Jedi Knight 2, No AA, No AF
Jedi Knight 2, 4xAA, 8xAF
The FX 5200-TDR128 does pretty well in Jedi Knight 2, although it does still struggle once you raise the image quality levels. How about when using Balanced and Aggressive? AA and AF were disabled.
Jedi Knight 2, Aggressive
Jedi Knight 2, Balanced
Performance-wise, there's little difference between the two, and in all honesty, I can't see any difference during gameplay when compared with the balanced settings. However, the difference is noticable when you directly compare quality against performance. There's slightly more pixelation with performance, and considering the benchmark scores, I don't think the loss in image quality is worth the slight performance gain. This image quality drop is because trilinear filtering isn't used.
SpecViewPerf7
For workstation use, the FX5200 will not be the best choice. It's servicable, if you only dabble in it occasionally, but people who take their work seriously will want to opt for a pro-level OpenGL card.
Image Quality - 2D
Scores are subjective, but having worked with many video cards the last few years, I got a pretty firm grasp on what card renders 2D better than the others. The scores will be out of 10, with 10 being excellent.
We loaded up a 1600x1200 image normarlly used in our video card reviews. I also pulled up several word documents with various sized fonts to judge the text rendering. The documents used white text on a black background, and vice versa. The screen resolution for all tests was 1600x1200 @ 85Hz on a Dell rebranded 21" Trinitron.
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FX5200-TDR128
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AiW VE
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ATi Radeon 9700
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MSI MX440-T8x
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Black Text (12Pt)
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8
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8
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9
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8
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Black Text (6Pt)
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7
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8
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8
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6
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White Text (12Pt)
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7
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9
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9
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7
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White Text (6Pt)
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5
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8
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8
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4
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Bitmap Quality
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8
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9
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9
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7
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There is a slight improvement over MSI's last nVidia budget offering, especially when it comes to rendering text. It still isn't up to ATi's quality, and I still found it difficult to work for extended periods of time at 1600x1200. It was a little better at 1280x1024, which is, in my opinion, the ideal resolution with the FX 5200.
