[H]ard|OCP reviews Nvidia's GeForce 6200.
When NVIDIA launched their next generation NV40 GPU back in April they talked a lot about parallelism and scalability. They made sure it was known that this new architecture was capable of scaling in such a way that they could still offer every single feature of the high-end enthusiast level and bring those features all the way down to the entry-level market and price point that OEMs love best.
We are sure many of you are familiar with the GeForce4 MX series of video cards. The GeForce4 MX series is well known for being one of the most mislabeled products in video card history. When people looked at the product name you thought you were getting a video card based on GeForce4 series technology, but in reality you were getting a video card that was nothing more than a "souped up" GeForce2.
NVIDIA realized and corrected their mistake with the GeForceFX line that followed the GeForce4 series. In their GeForceFX line NVIDIA created the GeForceFX 5200 to replace the GeForce4 MX series. This time they got it right by moving the DirectX 9 Shader Model 2.0 nature of the NV30/35 GPU series into this card. While the GeForceFX 5200 may not have been the fastest card on the block, it at least did support all the 3D features of its big brothers, and was labeled accordingly.
Now with the GeForce 6 series NVIDIA is doing it right again by moving all of the technology from the GeForce 6800 series into the GeForce 6600 series and into their entry-level product. To familiarize yourself with the inner workings of the GeForce 6 series please check out our GeForce 6 Series Tech article, Every technology you see packed into their $500 video card you will find in this new entry level video card, just likely not as much of it. You may also want to check out our Preview of the GeForce 6600GT which is the mainstream GeForce 6 series of cards that also use the same technology and features...
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