When NVIDIA launched the GeForce 6800, they talked up the new architecture as a scalable design that would power a top-to-bottom line of graphics cards. With the GeForce 6200, that top-to-bottom line is complete, at least as far as add-in desktop graphics cards are concerned. The GeForce 6200 brings the impressive rendering capabilities of the GeForce 6 series to the budget space with fewer compromises than one might expect. The GeForce 6200's strong performance in DOOM 3 shows that this budget card isn't too short on pixel processing power.

Priced between $129 and $149, the GeForce 6200 will do battle with ATI's Radeon X300 and Radeon X600 Pro. Against the X300, the GeForce 6200 is clearly superior. However, with the exception of DOOM 3, the X600 Pro's performance is tough to match. The GeForce 6200 performs exceptionally well given its relatively low clock speeds, but against a card with a 100MHz core and memory clock advantage, there's only so much it can do.