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Affordable Modern Graphics Cards
EconolineCrush writes "If graphics cards that cost more than a mortgage payment make your wallet quiver, it's worth checking out ATI's Radeon X700 and NVIDIA's GeForce 6600 series. Both are based on cut down versions of latest and greatest graphics chips, but at under $200, they sell for a fraction of the price of high-end cards. What's more, these $200 wonders outperform last year's $500 cards, sometimes by embarrassingly large margins. The Tech Report has in-depth reviews of both the GeForce 6600GT and Radeon X700 XT if you're in the market for a next-gen graphics card that's a little more affordable."
Of course, if you actually want to use your shiny new 6600-series card, you're gonna need to dish out the cash for a new PCI-E motherboard too. That or wait a few (more) months for an AGP version to show up.
:(
Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted that Nvidia is releasing a good quality card at a reasonable price, I realize that PCI-E allows for the very cool SLI technology, and I intend to buy one eventually, but seriously why not come out with AGP cards at the same time, my copy of DOOM3 is already starting to dusty while I wait
SINCE WHEN DID 200 DOLLAR VIDEO CARDS BECOME MIDRANGE! The top of the line should cost around 200-300, and the midranges should be in the 100-150 range, and budgets below 100. This is plain ridiculous...
I just can't. I feel like if I'm going to spend 200 bucks, it has to be the latest and the greatest, general gaming card. Which means like 400 bucks... my next problem is that I then worry about the rest of my computer. Its like if its not a totally perfect gaming rig, why bother upgrading at all. Anyone else have this problem/compulsion?
The super-expensive new cards are more for those who just have to be on the bleeding edge of technology. A $99 card will play any modern game smoothly, but it doesn't give you bragging rights with any of your videophile friends. If you're into that sort of thing.
Personally, I bought a Radeon 9200SE for $99 about 6 months ago (give or take), and it meets or exceeds the requirements of any game I've ever seen.
In addition to that the few places that do sell these cards are in the US and they only ship to US, Canada and USFPO.
the $35 cards?
Yeah, it's last year's chipset. But weren't they all the shit last year?
Aah, basking in the lagging edge of technology. Bug free and cheap games. Besides, I have a life and an airplane to build. Don't have time to camp out on the doorstep of Egames, waiting for the latest release of 'Death in the Dark, Part XXX', and then spend a week trying to get it to run so that I can say, "Ooh! Shiny things!!"
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
At 450 dollars you can get a Radeon x800 Pro VIVO, which has a 100% chance of flashing to a full x800XT with all 16 pixel pipelines.
Or if you want an nvidia card (i.e. you have Linux and want drivers that, uh, work), the 6800GT is almost as fast and at 400 dollars, its a great deal.
The 6600 and x700s seem almost as fast as the 6800NU (300 dollars) at first, but note--they have 128-bit memory. This means that they will suffer a much larger hit when enabling antialiasing, as their memory is slower and AA requires a lot of memory bandwidth.
I don't understand how 400 dollars is too much for a card, as I can easily assemble a high-end computer for 1200-1400 dollars, like one of these:
Athlon 64 3200+ (200), Asus A78 (150), 1GB Dual Channel Corsair (300), 6800GT (400), 160GB hard drive (100), 480 watt power supply (100), case and floppy and crappy cdrom (50). That's 1300 dollars for something better than the 4000 dollar computer that Dell is offering, and as good as a 3500 dollar Alienware. So don't bitch about the price of graphics cards--you get so much for your money these days its insane.
I buy the pricy first-gen hardware.
As an avid gamer, I view my $5,000/yr hardware habit the same way a sports fan looks at his season tickets. It's simply the cost of entertainment.
I play games almost every day, for about two hours a day. I'd rather play CS than watch The Apprentice, and I like to play on high-end hardware. It just amazes me, the way every time I think it can't get much better... it gets much better!
Besides, us early adopters are great for the rest of you. Without us, your speedy $200 video cards would be $1,000.
Its really all about the price performance ratio (at least, performance relative to the top-of-the-line card). The 6600 GT and the X700 XT provide a price/performance ratio not seen seen since the GF4 Ti4200. I'm willing to bet that between Doom 3, HL2, the amount of time since the Ti4200 came out, and the p/p ratio of these new cards, a lot of people who have Ti4200s will buy these new cards. As soon as they come out with AGP versions of course. I'm figuriing this will be my last AGP card and my last big upgrade until my next platform move next fall, which will be to a dual-core system (hopefully they're out by then!).
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
is how a video card can cost upwards of $400, and a processor AND motherboard that run faster and involve more R&D can cost less than that combined.
I have a 9800 Pro that I bought for $198, and I am certain that will carry me thru for another year or so until the x800 XT becomes $200, then I'll upgrade to the 'midrange' card again. I don't need bleeding edge technology -- I can suffice by lowering the quality settings to play games. If I am playing single player, I can turn up the eyecandy because FPS don't really matter, and if I'm playing online, then I turn them down to get the high FPS.
There's really no need to buy a $400 graphics card, and no need for them to cost that much. It's just for players who need the extra 5 or 10FPS when they are already in the 50 FPS range... which is damn stupid.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
The problem with these graphics cards is that their native slot is PCI Express now, which means gamers have to wait an extra month or two for an AGP version. There aren't many people I know (actually, I don't think I know any at all) who have PCI Express, and the motherboards that do feature it at the moment (only Intel ones at that) aren't very good at all.
Having said that, the nVidia 6600 is a great line of cards, especially the 6600GT. The X700 is too little too late, unfortunatly, but ATI diehards will probably appreciate the middle ground they're offering. I myself was put off by ATI's lack of dynamic range, unlike nVidia, which is why I bought a nVidia 6800 (vanilla) a couple of weeks ago, and I must say, it's one hell of a card. Counter-Strike: Source and Doom 3 are smooth as butter.
A couple of big issues are being missed in the price point discussion.
First, there are essentially no games out there that tax a high end card. Even games like Doom 3 run light lightning with a 128MB Radeon 9800. The high and ultra quality settings scraping for improvements, like not compressing normal and specular maps, things that buy you almost nothing in exchange for massive bandwidth requirements. So all of these people clamoring for X800s and all that...there's no need, not yet.
Second, a minority of PC owners run 3D games or otherwise need 3D acceleration. Partially this is because of compatibility and driver issues--and how those issues don't exist on consoles (cue the guy who always brings up RTS games as a counterargument)--but it's also partially because it's hard for the average person to know which games will work. DirectX 9? Pixel Shader 2.0? Video memory? Most people don't know anything about this. They buy a game, it doesn't work, they can't return it, and then they buy an Xbox for less than the price of a video card.
Third, the fragmentation and wide variations in the PC market result in all but a handful of game developers shooting for the high-end. Heck, over half of all PCs sold are notebooks. Is the 15% of the *gamer* market that owns X800s a viable target? Wouldn't it be better to tone things down and run on a wider variety of cards? Sure, you can write a game to scale based on the hardware it is running on, but this is expensive and time consuming.
In a lot of ways, the whole PC video card market is thriving on a sizable group of people--though still a minority--who upgrade obsessively.
As a rule of thumb, I try not to spend over $200 - $250 on a graphics card. 8 months down the line, the chances are your card will have gone down drastically in price, leaving you feel foolish.
I currently own a PNY Geforce 4 TI 4200 64 MB. I bought it when it was a fairly new product, and it cost me only $130. Years later, I can still run ut2004 at 1280 x 1024, with very playable framerates.
The 6600 GT looks like a great card... it has all the features of the 6800, only with less pipelines. Don't tell me that it "stunts the performance". If you saw a card for $750 that had 32 pipes, would you buy it?
Don't be stupid, get your cards cheap. :)