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Graphics Card Comparison Guide
JaniceZ writes "These days, there are so many graphics card models that it has become quite impossible to keep up with the different configurations. Therefore, we decided to compile this guide to provide an easy reference for those who are interested in comparing the specifications of the various desktop GPUs in the market as well as those already obsolescent or obsolete."
Let's say I didn't know anything about graphics cards. How does this help me?
If the manufacturers didn't go out of their way to completely confuse the issue to the point where there are no definitive answers to the question.
I hear video cards being rated in FPS(frames per second) in certain video games all the time. If person A can get 100 more FPS out of Doom 3 using an ATI at the same cost as a Nvidia, usually they are going to go for that.
So my question is why didn't they include this in there? They have a lot of good data but I just wish that someone would run all the video tests on each card and check out the FPS data on certain popular games and produce them in a nice chart similar to this one.
the web picks up the slack. Back in the day when I bought computer magazines (at least 2 years ago), I've always wanted comprehensive charts of the latest graphic cards listed in magazines. Occassionally, if they were doing a graphics card special issue, there'd be maybe 7 cards compared.
However, this comparison guide is hardly a "easy reference". It's on the web, so give it some features. I want to sort, filter out columns, have side-by-sides comparisons, comments/ratings by users (or staff), etc.
I live in Japan now, where I can pick up a monthly computer magazine, and they have a section dedicated to charts on the latest CPU, Video, HDD, Motherboards, and Chipsets. The video chart, for comparison, has 14 different specs, all listed on one row, making it far easier to compare than this site.
The only advantage to the charts at the site in this story is that it will/does include old cards. But, as with other commenters in this thread, I say this story certainly feels like a cheap ad.
* I went to the latest review of VGA cards at Tom's Hardware.
* I chose the top 12 video cards from ATI and nVIDIA
* I created a spreadsheet which calculated the relative rankings of each card across about 30 different tests for a range of games/benchmarks. i.e. the top scoring card in a category got 100% and the remaining 11 cards were expressed as a fraction of the top score.
* I averaged the rankings for the 30 categories
* I used a local hardware search tool to find the current "buy it today" best prices for each of those cards.
* I divided the average ranking by the price to get a bang/buck ratio that can help to compare the cards. i.e. so a card that averaged 90% but costs AUD$600 would have a lower final score than a card that came in at 50% but only cost AUD$200
Unfortunately, the spreadsheet is at work but the 6600GT was a clear winner in terms of bang-for-buck.
All these 12 cards were good, and most of them were the only ones remaining in the extreme tests like high-res DOOMIII with AA sort-of-tests. So, even if a card only came in at 50% average, it was still able to work with all the latest games at reasonable frame rates.
My gaming PC has a $600 videocard in it. I'm thinking of getting away from the annual process of building two new souped-up PCs to keep up with top of the line gaming and moving to console gaming once the new XBOX and PS3 come out.
My main reason is that I can get any decent strategy or RPG game that I want to play on the Mac. Everything else, I can get for the console. And rather than maintaining two expensive high-end gaming PCs for myself and my brother, we can buy one copy of a game and have one machine that'll last us years. Much better than dishing out $110 for two copies of Unreal or Counter Strike: Source on top of the videocards and everything else.
Mostly, I just want out of the rat race. I have a spare bedroom filled with a couple dozen monitors and linux, solaris and windows boxes and several laptops. And all I use is my Powerbook. I'm undecided as to whether I'll use just the laptop, the laptop and buy a desktop mac on x86 later or if I'll stick with my powerbook and have a windows desktop.
Really, the only reason I would keep the windows box now is the same reason I kept a windows box in the linux/solaris world. Because it runs the games. I think I can do without Counterstrike and a couple other PC games and settle for Halo and Madden and GT4 on the console. Or at least, I'm going to try.
That's not surprising. Most four-year-old hardware will work better on Linux than the brand-new equivalent, because various developers have had four years to write drivers.
What is impressive about nVidia is that their brand-new hardware works just as well under Linux as the four-year-old stuff.
I got a response about 20 minutes later which included a patch for the Linux kernel I was using. I recompiled my kernel with the patch and it fixed the leak.
It is too bad their drivers are closed source, but I have to say that their Linux support is outstanding and on a par with the best support I've experienced.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Well now Matrox doesn't really do consumer market goods anymore, too much competition I guess they couldn't afford spending millions on research and developpement for a product with a 6 months or less lifespan. Now they do things like hi-end cards for busisiness purpose (medical imaging, surveillance systems, and this sort of thing) there are still in pretty good shape they just went for a more specialized market.