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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PMPopic - Saturday, June 3, 2006 - link
Hello all,Do any of these cards support either of the two new high definition standards(i.e. blue ray)? My understanding is that there are no cards or LCD monitors out now that support this do to the HDCP copy protection. When will we see cards and monitors that support this?
Trisped - Wednesday, May 31, 2006 - link
The guide was concise and well worded (as price guides usually are)Keep up the good work.
Sunrise089 - Monday, May 29, 2006 - link
I didn't take the time to re-read the last few video guides, but I seem to remember them not being as good as this one. I agree with most of your picks, and I do appreciate you including every possible card. I only have two changes I would make.First of all, it's time to move the X800/X850s and the 6800s to mid-range, where they compete in terms of performance. Then move the 7900GTs and X1800XT/XL and X1900GTO to high-end, if you still want to have four sections. None of us reading this guide really considers the 6800GT high-end anymore, not the X1800XL Ultra-high-end. I know Anandtech readers are more hard-core than the general Best Buy shopper, but that's who is reading the article anyways.
Second, when you inevitably move the previous generation cards out of the high-end section, you need to directly compare them to the cards that cost the same amount of money. We all know that buying a $500 6800-Ultra is a terrible deal, heck even buying a 7800GTX is a terrible deal. Those cards were replaced by faster cards but didn't drop in price, so it's an easy call. The $160 X850XT is NOT an easy call. I am under the impression that while giving up SM3 support, it is probably faster overall than the current generation cards at the $160 price point, but I don't know for sure since it isn't normally included in reviews of modern games anymore, and the new cards don't normally get reviewed under the older games I can look up X850XT scores for. I think a direct comparison between last-gen and present-gen cards is warranted when the older cards have actually dropped considerably in price to match the prices of their current-gen performance equivalents.
AGAC - Monday, May 29, 2006 - link
My system was upgraded about one and half year ago and it´s going to remain as it is since the video subsystem is not just about framerates. Thanks to DRM schemes of tomorrow, no video card of today can legaly playback HD content. So, it´s a waiting game for me.BTW, does anyone knows about those phony claims made by ATI regarding HDCP compliant video cards?
And I am not talking about HDMI on video cards. As far as I know, DVI can be HDCP compliant, so that is not much of a chalenge in terms of R&D.
JarredWalton - Monday, May 29, 2006 - link
You need an HDCP chip on the card, and while it is possible, no one has done it yet with ATI chips (AFAIK). They are "HDCP compatible" but not "HDCP enabled". :|lafchiev - Monday, May 29, 2006 - link
"Previous tests showed that NVIDIA's budget cards were slightly faster than ATI's budget cards, but mostly it's a non-issue. "I thought that X1300 was ever more powrfull than the 7300 or 6200 ones.
Let see in the Anand review from 20 february:
Battlefield2 performance 1024x768:
X1300:24.2 fps
NV7300GS: 18.2 fps
Half Life 2 performance 1024x768:
X1300:27.2 fps
NV7300GS: 23.8 fps
Quake 4 performance 1024x768:
X1300:30 fps
NV7300GS: 25.6 fps
Overall NV7300GS is MUCH less performant than X1300
and this changes everything in the budget cards comparison.
Hi
Ico
JarredWalton - Monday, May 29, 2006 - link
I was thinking X300 vs. 6200 - I'll clarify that. X1300 is still pitifully slow for gaming (as is the 7300).tential2 - Sunday, May 28, 2006 - link
I am not sure but I cant seem to find any decent review on this website on the 7600GT and 6600GT. They are closely priced but as you said in the article the 6600T was a very popular card. As a result I am not sure whether to buy another 6600GT and try and go SLI or buy a 7600GT. Which gives more performance? I found a few benches but many of them showed SLI giving no performance benefits. I was wondering what the benefits of SLI 6600GT are over the 7600GT.JarredWalton - Monday, May 29, 2006 - link
7600 GT is generally a bit faster than 6800 GS/GT, so if you have benches of 6600GT SLI vs. 6800 GT you can draw some conclusions. If it were me, I'd take 7600 GT over 6600 GT SLI in a heartbeat. Two cards is a high-end option only, IMO. Don't bother with SLI until you're at least looking at 7900 GT.tential2 - Monday, June 5, 2006 - link
It still would be nice to have a review on it. Also on Crossfire since I have seen nothing on upgrading with crossfire. It would be nice to buy a x1600XT knowing I could buy a later ATI card at anytime and run crossfire. It seems that has been largely neglected by reviewers and just people in genreal. I'm not even sure if Crossfire supports different cards anymore actually.