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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."
OK, the article tells us about 3dmark, quake 4 specs, video playback, etc etc etc.
But, they don't tell us which one (if any) has a vendor supported OSS compatable driver.
Since XGL, etc (and I'm sure I'm not alone here), I've been on the lookout for a cheap & good 3d card, that doesn't give me 'kernel tainted' messages when I insert the driver.
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)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
If I can't do 27,000,000,000,000 triangles a second for under $80 I'll not buy one!
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.
No, what's impressive is that most gamers have been successfully brainwashed that they need a $500 video card to play a modern game, while the low range has been excellent for the past 3-4 years.
At the same time, people are shocked about PS3 being $600. I wonder what the hell happened to common sense, where we lost it and will we find it again any time soon.
Will any of them give me more than 10 FPS during "Breaking Siege of Kvatch", "Battle for Bruma" and the final fight in Imperial City in Oblivion?
That should be current benchmark method. All the budget cards I know of simply can't do it.
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I find it humorous that there is such a push for budget cards using a fairly new interface. Where are the AGP versions of these cards? You know, for people who really are on a budget and can't afford to buy a new motherboard to use with a new budget card...
This guy's the limit!
But will ATI, nVideo, or S3 provide documentation so we can write drivers even for these much less than flagship models? When they release a card (even a *much* less than cutting edge card) and the documentation to write a 3D driver for it (so I can expect to use it to potention on whatever operating system), then I will be impressed and interested in the bargain.
You are right, $500 card is way too much. But an $80 card is gimp. If you are going to make the upgrade do it right and get a mid-range card that has withstood the test of time, something like a nVidia 6600 or 6800 GTS. It'll set you back a few bucks more than these cards - 30-50$ more - but you will get a whole lot more value.
I'm not much of a gamer but - well - my current Radeon 8500 looses it on most modern games (though I'm still happy with it in IL2 and GPL, that I mostly play). So I thought for some about a new video card (and a bloody new MB apparently since they decided to kill AGP, bastards). Nothing over $100-150 - just something with support for modern features and reasonable performance. Nice article for me....
But hey!! Check out power consumption figures! They state 85 watts in idle and 145.6 watts under load for their "winner" card (Radeon X1300). W.T.F.?! That's like three times more than my 90nm AMD64 CPU, right? You know what - go to hell. Call me back when you have something reasonable with passive cooling.
Budget video cards almost always suck. You're better off buying the best of the previous generation or, even better, buying refurbished or open box hardware from sites like Newegg. I was browsing their open box section the other day for a friend, and came across a Radeon x1600 Pro 256mb for $90. A little bit more money than their target, but for $10 you get a card that's not intentionally crippled.
... just consider buying one of yesterdays "mainstream" cards. An X800 GTO will wipe the floor with any of the crippled budget cards, while being in the same price range (assumed you can find the version with 128 MB GDDR1 memory, the slightly faster GDDR3 versions cost a bit more).
Run glxinfo.
Is direct rendering enabled? Is the OpenGL vendor string "ATi Technologies Inc". Basically... can you tell from the glxinfo that you're indeed running hardware accelerated graphics, or if you're using software MESA OpenGL? I think it could be the second in your case, and that your graphics wasn't properly set up. What distribution is this on?
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:
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.
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Why don't they ever compare graphics cards to slightly older cards? I have an ATI 9200 but have not a clue if these cards are the worse, the same, or better than the card I already have in my box...
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Their conclusion? The best budget card is the most expensive one they looked at, the Radeon X1300 Pro.
What's the point in reviewing budget cards if the require investing in a top computer?
All of the cards require PCI express and consume extreme amounts of power requiring motherboards and PSU less than a year old!
With a CRT monitor, all of the supported resolutions display equally well. Unfortunately, as gamers upgraded to fancy, new 19" and 21" LCD monitors, they only look good at a single, native resolution - which is usually much higher than people ran their CRTs at.
This translates to needing a beefier graphics card to get the frame-rates you expect, vs. the "old way" of just playing all your 3D games at a lower resolution like 800x600.
Does the S3 have open drivers for the DVI interface? I'm looking to ditch Matrox.
You shouldn't get equipment that is missing features, or that has easily perceptible video/sound quality problems. Aside from that, buy on price. It'll only get better and cheaper. Don't act like it's an investment. It's a commodity that is constantly and rapidly dropping in value.
Man, you really need that seminar!
On most 21" (4:3 AR) LCDs, the native resolution is 1600x1200. I think you should be able to set your 3D game at 800x600, then stretch it to full screen. Each 800x600 pixel would then be simply traslated to four 1600x1200 pixels, right? If this works, then setting your 3D game at 800x600 (with some AA) would be a better experience (decent FPS and quality) than setting your 3D game at native 1600x1200 (bad FPS).
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Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
It's weird, but I find some resolutions look much better than others on my 1280x1024 monitor. 1280x1024 looks good, of course; 800x600 also looks good. However, 1024x768 and 960x600 look abominably awful. Strangely, 1152x864 looks very nice indeed. Is it just me?
A lot depends on your monitor's ability to scale the output from the video card. Some monitors have algorithms that are good at this, and some do very poorly. One monitor I have (20.1" Sony) seems to do very well at non-native resolutions, while another (19" Gateway) looks like crap. I have also used a 19" Viewsonic which seemed to do a decent job, and a 17" NEC which was kind of in the middle. I have also found that overall, most laptops look terrible at non-native resolutions. Some monitors (like the Sony) have multiple scaling algorithms and let the user choose which one works best for them, though I haven't messed around too much with it since the default seems to work good enough.