Low-End Graphics
With this video card price guide nearing completion, we will close with a quick look at the budget graphic cards available for purchase. Honestly, the vast majority of users are better off purchasing a midrange card, which in many instances are two or three times as fast as the budget offerings (sometimes more). If you don't intend to play games, you should probably just use whatever graphics card you already have - even integrated graphics is sufficient. As we look at the various products, the reason we make this recommendation should become clear.
Firstly, we have the X1300 cards. For the AGP users out there, most of the X1300s seem a bit overpriced. For that price, you can easily pick up a 6600 GT and get much better performance than an X1300 can deliver. The same goes for the X1300 for PCI-E applications: you can easily pick up an X1600 Pro, 6600 GT, or 7600 GS for about $100, which we would unquestionably suggest you select over an X1300.
There really isn't much we can say here regarding these X300 cards. Any one of these cards should be adequate enough for its application and the only thing we would suggest is you try to stick to about the $50 mark. We see no real need to spend much more than that for a card of this caliber. The real question is why you even need this card in the first place. You can't really play games -- unless you want to play 3-4 year old titles -- with the X300, and if you don't want to play games you might as well hold off upgrading a while longer. About the only reason to purchase a $50 graphics card is if you want a DVI output for an LCD display, since most integrated graphics omit that feature.
Here are the GeForce 7300 GS cards which are meant to replace the 6200 TurboCache cards. We recommend you stick to the lower end of this spectrum as well as the ~$100 midrange cards are a far better choice. Previous tests showed that NVIDIA's 6200 series cards were slightly faster than ATI's X300 cards, while ATI's X1300 comes out ahead of NVIDIA's 7300. Given the poor gaming performance either way, it's mostly a non-issue.
We mentioned DVI outputs as being one reason for a budget graphics card, but of course there are a few others. The HTPC market often prefers a cheap (fanless) graphics card over integrated graphics, due to the improved video decoding quality (AVIVO/PureVideo) and additional connectivity options (component out). Both ATI and NVIDIA have various cards that fit those requirements, if you're interested.
This completes this week's video card guide. We'd like for you to join us again next week, where we'll be taking a look at all your storage needs. Thanks for reading!
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koomo - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
First, glad to see the price guides back. What a tremendous improvement in price/performance from what we thought was the cat's meow earlier this year!Would you please consider comparing systems in your future High-Range Price Guides to those systems previously recommended? By the time they are ready (I assume you will be waiting for Conroe) I know there will have been an enourmous leap in the past year, but I would very much like to see it graphically with your testing.
Also, what's the safe bet on DX10 card arrivals? I imagine they would be ready for release once the system is ready for sales, but will they require some time for optimization? Will it be awhile before games are capable of utilizing DX10 well? (Such as the somewhat languid adaptation of dual-processor advantages.)
In other words, it seems to me that a very good card purchased today could still be quite competitive a year from now, and not made "obsolete" when DX10 arrives.
Thanks again.
JarredWalton - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
AFAIK, DX10 won't come until *after* Windows Vista, so that means we're at least 6-8 months away from DX10 hardware. I also expect games to lag behind by quite a bit, just like with SM3.0 support. DX9.0L (WGF1.0) will be available for Vista launch, but I'm not sure what it adds.I'll see what I can do with the high-end buyers guide. Generally speaking, we let the CPU/chipset/etc. articles cover performance; otherwise, the guides end up taking a long time to write.
PrinceGaz - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
Do your sources suggest DX10 hardware will be delayed until Vista is released, even if the hardware is ready and Vista suffers yet more delays? Let's face it, Vista is likely to be delayed more than the next-gen DX10 compliant cards intended to be released near the end of this year. I mean in Jan 2007. Or Feb 2007. Or sometime early next year which seems to be the current Vista release data. Along with "when it's ready" which is a very good thing for quality, but not so good for release dates.JarredWalton - Sunday, May 28, 2006 - link
Derek probably has more info than I do. All I know is that NVIDIA and ATI are both working on DX10 hardware, but they aren't discussing any of the features that will be present - at least not with me.Sahrin - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
"The X1900 AIW has lower clocks than the X1900 XT (500/960), but you also get VIVO support, and the price is lower. "The vanilla X1900XT supports VIVO as well. Doesn't it?
JarredWalton - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
I believe the X1900XT only has TV out, though I suppose some manufacturers might add non-AIW video in hardware.Missing Ghost - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
but when the 6800gs was announced they said it would be a short-lived product.PrinceGaz - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
One reason for purchasing a low-end graphics-card you didn't mention is if your mobo does not have integrated graphics, which includes every nForce3 and nForce4 mobo sold-- in other words the vast majority of people with an Athlon 64 processor. If they're not a gamer then a cheap card is pretty much a necessity in order to use the computer.Another reason would be if you've got a good graphics card already but want an emergency replacement than can be immediately swapped in should it fail (not all of us are hardware reviewers who have hundreds of graphics-cards in the closet). If you've made the jump from AGP to PCIe like I did last year, you probably don't have any other PCIe cards you can use if something should go wrong, so unless you have an old PCI card available you're stuffed unless you have a cheap PCIe card as a spare. Which is the situation I'm in as the fan on my 6800GT has almost died judging from the racket it is making which means my main box may be out of commission for at least a week while it is RMA'd as I have nothing to replace it with.
Obviously for people with integrated video available, the only reason for a low-end card would be for DVI output or higher-quality analogue output like you said.
JarredWalton - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
There are various reasons for budget cards. Our point was that you shouldn't buy one hoping for moderate gaming performance. Buy at the bottom of the price bracket, because the extras are mostly worse than getting just about any mid-range offering. If you buy one as a temporary replacement, though, you're basically buying hardware that's not going to be used much.If you are purchasing a new PC and just need any GPU (i.e. because you don't have IGP), then go ahead and buy one as well. I purcahsed four 6200TC cards for my brother's dental office for exactly that reason, but they were all the $50 versions rather than spending even $20 more for faster clocks.
PrinceGaz - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
I agree 100% on the purchasing a cheap low-end card for boxes that don't have a mobo with integrated graphics. Not spending even slightly more on cards that would be quite a bit faster for 3D stuff is also wise. The arrival of Vista sometime next year will make 3D performance important for workplaces that might migrate to it over the computer's lifetime, though most workplaces won't even consider migrating until it has been out for a year and then when all their applications have been thoroughly tested (probably another year) so by then the ROI has already been covered.The temporary replacement scenario I pushed isn't as daft as it might sound. Obviously it's not going to be used much, that's the whole point of the emergency stand-in solution to keep the box working. But for a single-user scenario, if you've got important recently updated files on a system with a PCIe graphics-card and that card suddenly fails, then you're stuck unless you have an old PCI graphics-card (I have a friend with a Trio64 gathering dust) or a cheapo PCIe that could be instantly swapped in to get me back up and running. I've got three AGP cards but none of them will be any use in my current system when I have to return the PCIe card, and I now regret not also spending a tiny bit extra on an X300 or 6200 last year when I bought this 6800GT.
Like I said we aren't all PC hardware reviewers with hundreds of graphics-cards lying around the house we could choose from if one fails. My PCIe 6800GT is on it's last legs and I don't have another PCIe or PCI card to replace it with while it is RMA'd (though it can run passively in 2D or if downclocked in 3D so I can choose when to RMA). I imagine you have a closet stacked to the ceiling with everything from X1900XTXs and 7900GTXs from several manufacturers, through everything back all the way to the Trio32 and earlier. The rest of us don't have that luxury unfortunately. And yeah, I know you don't really have hundreds of graphics-cards in your closet as most have to be returned, but it's nice to imagine that :)