Inno3D Tornado GeForce FX 5200 - 128mb

What you get

Upon opening up the Inno3D GeForce FX 5200 box, we found the Inno3D 5200 FX card, a DVI adapter, TV out cables, a manual and a litany of software.  The software includes a driver CD, a copy of InterVideo WinDVD: Software DVD Player/ InterVideo WinDVD Creator: VCD/DVD Capture and Authoring Software, the full retail version of Comanche 4, shareware version of 3D Mark 2003, as well as five game demos to include Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, Red Faction, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, Black Hawk Down, and Vietcong.

Not a bad package.  I am not disappointed in the number of demo games with only one full game.  The addition of full version games adds to a product’s price.  As for me, if I’m paying money for a game, I certainly want to be able to pick it out.

The Card

The card itself is standard sized.  However, the heatsink on the Inno3D FX 5200 certainly is not.  The GPU is cooled by what looks to be half of the newer passive sandwich coolers.

This style cooler absolutely dwarfs traditional GPU coolers.  I say “half of the newer passive sandwich coolers” in that the reverse side of the card is bare.  This was a bit troubling because the purpose of the oversized sandwich style passive cooler was to cool effectively through the use of the heatsink’s mass so it could do without a fan and the accompaniny noise.  I question how well the GPU would be cooled.  On testing the card, we never ran into any thermal problems but the cooler was certainly hot.  Hot enough that at times it was too hot to rest your finger on for more than a second.  In my book that is just too hot.  Anyone looking to install this card in a water cooled box may have problems.  We ran into a problem of this type with our ASUS A7V8X mainboard that uses a passive Northbridge cooler. The diminished air flow within the case will be felt on the Northbridge and VGA card.  Not a huge deal but small point that you should be aware of.

Removing the cooler exposes the GPU and card’s memory.  Our test unit carries 128 megs of DDR made up of 8 memory chips on a single side of the card.  The GPU cooler unfortunately isn't touching these memory chips.

The front of the card shows a DVI port as well as TV out.  The adapter we noted as included allows you to utilize the nView multi-monitor support that coordinates the use of two displays for one machine.  Nice.

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