Budget Graphics Cards Compared

EconolineCrush writes "Tired of reading reviews of high-end graphics cards that cost several hundred dollars or more? The Tech Report has a round-up of three budget cards that cost $80 or less. ATI's Radeon X1300 Pro, NVIDIA's GeForce 7300 GS, and S3's Chrome S27 are compared in an array of gaming, video playback, power consumption, and noise level tests against not only each other, but also a typical integrated graphics solution. As one might expect, the budget cards offer significantly better 3D performance than integrated solutions. What's even more impressive is the fact that even with newer games, the sub-$80 cards still have enough punch to deliver respectable performance."

Comments

Re:Impressive

[Lumpy]

Exactly! I use the horribly outdated and underpowered Geforce FX6600 card and I can play ANY game very nicely. Even the Quake 4 watermark is very VERY playable at 1024X768 at mid level quality settings.

and the point is playability. because you can play at 1280X1024 at full res does not make it feel any better when the 13 year old kid waxes you hard every time with his 640X480 and lowest quality settings.

if the game is smooth and fun then that is what matters.

Re:Unanswered Question.

[strider44]

Is there a linux tech site that reviews hardware under different flavors of linux? That would be a useful site. Especially if they dived into driver compatibility issues on different distributions.

Try http://www.phoronix.com/

Re:Unanswered Question.

[strider44]

Does anyone know if any of these have good open support (I'm going to presume patchy [at best] for ATI, closed fast drivers from nvidia & good drivers [but crappy hardware] for the s27)

You presume right. Nowadays I don't buy anything but nVidia graphics cards - I like my Doom 3 and co. and I can never be bothered rebooting to Windows. Hell I got Serious Sam 2 with my 7600GT and I can't even be bothered installing it and playing it.

Power hungry and Noisy

[pjrc]

Ok, I thought, "hmm, maybe this is the time to upgrade that crappy but silent card I bought some time ago?". I believe it was a nvidia 6600LE... which as I understand is the graphics equiv of the low-end 6200, but has its own dedicated 256 meg memory.

Why would I buy that? Well, cost wasn't the concern. At the time, it was the best card on the market that was passively cooled. No fan = no extra noise!

So I clicked the link to TFA, and jumped right to the end, and it turns out the quietest card is 44 dBA. No thanks! Not after the low noise power supply, an after-market super-quiet chipset heatsink/fan, and installing 120 mm low-rpm fans (20 dBA), and the quiet Seagate drive. Even worse, from TFA:

Unfortunately, none of our budget cards are intelligent enough to lower fan speeds at idle, and none offer silent, passive cooling

So does anyone know of better cards that ARE passively cooled, and will work inside a case with scant airflow due to using large but very low speed fans.