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Getting Away With a Cheap Graphics Card

Posted by timothy on from the time-value-of-money dept.

theraindog writes "High-end graphics cards get all the glory, but most folks have a difficult time justifying $300 or more for a single PC component. But what if you could get reasonable performance in all the latest games from a budget card costing as little as $70? With game developers targeting the relatively modest hardware available in current consoles and trickle-down bringing cutting-edge features down to budget price points, today's low-end graphics cards are more capable than ever. To find out which one offers the best value proposition, The Tech Report has rounded up eight graphics cards between $70 and $170, comparing their game performance, Blu-ray playback acceleration, noise levels, and power consumption, with interesting results."

6 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Wow.... $170 is cheap? by EVil+Lawyer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Um, to me at least, $170 for a graphics card is not "cheap"...

    1. Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? by c_forq · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Still bullshit. By using your useless relative scale a new Jaguar is cheap, because it is way less than a Ferrari, Maserati, or Bugatti. (Dang it, I used a car analogy; enter moderation limbo).

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      Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
    2. Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? by c_forq · · Score: 4, Insightful

      While Ferrari and Bugatti may be out there the Maserati entry level is comparable with the high end of Jaguar, but my point is $170 is still a hell of a lot for the budget minded consumer, substantial for the budgeting consumer, and considerable for the consumer with a flexible budget.

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      Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
    3. Re:Wow.... $170 is cheap? by petermgreen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because compared to the 'good' cards, it's less than 1/2 the price people pay to game.
      I guess it's a matter of perspective but I don't consider a review of cards that cost arround 2-4 times what I paid for the last few graphics cards I bought to be a review of cheap cards.

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      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  2. Cooling by Detritus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd like to see more graphics cards with passive cooling. Every time I see one of these cards with a big honking fan on it, I wonder how long it will last and whether it is even possible to replace the fan if it fails.

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    Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  3. Re:Failing the spork test? by Cochonou · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Be careful, MB might have worked good in retail space as "everyone except hard drives manufacturers" knew what it was supposed to mean, but it didn't work as well in engineering space as soon as you mixed storage space (power 2) with data transfert rates (power 10). A MP3 encoded at 128 Kb/s is encoded at 128000 b/s, not 131072 b/s.
    So, regardless of the fact they were coined rather abruptly, I find the whole Ki / Mi / etc prefixes to be a rather good move forward.