A $99 Graphics Card Might Be All You Need

Vigile writes "With the release of AMD's latest budget graphics card, the Radeon HD 4770, the GPU giant is bringing a lot of technology to the table. The card sports the world's first 40nm GPU (beating out CPUs to a new process technology for the first time), GDDR5 memory, and 640 stream processors, all for under $100. What is even more interesting is that as PC gaming has evolved it appears that a $99 graphics card is all you really need to play the latest PC titles — as long as you are comfortable with a resolution of 1920x1200 or below. Since so few PC gamers have screens larger than that, could the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away?"

Comments

Resolution != size.

[MaerD]

Since so few PC gamers have screens larger than that, could the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away?

.... This statement boggles my mind. Resolution does not, and never has equaled screen size.

Heck, we just now have tv's that do above 640x480.. but all the old sd sets came in all sorts of sizes. It did not mean your 54inch tv was capable of displaying any more pixels then your 7 inch handheld.

Re:But their drivers still suck

[Bigbutt]

Probably shouldn't be a troll here. I have a $250 high end Radeon. Bought it along with a new system back in October. From the beginning, it would blue screen on boot but only once in a while. Now it's doing it more often (event log identifies the problem as with the ATI driver), it randomly boots the machine, and currently the machine is in a reboot cycle. Searching on the problem shows it's well known. Suggestions are to upgrade to the newest driver (fails) and disable some feature (fails). Reports of contacting ATI results in "it's Microsoft's fault". Calls to Microsoft result in "it's ATI's fault".

Yea. I agree. No matter the price, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

[John]

Re:Could the world of high-end PC graphics go Away

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I purchased my watercooling system not to overclock, but to run everything at a lower temperature. So far it's kept my GTX260 and Q6600 at constant temps and has kept my office about 5 to 10 degrees F cooler.

Re:But their drivers still suck

[Barny]

I don't know if I'd limit it to just $100 though but for $150 and under you can definitely buy enough card to run most games at high detail and quite high resolutions.

For sufficiently low values of both resolution and detail.

Re:A more expensive card == a bigger e-Peen

[spun]

Have you tried penis pumps? What about weights?

Re:But their drivers still suck

[Barny]

Troll? Bah

If you had to sell vid cards to people who think that "a good one" costs under $50AU then you wouldn't mod this troll, it would be insightful or some such.

Go on, mod this troll too, I dare you mods (would do it myself but can't mod my own posts).

Re:Once upon a time

[Phoghat]

Yeah, yeah, your mom probably bought you a Dell with integrated graphics. Yes, I know this is a troll. That's why I live under a bridge, in a van,DOWN BY THE RIVER!