Ok short and sweet, My Pc only has PCI ports, so my graphics cards are limited (but noting can be worse than onboard). So I'm buying a geforce fx 5700 w/ 128nb ram, is it worth the extra? Or is it better long term to buy the worse of 2 evils in the 5200 with 256mb ram? I've heard how bizmal the 5200 series was though so I'm thinking the refinements in the 5700 should be worth the extra...

P.S. My knowledge is that all nVidia chips come natively with T&L support? My misunderstanding?

All of the FX series certainly do, but not all nVidia GPUs.

5700.

Definitely.

Please believe me when I say 256MB is just a rip-off. A marketing scam.

The performance increase over a 128MB card is something like 0.8%.

Some people are like Slinkies, not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs...

much appriciation, that has made up my mind,I knew there had to be a catch to offer a "better" sounding card cheaper than the new series. My Pc knowledge is great, but graphics are a new veture to me, so its all a learning process ;). Again my thanks.

Its gotta be the 5700, why? See above ;)

Zee.

AMD Athlon 2800+ barton @ 12.5 X 176 : 2200mhz
512Mb Corsair RAM
MSI KT6 Delta mobo
Leadtek AGP 6600 gt 128Mb
120Gb Seagate HDD

The 5600 is the best PCI card you can get. There are no 5700s in PCI, what you are thinking of is the 5700le, which is actually clocked slower than the 5600. Here is a link to it:
http://www.amamax.com/ge56pciwddrd1.html

I've read that nVidia has plans to scrap the FX5200 & make the FX5700LE their low end "value" card

http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=article&dId=649

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?s=8c0ebad681fce7141ef4c90d51c06789&showtopic=307295&pid=585780024&st=15&#entry585780024

Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @ 8.5 x 200MHz
768MB PC3200
Asus A9550 128MB/128-bit
Gamer Edition
WinME/WinXP Pro

The 5600 is still better and clocked faster than the 5700le.

I'm not recommending the FX5700LE but the choices in PCI cards are very limited & they usually cost much more than their AGP "twin".

Looking at Newegg using "PCI, 128-bit, DX9" as the search terms, I got 4 hits...3 different FX5200 cards & one FX5700LE ranging from $70-100.

Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @ 8.5 x 200MHz
768MB PC3200
Asus A9550 128MB/128-bit
Gamer Edition
WinME/WinXP Pro

Check out the 5600 I posted, it's the best PCI card you can get. I used to have one actually.

Actually.. I would recommend you to buy the FX5700LE because it has a awesome over clock potential. Even thou the FX5700LE core is clocked at 250 MHz it is possible to clock it to over 400 MHz which is great value for that money. The memory isn’t as impressive to clock as the core (stops at about 500 MHz in difference to standard 400 MHz) but then its not possible to compare the core to the memory anyway.
If you could have used the FX5700LE with your motherboard I would definitely advice you to chose the FX5700 over the FX5200.

When it comes to size of the memory… To my knowledge, as a graphics programmer, the size matters when it comes to texture sizes.
128 Mb is sufficient in the most scenarios. But if you want to get into advanced fields as using 3D textures for advanced volumetric rendering you should have as much memory as you possibly can. Don’t know whether it is going to be implemented in games in the near future but one can only hope ;)