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Review: XpertVision nVidia 6200 256mb AGP
Date: 8/1/2006
Product: ExpertVision nVidia 6200 256mb AGP

Score: 3/5


Pros:
  • Price (cheap)
  • No fan (quiet)
  • Great video out options
Cons:
  • Output corruption
  • Flakey TV breakout connector
  • Average 3d performance
I needed a better 3d card to work on some software I was developing so I ditched my aging (but still good) Matrox G400 and went shopping for a new video card. My primary concern was low cost, but low noise was a close second. So after a bit of poking around on the internet the ExpertVision 6200 seemed like it fit the bill, cheap, no fan and some decent 3d support, as well as TV out. So I picked one up for the low margin retails around here and plonked it into my box (Athlon 1.4ghz, 512mb). It installed fairly easily and I was up and running in 2d in no time. All the PCI slots are full on my motherboard and yet the heat sink fitted anyway, however it was a bit snug.

The first area I tried was the 3d performance so I downloaded some current game demos and fired them up. 3d performance was reasonable, but I'm not going to benchmark anything, as I don't have an array of cards to test against. And thats not the point of this review. However I did find that some games, notably Doom 3 had lots of texture corruption and shearing issues. Which I found annoying. Less demanding games seemed to run fine, e.g. Counter Strike has no issues. I don't however do a lot of gaming so it doesn't really worry me.

2D performance is fine, I get a sharp picture with both the analogue and digital outputs. For everyday browsing and so on it's as good as more expensive cards. However for the first few months I had the card it would occasionally cease functioning by turning the screen blank, well almost blank... if you turn the monitor bightness all the way up you can faintly see a distorted view of the desktop. I made a video of this here. You can fix it on the fly by changing video modes, and everything returns the normal. After thinking about this I wondered whether heat build up could be a contributing factor, so I openned up my case and ripped out the PCI card right next to the AGP slot (leaving it open to the outside) and turned the case fans up a bit. This improved the air flow around the card and as far as I can tell the problem hasn't re-occured since then. So the price you pay for "noiseless" operation is that you need to be air flow aware. Make sure it gets plenty of cool air or it'll flake out.

One of the must have features for me was the TV out. I specifically wanted a TV that supported composite video for the short term, which my TV is limited to, but also supported component video. So that when I upgrade our TV to a component system I don't need to get a new video card. The ExpertVision 6200 supports all 3 video formats; Composite, S-Video and Component video via a breakout cable that plugs into the card between the DVI connector and the VGA dsub connector. The breakout cable however has seating issues and it's quite hard to get it to connect pins in the cable to the sockets in the card securely. I often have to fiddle with it to get my TV out to work after moving the PC. It's just a build quality issue, but it's annoying enough to mention. So far I can only test the composite output, and it's quality is only fair. Everytime I use it I need to adjust the brightness and contrast on the TV to suit. The picture isn't quite as clear as my old G400, but because the video processor is so much more capable the frame rate is far steadier. I think the G400 struggled to scale some video for output due to lack of processing power. The EV6200 however scales the video fine, however to my eye the output is a little less sharp and the colours a little more washed out. A marginal differece but present none the less. By default the TV out acts as a 2nd monitor in XP. Which is fine if thats what you want, but most people want the overlay window used by media players to map to the TV when active. By default the nVidia drivers don't do this. However there is a somewhat obscure option that lets you set this up. It took me a long time to figure this option out, in fact my friend ended up showing it to me.

All in all it's an alright card.
Comments:
fret
09/02/2006 10:54pm
Just an update on the screen going black issue, it still happens but very irregularly. What I've done is setup some shortcuts in my utils folder in the Start->Programs menu that change the resolution, which resets the card and fixes the black screen. These are bound to shortcut keys that I can hit "in the dark".

The shortcuts call the program Res which is a command line util to get/set the screen mode + refresh.
 
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