The GeForce FX Go5200

The NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200/5100 GPUs are the lowest end GPUs in the GeForce FX Go family. The two GPUs are actually similar. The only difference is in the memory interface. The Go5100 supports a 64-bit memory interface while the Go5200 supports a 128-bit interface.

Recently, I reviewed the Toshiba Satellite M30 notebook which was powered by a Go5200 GPU with 32MB of DDR SDRAM. Below are the specifications of the Toshiba M30's GeForce FX Go5200 GPU.

Toshiba chose to reduce the core and memory clock speeds of the Go5200 to reduce power consumption. Unfortunately, this also meant poorer performance than what we might expect from the Go5200.

It also came with just 32MB of DDR SDRAM. With many notebooks coming with 64MB and 128MB of graphics memory, the 32MB of DDR SDRAM cannot be considered a generous amount. AGP texturing will definitely be needed with texture-intensive games.

Therefore, it is unfortunate that Toshiba turned off AGP Sidebanding support for the Go5200. As you know, AGP sidebanding creates a separate port for AGP commands. This allows AGP reads and commands to proceed simultaneously, which greatly increases the performance of the AGP bus. This feature will be sorely missed since the Go5200 will definitely require AGP memory for texture storage.

But how well it actually performs, well, there is only one way to find out. So, let's get down to business and test the Go5200!