

Rytr is this card coming out in agp format? I might get it for my girlfriends machine if it is.

[MUYA]

You can get 6200 in AGP variants only they do not support Turbo cache and will have 64-128MB memory onboard. You have to be careful though if the memory interface is 128 bit ot 64 bit. The lower the worse etc

[Rytr]

Albatron's AGP 6200 goes by the designation AGP6200 and comes with 123MB on-board DDR memory with a 128-bit memory bus. The gpu has active cooling with a HSF that looks the same as is on the 6600.

But, check the 6200's close as MUYA said as I don't think you would want the 64-bit memory bus. Albatron does not list one on their site but several mfg's are offering this and sometimes it gets a bit confusing which is which.