"Wal-Mart", he said, "ooops, bad board, send it in...". I'm upgrading
from

That sucks... But I am confused as to why you are sending it in, Wall
mart has like a 30day return policy on electronics I believe, or at
least 2 weeks.

By the time I got around to installing it it was 10pm or so, it didn't work
and there was the tech support number so I called it. I had browsed online
and saw tha the card sells for $149 at Best Buy and the original price at
Wal-Mart wasw $128 so I figured that if I could send it in and get a new,
working card, I'd have gotten a $149 card for $60

to sink $500 into a video card. I do want to try out Halo for the PC,
City

I understand... Im not rich either... A $100 is a lot to me at the
moment. But you don't need to blow $500 on a video card. A $70
Ti4200 would give you a lot more OMPH of power.

I read a lot of review and the 5200 tested pretty well according to a lot of
the testers. and I figured that just about *any* modern card would give me
a lot more OMPH than the one I was using. I see your point, that I could
have gotten more bang for my buck, but I made my decision based on the info
that I had and the opportunity.

I cant play Half Life (too horrible) I didnt like Tribes - it wasn't
bad... it just didnt float my boat

Love them both...

Probably get the board back next week sometime, can't wait to try it...

To play HALO and other such games, the 5200 is gonna be kinda sucky...
you'd have to use the LOWEST settings... On my #2 pC - I got UT2004
running by itself for run... its going 15~25fps on a Ti4200 card (but
I have 16bots going nuts and max details).

I'm used to that. I usually had to run at the lowest settings to improve
performance. I like to see the players, and I like to see as far as I can
to get the "zoom-in" shots, but if I can play the games at all, I'll be
grateful.

good luck... and yes, yer old games will run a lot better with the new
card... as long as its a 128bit version... which I doubt... ;(

Windows properties says that it has 256 MB of RAM, which according to what
I've read is a bit of a sham because it only uses 128 of it, something about
a pipeline or something. I tried Tribes for a bit last night, reinstalled
it under the new video card and upped all of the settings to the max, didn't
seem to be that much different from my old card. Of course I *was* running
it with the settings (texture quality, dynamic lighting, hi-res everything)
maxed out, whereas before I had minimal settings, maybe that had something
to do with it. Any tips or tricks for tweaking the 5200 settings to
maximize the speed/visual quality?

Thanks for the message, I appreciate the feedback. Next time I upgrade I'm
going to hit the message boards and ask for advice in my price range.

Thanks again.