Albatron GeForce TC 6200 Q

The Little Card that Could

by Josh Walrath

Half Life 2

            The latest title from Valve utilizes a lot of shaders per scene, but they have kept the performance good for a wide variety of cards.  The 6200 TC is still a true DX9 card, and it can utilize the PS 2.0 shader content in HL2.  The image quality of the 6200 TC is identical to that of the X800 series from ATI, as well as the 6600 and 6800 series from NVIDIA.  This title is not nearly as hard on a video card as Doom 3 is, but it still achieves a high level of visual quality and advanced shader functionality.  I used a recorded demo from the canals section which utilized a lot of water and a good amount of geometry.  Settings were put to high quality, reflect world, trilinear, no AA or AF.

            At stock speed, this title is very playable at 1024 x 768.  Adding AF would cut the frame rate down a bit more, but nothing dramatic.  When set above 1024 x 768, the stock card would experience hitches and some pretty extreme frame rate drops.  The overclocked card fared quite a bit better here, and it was very smooth when playing at 1024 x 768.  Even when overclocked, I did experience some nasty frame rate drops at anything above 1024 x 768.

            Still, with such a title, the 6200 TC card played this game really well.  Anti-aliasing is out of the question though, as it involves way too much of a framerate hit. 

Far Cry

            Far Cry is one of the first titles to embrace SM 3.0 rendering.  While it cannot be considered SM 3.0 shader heavy, it still utilizes some SM 3.0 functionality.  One of the top selling points for the 6200 TC is that it does support SM 3.0 rendering.  For this test I used the Regulator demo with Ultra quality (uses SM 3.0 code and below) and High Quality (SM 2.0 code and below).  At each setting Far Cry uses a mixture of shaders, some of which are PS 2.0 and below, depending on the card used.  I only used 800 x 600, as anything above that was far too slow to play comfortably in.

            The stock card makes for a rather jerky experience at 800 x 600, but it is still marginally playable.  Unfortunately, Far Cry doesn’t look very good at all at 640 x 480 due to the high contrast nature of the environments.  800 x 600 is pretty bearable, but still not great.  Still, the overclocked card is able to keep mostly above 30 fps on this title.

            One issue I ran into was the inability to render with HDR enabled in Far Cry.  It appears as though NVIDIA has disabled this functionality in the drivers, or the NV44 may not even have the FP16 framebuffer support that is required for the OpenEXR HDR rendering. 

Quake 3 Arena

            Not every title out there is shader heavy, and most of us still play “older” games.  This is an area where the 6200 TC excels in.  Quake 3 still is a very good looking engine, and it powers games such as the Medal of Honor: Allied Assualt series (except for Pacific Assault of course), Call of Duty, Elite Force, and other such popular titles.  I used the NV-15 level and the PSSDemo1a, which features an 8 bot deathmatch.  This is a very visually complex level that pushes even today’s hardware.  Settings are at High Quality, 32 bit, trilinear, no AA or AF.

            This just goes to show that the 6200 TC is still a fast card, especially when dealing with older titles, or newer titles still based on the Quake 3 engine.  Breaking 100 fps while overclocked on this particular demo is quite impressive.  Achieving over 50 fps overclocked at 1600 x 1200 is something to brag about!  Quake 3 is very playable at all resolutions with the 6200 TC.  Not bad for a value card. 

Commanche 4

            This DX8 based title is usually more CPU bound than video, but when dealing with a value card that really shouldn’t matter much.  This features a lot of fixed functionality, as well as PS 1.1/1.3 shaders.  High quality rendering is enabled, no AA or AF.

            At both speeds and settings, the 6200 TC was able to give very good framerates.  Simulators usually do not require the higher framerates that first person shooters do, so at higher resolutions this card should provide a very enjoyable experience.

Next: Gaming Impressions

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