Leadtek GeForce 6200 TurboCache 16 MB 32-bit Review
Conclusions
Contents
WinFast PX6200TC TDH supporting 128 MB from Leadtek is clearly targeted to users that want the cheapest video card available on the market but don’t want to buy a machine with on-board video. The idea seems good, since the performance of the reviewed card was in fact better than on-board video produced by Intel 915G chipset, and could also provide some image quality settings like antialising, which Intel’s chipset doesn’t provide (even though in our opinion users looking for this class of video cards don’t care about image quality settings).
You have to keep in mind, however, that its performance is really low, especially compared to other video cards on the same class, like other GeForce 6200 models and Radeon X300.
The whole problem of this card, in our opinion, is the misinformation. A regular user can buy it thinking that it would achieve the same performance level of a real GeForce 6200 or even of a GeForce 6200 TurboCache with more on-board video memory, which is not true.
Our constructive critic of today goes to NVIDIA: why allow card manufacturers to use so many different memory configurations? If even for techies it is really complicated to decipher what kind of memory bus (128-bit, 64-bit or 32-bit), memory clock and memory capacity a given GeForce 6200 model is using, imagine for the regular user, which doesn’t even know what those terms are all about!
It is good to keep in mind that the problem is not with Leadtek – we gave recently an award to their “real” GeForce 6200 product, which provides a great cost/benefit ratio – but with the very low video memory capacity (only 16 MB) and very narrow video memory bus (32-bit). Even the higher clock rate (700 MHz against 550 MHz on models with more on-board memory) was not able to compensate these very low end specs.
As for the price, funny enough we couldn’t see this model being sold at Shopping.com. At Pricewatch.com the cheapest place selling it was Newegg.com, at USD 55. Well, for one dolar more you can buy a GeForce 6200 TurboCache with 64 MB and 64-bit interface, like the one we reviewed from XFX, which provides a far greater performance than the reviewed model.
To be very honest, forget about this card. It is not worthwhile buying one. If you are really on budget and have only up to USD 60 to spend on a video card, our recommendation is a GeForce 6200 TurboCache with 64 MB and 64-bit interface. If you can spend twenty dollars more, our pick goes to the “real” GeForce 6200 with 128 MB and 128-bit interface.