With Doom3 being effectively optimized from NVidia, I fully expected to see more playable frame rates here than we did with Half Life 2.  Even at 1024 resolution, game play would lag quickly at the first sign of a fire fight.

Conclusion

Everyone evaluates things in terms of ‘what can it do for me?’  For me, hardware for my personal use falls into one of two categories; either it will give me an edge in my LAN box or on my HTPC.  All products should be evaluated in the context of their uses and strengths.  It almost felt criminal to throw Doom3 and Half Life 2 at the littlest GeForce but that is the only way to get an idea of its pixel pushing power which was of course lacking.  If you are looking for an inexpensive upgrade to play some of the current games out today, the GeForce 6200 is not for you.  However, more to the point, as far as a single slot and completely silent VGA solution for a home theater PC or a non-gaming PC then the GeForce 6200A may be just the ticket.

From this perspective the only problem we ran into was heat and driver maturity.  Passive cooling cuts both ways. It means zero decibels at a cost of higher heat.  You never get something for nothing. While the temperature was high it never proved to be problematic.  As far as the lack of crispness of desktop icons and text, I have to attribute this to driver immaturity.  The reason, I’m so quick to say this is that the exact same fuzziness of text showed itself when the GeForce 6800 comparison card was used with the same driver.

Priced at $69, the Inno3D GeForce 6200A draws from two different audiences.  One of cost effectiveness and one out of want to get their HTPCs to operate as silently as humanly possible.  This is why we are able to recommend the GeForce 6200A to the AGP masses that constitute these two groups.  We wish to express our thanks again to Inno3D for making this review possible.

Pros

• Silent
• Fantastic bang for the buck
• Answers the need for many a HTPC builder
• Inexpensive

Cons

• Hot
• Immature drivers at present
• Not a gamer's card