GeForce4 Ti4600 > GeForce FX5200?

Hello all. I'm new to this forum, but I'll try to be clear and to-the-point. Any suggestions would be great.

I recently purchased a new system, with good specs - 3.2 GHz p4 extreme ed., 512 mb RAM, etc. My old machine was a 1.4 GHz p3, 128 or 256 mb RAM if my memory serves me.

The video card on my old one was a replacement: an nVidia GeForce 4 Ti4600 (128 MB VRAM). The card on my new system is an nVidia GeForce FX5200 (also 128 MB VRAM). However, my new system can barely run HALO or a couple of other games smoothly (>30 fps), even at 800x600 with minimum video settings. My old system performed much, much better on those few games; it could run HALO smoothly at 1024x768 with medium video settings.

I suspect that the Ti4600 is better than the FX5200, since it was at the top of its lineup, whereas the FX is at the bottom of its lineup. If anyone could tell me whether this is the case, I would really appreciate it.

I'm also concerned that if I replace the new FX with my old Ti, it could cause screw-ups (driver errors, DirectX, stuff like that). If anyone can give me any pointers regarding the possibility of that sort of thing happening, that would be great!

- SarlaacSan (yes, I know it's supposed to be Sarlacc...)

P.S. Every time I tried to post this, my IE crashed. Anyone know anything about what might be causing that? Anything I should be avoiding on this forum that causes errors? Like, smily faces, stuff in general...

ti4600 better than fx5200=true (fx5200=crap, also true)

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/index.html

Awesome, thanks. That's what I figured, but it's good to know I'm not just delusional .

If anyone can give me any feedback regarding whether installing the ti4600 might screw up my system (or possibly make some games unplayable?), I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

strange, the fx5200 supports the newer DX 0.9, but it IS much slower. if you would have gotten the 5200 U, you would have seen a much bigger (better) difference. you can try overclocking it if you want but it still probably wouldn't go as fast as your ti4600, not the memory clock at least. anyways just make sure you uninstall your old drivers first, then take it out, then install the new drivers first, and lastly install the other card itself. as for the unplayable games...the older DX 8.1 will, still, probably, most likely, be supported by most current games, you just won't see what the new 9.0 has to offer in the most newest of games (no different than me though cuz i don't know what upgrading Direct X does as far as gameplay is concerned *scratches head* ) but it should still serve you well [karsh mehbe u could explain to us what DX does for games ]

Gaming wise, there are some games that require dx9 to be installed, and more will continue to come. However, there is a difference between games that need dx9 installed and games that use dx9 effects, so some games that can use dx9, will still work with dx8, just not as pretty.

Directx is a groups of multimedia api's that allow game developers to write software to take advantage of advanced capabilities of graphics cards, like pixel shading and such. (Before directx, you had to write code specifically for the hardware, that is, you had to program differently for an ati card than an nVidia card, and they were often not compatible)
DirectX standardized things so that when you buy a game, you know it will work with whichever brand you have, rather than always looking for compatibility info.