Price Guides August 2004: Video and Memory
by Kristopher Kubicki & Adam Rader on August 21, 2004 12:04 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
NVIDIA Video Cards
New releases (read: Doom 3) have given NVIDIA a chance to truly show off an area where it has a distinct advantage: Open GL. While NVIDIA's solid Open GL performance is enough to recommend them over ATI if your primary gaming choices include Open GL titles, keep in mind that the playing field gets a bit more leveled out back in DX9-land when price is a more logical measure of which card to buy.
Since prices on NVIDIA's flagship 6800-series cards are still much higher than most have in their upgrade budget, we must default to the GeForceFX lineup for this week's recommendation. More specifically, the XFX GeForceFX 5900 128MB looks to be a solid option this week. This cards siblings (vanilla series 5900) fared quite well in our recent Doom 3 week coverage scoring a little bit above or near ATI's Radeon 9800 Pro card. If Doom 3 is your choice for gaming then this week's recommendation goes solidly to the XFX 5900.
For the non-gaming crowd, Gigabyte's GeForceFX 5700 128MB (*not* the LE edition) makes a good choice for the average desktop user and still sports a little extra juice to run the occasional game.
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thomas35 - Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - link
I'm just wondering, why are you guys posting the Saphire 9800 ATLANTIS 128mb as being a 9800 PRO 12mb card? I'm sure you guys would know the difference by now.KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, August 24, 2004 - link
TheAudit: It seems as though all of the merchants have run out of 5900 and 5950 availability. There are still a lot of 5900XTs though.Kristopher
TheAudit - Sunday, August 22, 2004 - link
Why have a lot of the 5900 prices sky-rocketed?KristopherKubicki - Sunday, August 22, 2004 - link
The XFX GeForce 5900 retails for about $200, which is the one we recommended.Kristopher
Avalon - Saturday, August 21, 2004 - link
You can get a Gainward Golden Sample 5900 for $200...which will practically OC to ultra specs. That's a good deal less than a $285 vanilla 6800.Visual - Friday, August 20, 2004 - link
eep... explain to me, why do you say 6800 prices are still high, and recommend a 5900 "for cheaper" ? the plain 6800 comes below $300 now, and no 5900 is anywhere near that cheap... and you've showed in your articles that the 6800 is faster too.also, there isn't a list of prices on the mem page, only comments.