*kinda dead, price raised* FIC A92 RADEON 9200 64MB 8x AGP Video Card for $20

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: pxc
and if you want to keep score, the Radeon 9100 is exactly the same as the 8500LE and the Radeon 9200 is an update of the Radeon 9000 Pro with AGP8x support (9000Pro = RV250, 9200 = RV280).

If you already have a 9100 128MB, the 9200 isn't an upgrade. The 9100 is up to twice as fast as the 9200 with FSAA/AF enabled and about 20-50% faster with no FSAA/AF.

Once again, interesting and useful info.

I managed to snag one card at my B&M Microcenter, there were none on the shelves, but I asked the fellow, and he came back in 5 minutes with a card. I don't know if they are just a less-stocked item, so aren't on the shelves, or the sales help was secretly stashing a few away. ("Never attribute to malice, that can be explained by incompetence." - so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt on this one.)

I noticed that they also had a white-box 9100 card on the shelf, I think it was 64MB, for roughly $60 or so. If they didn't have the FIC, I was thinking of that one, but the FIC 9200 is less than half the price, after rebate. ATI's own-brand retail-box 9200 card is $100, but that's also a 128MB card.
All in all, a great deal to upgrade a lesser video card on the cheap. Heck, this is as cheap as a used GF2 MX, and a heck of a lot nicer. Excellent find, OP. (It was just the kind of in-between performance and price that I was looking for, for an interim upgrade.)

PS. I dig the sleek black box that FIC chose for packaging.

PPS. I don't have the card in the system yet, but the manual mentions that the TV-out supports 1024x768 res. That would also be a good reason to upgrade, if you use TV-out a lot, and hate that most of the time (with other cards), you have to set your VGA desktop to 800x600 to use TV-out mode too.

 

[splice]

FIC A92 Review

That is a review of the card.. it's not exactly fast, but hey, it's only $20.

 

[gibster]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

PPS. I don't have the card in the system yet, but the manual mentions that the TV-out supports 1024x768 res. That would also be a good reason to upgrade, if you use TV-out a lot, and hate that most of the time (with other cards), you have to set your VGA desktop to 800x600 to use TV-out mode too.

I just installed it, and yes, it does support 1024x768, BUT it's too blurry to read any text. 800x600 is decent, and 640x480 looks the best, of course. This is my "MythTV" project box, so far so good, still need a fine but inexpensive capture card (I'm using MicroCenter's Celeron/P4VGM deal, this card complements it perfectly).

 

[KevinH]

Originally posted by: pxc

Originally posted by: gshock888
i would assume my 9100 is a slower and older model of 9200

I went over this above. The 9100 is better than the 9200.

Radeon 9100: R200 core (8 texture units), 250MHz core, 500MHz 128-bit memory
Radeon 9200: RV280 core (4 texture units), 250MHz core, 400MHz 128-bit memory

Radeon 9200se: RV280 core (4 texture units), 200MHz core, 166MHz 64-bit memory (slow)

and if you want to keep score, the Radeon 9100 is exactly the same as the 8500LE and the Radeon 9200 is an update of the Radeon 9000 Pro with AGP8x support (9000Pro = RV250, 9200 = RV280).

If you already have a 9100 128MB, the 9200 isn't an upgrade. The 9100 is up to twice as fast as the 9200 with FSAA/AF enabled and about 20-50% faster with no FSAA/AF.

Yep. ATI basically botched the naming conventions when refreshing their 8500 line and the subsequent release of hte 9000-9200 series.

 

[becat]

It would really be great if FIC or someone could offer a bios to flash it.. so We could oc this card even for the means to add a fan on.

 

[ram07032]

Website now shows price as $59.99. Is the dead dead?

 

[blueribb]

I ordered one last night (Sunday 6/13) and got immediate email confirmation.

This morning I received an email cancellation notice. WTF ?

I checked the website and the price has risen to $59.99 before MIR.

It looks like the $39.99 price was an error.

Anyone else get a cancellation email ?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: pxc
The MX440 and full 9200 (in this deal) aren't too far apart in performance. The 9200 is overall faster, but the differences in many games is not that much. At $20 + shipping, this is a very good bargain though.

Hmm. I found this brief review, according to it, the Radeon 9200 is slower than both the GF4 MX 440 and the GF FX 5200. :|

I hope that rebate arrives..

Edit: I know it's not $20 AR, but Shentech has their Radeon 9100 Pro 64MB AGP 4x 128-bit memory card for $41.99. That card should be faster than the FIC 9200, but specs only list VGA + DVI-D connectors, not DVI-I, so no dual-monitor support, and no TV-out.

 

[Bri79]

They've changed the price to $59.99 on their site.

 

[gshock888]

Originally posted by: pxc

Originally posted by: gshock888
i would assume my 9100 is a slower and older model of 9200

I went over this above. The 9100 is better than the 9200.

Radeon 9100: R200 core (8 texture units), 250MHz core, 500MHz 128-bit memory
Radeon 9200: RV280 core (4 texture units), 250MHz core, 400MHz 128-bit memory

Radeon 9200se: RV280 core (4 texture units), 200MHz core, 166MHz 64-bit memory (slow)

and if you want to keep score, the Radeon 9100 is exactly the same as the 8500LE and the Radeon 9200 is an update of the Radeon 9000 Pro with AGP8x support (9000Pro = RV250, 9200 = RV280).

If you already have a 9100 128MB, the 9200 isn't an upgrade. The 9100 is up to twice as fast as the 9200 with FSAA/AF enabled and about 20-50% faster with no FSAA/AF.

thanks for the info.

 

[Naruto]

Damn looks like the deal is dead. And I wanted one too. Could have given my older 1.2ghz athlon pc more gaming life.

 

[Karaktu]

Originally posted by: Bri79
They've changed the price to $59.99 on their site.

ROFL!

Props to Cheetah for jumping on this when he did.

FIC is using www.rebatestatus.com for their rebate processing. Any problems I've ever had with them were cleared up pretty quickly with a phone call and/or fax.

Joe

 

[becat]

I know I shouldn't be saying this for some people, but now I feel good really really good. Because I bought this card before the rebate was avilible.

This wasn't pricemistake at all, because just before the weekend since Jun 1st, the card didn't have the rebate or didn't have the rebate avilible in time. I think that was why microcenter adjust the price down to 39.99. Now that the rebate is avilible they raise to the advertised(paper ad) price(those who read my previous posts should know well enough).

This card would be great for my Cel 2ghz for doing my professional work, graphic design(commercial printing), since it got the best of the best image quality along with my 19" Sony Trinitron monitor. I could already tell the differences btw my previous card TI 4200 on the image quality with my eyeballs. ATI is better.

The Geforce 4 4200TI could now be in my AMD gaming purpose computer, before was using GF2.
Again thanks OP for letting me know the rebate was/is avilible.

 

[TheHamburgerPimp]

I'm kinda pissed. I ordered last night at $39 along with a Mobo. Now this AM I get an email telling me they've cancelled my vidcard, and shipped the Mobo. I called, and the dude said they ran OOS, but it's still on their site, but at a higher price?! WTF...anyone else get this email?

take care,
THP

 

[multifacitedonyx]

I ordered last night and got a email confirmation today with tracking number. Est. delivery if Thursday. I guess I go lucky.

 

[gibster]

Originally posted by: TheHamburgerPimp
I'm kinda pissed. I ordered last night at $39 along with a Mobo. Now this AM I get an email telling me they've cancelled my vidcard, and shipped the Mobo. I called, and the dude said they ran OOS, but it's still on their site, but at a higher price?! WTF...anyone else get this email?

take care,
THP

You should be pissed. I went to pick mine up yesterday, and there were probably 20+ on the shelves in the store in Denver. Price was $59 on them, didn't think much of it, as mine was confirmed and paid for.
That was pretty low of Micro Center to cancel orders - they could have honored the ones that were put in before the price change...
Now it could be that they want to fulfill whatever they can with the ones they have in the stores - chances are nobody will buy those at $59 anyway, even with the $20 MIR.

For me, this was exactly what I was looking for my "console" gaming system. I will be playing at 800x600 (best resolution for TV out), so performance is perfect for that. I even went down to 16 bit, as I doubt I will see too much of a difference between that and 24 bit on my TV. That should even get me playable Doom 3, with the 2.8GHz Celery. There is still the option of 640x480 for D3, so I figure I'm set.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: gibster
You should be pissed. I went to pick mine up yesterday, and there were probably 20+ on the shelves in the store in Denver. Price was $59 on them, didn't think much of it, as mine was confirmed and paid for.

That was pretty low of Micro Center to cancel orders - they could have honored the ones that were put in before the price change...
Now it could be that they want to fulfill whatever they can with the ones they have in the stores - chances are nobody will buy those at $59 anyway, even with the $20 MIR.

Hearing about the price change, I'm sooo glad that I ran down to the B&M that afternoon to buy one. They didn't have any on the shelves at my store, apparently they were "out back". Was a little suprised that the sticker on the box said $59.99. Now I know why. :|

I feel bad for those that ordered, and even got a confimation e-mail, and then got cancelled. That's kinda sleazy of Microcenter, but if they didn't charge your CC, they are probably within their legal rights to do so.

Originally posted by: gibster
For me, this was exactly what I was looking for my "console" gaming system. I will be playing at 800x600 (best resolution for TV out), so performance is perfect for that. I even went down to 16 bit, as I doubt I will see too much of a difference between that and 24 bit on my TV. That should even get me playable Doom 3, with the 2.8GHz Celery. There is still the option of 640x480 for D3, so I figure I'm set.

Why 16-bit color? Especially with Doom3, with all of it's photo-realistic visuals? I thought that some/most ATI cards, not only didn't gain that much of a speed advantage from running in 16-bit color, but sometimes actually ran slower. Plus, 16-bit color sucks, too much banding. In fact, I think that it is more pronounced when using the TV-out than on a VGA display, due to the reduced-dynamic color range on a television. I haven't actually popped the card in my machine yet, waiting for more stuff to download before I start swapping hardware.

Btw, is there any sort of mfg warranty on these cards? I couldn't find any mention of it anywhere, either on the box or in the rather-general manual. If there is none, I'll be slightly disappointed, but as long as it's not somehow DOA, then I guess I'm ok.

Has anyone attemped to overclock their cards yet? I've heard something about BIOSes being "locked", so that they don't run if OC'ed, need "Omega soft-mod drivers" to allow to OC, using "ATITool".

I haven't managed to track down the original FIC BIOS (do FIC even make these, or just re-sell them?), but I managed to track down what I think might be a compatible BIOS image file here.

Search in the page for "Mosel". There is a link to a BIOS image file, for a Radeon 9200 64MB AGP, default clocks of 250/200, and with Mosel Vitelic 4.0ns memory. That matches the configuration of my board.

My board is on a red PCB, with "A92 ver. 1.2" silk-screened along the top. I've also noticed a few other things - there is a dual-position surface-mount DIP-switch on the board. I've no idea what it's for, but I'm hoping that I might be able to flip a switch and either: a) turn it into another card, or b) up the voltages, for higher OCs.

I also noticed, that I can't find the BIOS chip on the board. Is it under the GPU heatsink? Or do modern GPUs include some flash memory on the chip itself, storing the BIOS internally? (My Promise Ultra100 TX2 apparently does that, surprised the heck out of me.)

I think I'm going to stick a nice phat 5200-RPM fan on my stock heatsink and see how it does. Someone else on another board mentioned getting a 9200SE to 290/270 by adding a fan.

The fact that this board has DIPs really intrigues me. Are there any other Radeon cards with PCBs that look just like this one? Any other brand-model-number cards also based on the RV280 GPU? Is the RV280 pinout-compatible with another GPU?

 

[gibster]

HA Virtual Ler, you are in for another shocker:

In Win2kPro, the primary display is recognized by the latest ATI Catalyst (4.6) as:

ELSA FALCOX RADEON 920FX 128MB

The secondary display is:

FIC RADEON 9200

WTF? Looks like they forgot to set some strings in the BIOS? Hmmm.

Details on the primary display shows the correct amount of memory (64MB).

 

[VirtualLarry]

gibster, that's pretty strange...

I checked out ATI's AIB Partner pages, here's ELSA, and here's FIC.. Neither one of them has a 64MB AGP Radeon 9200 listed there, but both have a 64MB 9200SE listed. Hrmm.

This picture on Elsa's site, appears to be an identical PCB. So who DOES make these things???

(And better yet, is there a small-but-nonzero chance, that these cards might actually have 128MB onboard, but just have a BIOS doctored to report only 64MB? I'm thinking that since these cards use older, slower memory, and it might take that many chips on the board to make up a 128-bit memory bus, they might just make them all on the same production line, and "disable" half of the RAM? I guess one could look up the DRAM chip markings themselves to find out for sure, that's my next step.)

Edit: Here's a review, in German, of an ELSA Radeon 9200 card. If you click on the card for a close-up picture, you can see that the PCB appears to be identical, including the dual DIPs, and the "A92 ver. 1.2" silkscreen. The only difference is that the PCB is the normal green color instead of red.

(Btw here is the parent full article link - it's a "shootout" between GF FX 5200 and Radeon 9200 cards. Sadly it's in German, but you can still make out the specs. Btw, I wish that US hardware review sites were this thorough - they actually measure output image-quality objectively, by measuring signal rise/fall times, voltages, etc.! Leave it to the Germans to do things right and take exacting measurements. No more "well, ATI looks sharped than NVidia cards" - the numbers actually prove it.)

Edit: Oh bloody hell, I read the datasheets wrong. Teach me to edit too quickly. The short answer is, these are in fact 64MB cards, with 4.0ns DRAM. Sorry to have gotten anyone's hopes up. (However, that speed memory IS good for a 250MHz (500 DDR) memory clock.) Here's the datasheet for the memory chips.

Edit: I may have figured out what those DIP switches do - I've found some pictures of an older style of PCB, and it has an NTSC/PAL jumper on it. Those switches may control the TV-out. Then again, you would think that would be programmable in the software drivers, and not need the cost of a DIP on the PCB.
Here is a picture of an "A92L ver. 1.1" board, low-profile, with VGA and TV-out. It still has those two DIPs, if you look carefully.

 

[becat]

yup I confirm what gibster said. It is weird.

edit: VirtualLarry after checking out the link you provided, they look like the same except the color of the heatsink and / or the PCB color.

I wonder who made the bios for Elsa and FIC, sounds and looks like the same place so the bios won't miss neither companies.

edit2: Seems the Elsa card can't be oc either. Something interesting was, the board was silk printed A92 but Elsa called it A64 :roll:

edit3: If u go to fic.com.tw they offer bios updates for other A92 series except just the "A92."

 

[jessieqwert]

I decided to go searching for the status of my rebates and came across this one at www.rebatestatus.com
It said it was denied.

WTF?

The receipt you submitted was dated after the qualifying period for this promotion.

Ok, I Go to check the rebate requirements and when I purchased it.

sales receipt must be dated between March 1, 2004 and immediately to: July 31, 2004.

My receipt says 6/13/2004

It seems to me I fall in this range.
Anyone else been denied?
Of course I'll be resubmitting.

 

[KenSr]

My rebate status says the same thing.
I am glad that I have copys of everything.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

I've been wondering, does this card do multiple resolutions at the same time?

ie: 1600x1200 on the primary and 1280x1024 on the secondary.

<-- still running a G450

 

[Cheetah8799]

Since some of you seem to be having issues with your rebates, I decided to check mine. Looks like I'm OK.

We have received your submission and it is being processed.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
I've been wondering, does this card do multiple resolutions at the same time?

ie: 1600x1200 on the primary and 1280x1024 on the secondary.

<-- still running a G450

As long as the two displays are not set up as "clone mode", then you should be able to independently adjust the resolution and refresh rates.

One thing that I really like about these ATI cards, is that they have a "theater mode" setting for the video-overlay feature. That means that you can have WMP (or any other media-player that uses overlay mode) in a window on a monitor, and also play the *same* overlay video content, FULL-SCREEN on the TV-out at the same time. Great feature!

I don't know if you can have three independent displays (VGA, DVI-I to VGA, and TV-out) at the same time. I don't know if the TV-out must share one of the twin RAMDACs, or if the TV-encoder has its own. I should try that I suppose.

Something else that impressed me, is that the card is claimed to have 10-bit-per-channel RAMDACs. I thought that was interesting, because that was one of the bigger selling points of the Parhelia, and their 30-bit color-mode support, with 10 bits per color channel. Granted, I don't know if the ATI card supports actual 3D rendering in that mode, I've never seen any games that use it, nor DirectX screen modes with 30-bit color (only 2 or 0 bits of alpha in that mode, of course).

Btw, that reminds me, I haven't sent in the rebate yet, I hope that it's not too late. :|