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Getting Away With a Cheap Graphics Card
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."
Um, to me at least, $170 for a graphics card is not "cheap"...
Prices on graphic cards have been plummeting, both due to the overall memory prices dropping fast and because of the huge saturation of inventories in the market. Cards that few months ago were going for $300+ have been getting blown up for under $100. So before you compromise, make sure you do your due dilligence and check price engines like google shopping or pricewatch, you will be surprised how far your buck travels these days. Also, don't bother with brick and mortar retailers, they turn their inventory slower and their best deals are still month or so behind and usually involve some mail in rebates.
Well, not many movies came out in 1920. Even fewer in 1080 - the Norman cameramen could never grasp the fact they needed to hold the camera straight.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The 8600GT 512 has been available for a while now, I have one myself, and it was ~$120. They're even cheaper these days. That card can handle about anything you care to throw at it, unless you're running Vista, at which point you shouldn't care about the cost, because you're already paying Mistress Xanthia hundreds per month to kick you in the beans.
$700 for a video card solution. Unless I'm going SLI, then it's like $1200 or so for two cards because you gotta get 'em the day they're released...NOT after the inevitable price drop. Of course, you gotta throw in extra for the water blocks and pump, and tubes, and reservoir and such, so in reality I never spend more than like $850 each...Unless I am buying for my Tri-SLI capable board...then it's like $2450, and add like $250 for a 1200watt PSU and like $550 for three water blocks and stuff, so it's like close to, but under $3000 for video cards...wait...why is there only Raman Noodles in the cupboard?
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
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.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
Yep, I just bought a factory overclocked 8800GT (ZOTAC Amp! Edition, to be specific) for $117 a couple of weeks ago. It does indeed run Crysis, COD4, Assassin's Creed, etc. at very high quality and framerates. And NVIDIA just released driver update 178.13 today, with the following changes:
# WHQL-certified driver for GeForce 6-series, 7-series, 8-series, 9-series, and 200-series GPUs, including the newly released GeForce 9800 GTX+, 9800 GT, 9500 GT, and 9400 GT GPUs.
# Adds support for NVIDIA PhysX acceleration on all GeForce 8-series, 9-series and 200-series GPUs with a minimum of 256MB dedicated graphics memory (this driver package installs NVIDIA PhysX System Software v8.09.04).
# Experience GPU PhysX acceleration in several full games and demos today by downloading the GeForce Power Pack.
# Adds support for 2-way NVIDIA SLI technology with GeForce GTX 200-series GPUs on Intel® D5400XS motherboards.
# Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI(TM) technology* on DirectX 9 and OpenGL.
# Supports CUDA(TM).
# Supports Folding@home distributing computing application. Download the high performance client for NVIDIA GPUs here and join the NVIDIA team: #131015.
# Supports GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring by installing NVIDIA System Tools software.
# Includes several 3D application performance improvements. The following are examples of improvements measured with v178.13 WHQL versus v175.19 WHQL driver:
* Single GPU increases up to 11% in 3DMark Vantage (performance preset)
* Single GPU increases up to 11% in Assassin's Creed DX10
* Single GPU increases up to 15% in Bioshock DX10
* Single GPU increases up to 15% in Call of Duty 4
* Single GPU increases up to 8% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
* 2-way SLI increases up to 7% in Bioshock DX10
* 2-way SLI increases up to 10% in Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts DX10
* 2-way SLI increases up to 12% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
* 2-way SLI increases up to 10% in World in Conflict DX10
# Includes numerous 3D application compatibility fixes. Please read the release notes for more information on product support, features, driver fixes and known compatibility issues.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
The thing is that IT-people and Computer Scientists have this uncanny drive to keep talking of and thinking in powers of two, insisting on starting the counting with 0 and generally don't care about the long standing conventions there already were in the rest of the world. k=1000, M=1000000, etc, period. If you insist on using rediculous numbers like 1024, 1048576, etc, you're gonna use your own damn prefixes for them. No hijacking please.