I try to keep it around $150. Maybe give or take $30 or so if necessary. But would really prefer not to go over $150 if possible.

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I normally by cards in the $150-200 range in the $100-150, because I wait for good sales with coupon and mail-in-rebates. I think there should be a question about how much do we consider market price versus lowest price we can find on bargain websites and such.

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this is a good suggestion. we'll look at a separate poll in the coming weeks on coupons, instant rebates, mail in rebates ...

are bundles part of the same equation, or should that be considered separately from the cost?

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That's pretty much what I do. I nabbed a GTX 260 Superclocked last summer for $220 after promo code, free shipping, and a mail-in rebate. Eight months later I still don't regret it, and is how I've begun to conduct most of my other PC-related purchases.

To answer your question, the only time I give the bundle any consideration is when it has a game I already wanted to purchase was included. This unfortunately is very rare so it almost never turns into a factor in my GPU purchases.

Unique programs like EVGA's Voltage tuner give value, but specific warranty length, options, and provisions are usually the biggest deciding factor beyond price for me personally.

If the GPU already had a very good quality aftermarket cooler pre-installed would this count as part of the bundle? I would factor any very good factory cooler upgrade into the price equation as it saves me from buying one myself. Otherwise I don't end up factoring the bundle into the original price.

To further muddle the issue, things like combos would factor in if I already was planning to buy the hardware. For example the Intel X25-M and Core i7 920 "combo" on Newegg gives an instant $60 off the combined total... I've been incredibly tempted by that because both items are on my future shopping list already and those items don't deal in rebates otherwise.

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Same here. I'll wait for a good deal before purchasing a video card. I have the time to wait since I don't play games very often but do like have a good card when I need it. I got my 9800gx2 a year or so ago for $300 and it's still doing very well for my needs.

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i modified the second question to be a little more clear -- value was changed to VALUE and the (perf/$) note was added

we aren't looking at how flexible you are to get the best performance (that should be taken into account in the first question) ... we want to know how flexible you are to get the best perf/$ ...

342 had responded before this change was pushed live. I do apologize for any inconvenience or misunderstanding.

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I guess this validates AMD's strategy of focusing on winning the mid-range ($150-$199) and performance ($200-$300) markets since that's where the customers are. Any breakthrough in the high-end would be a bonus given the small amount of capital put in up front. (A dual die HD4870 X2 is cheaper to come up with than a mega chip).

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Making any kind of conclusion about a company's strategy based on a poll on a tech site is epic-fail.

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Yeah, the people participating in the poll are only consumers. What the hell do they know?

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The only thing I know is that I know nothing.

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It validates the strategy if their only concern is the subset of customers who respond to polls on AnandTech ...

There is a bigger market out there, and we've always believed that our readership are smart shoppers interested in lots of performance for the money they put in. This sort of helps confirm our thoughts about that, but we are also not randomly sampling, and there could be some correlation between people who tend to respond to polls and the answers we've gotten ... which we can't evaluate without random polling.

we actually do have the ability to randomly poll people with popup polls, but people have been down on that idea, and we still have the problem that we are limited by people who chose to respond to a poll even if they are randomly presented with a popup poll.

we would expect a similar poll on an overclocking web site to reflect higher spending and higher flexibility or more of a focus on absolute performance.

we would likewise expect a poll on a more general consumer focused computer tech site to reflect that value parts (<$50 or maybe $50-$100) have the highest demand.

This data is not generalizable... but, for us and our readers, this information is very valuable.

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I suspect a poll conducted by a third-party consumer research company would give results suggesting that most people don't buy a discrete graphics-card themselves, and that those who do are most likely to buy a card in the US$50-99 range (roughly the cost of two games), with those who also indicate a significant interest in gaming more likely to spend in the US$100-149 or US$150-199 region on a graphics-card (three or four games).

People who visit sites like AT are not normal. They're technology enthusiasts at least, and PC hardware fanatics quite often. Therefore any poll run here can only ever give the views of people who already visit the site, which is certainly not the general public.

I don't think many people these days would actually go to the trouble of buying and installing (or having installed for them) a sub US$50 graphics card, as the time or money spent actually putting it in and setting it up would probably exceed the value of the card. Besides, whilst even sub US$50 cards are many times faster than onboard graphics, even Intel chipsets like the X3000 are quite capable of satisfying the needs of people who enjoy Sims 2 and other less graphically-demanding games (I've been playing Civ 4 a lot lately and I certainly don't need an 8800GTS for that).

The best way to find out what most people in the real-world spend on a graphics-card would be for Anand to use his connections with many mobo companies (who also sell lots of graphics cards with both nVidia and AMD GPUs) and ask them for a rough breakdown of sales across each sector. I'm sure if he promised not to reveal his sources, he'd be able to obtain relative figures of the volumes shipped in each segment (and possibly even between their nVidia and AMD based sales). We know these companies are often willing to spill the beans on upcoming stuff, and even pass on the odd unreleased CPU from Intel or AMD to the likes of AT (what they get in return for this is never made clear...) so I'm sure they could say

"x% of products shipped is in this range, x% in that, x% there, and x% above this amount).

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I make a decent living, but in my opinion, no computer is really worth more than $500 (in the same way I feel no phone plan/internet plan is worth more than $20 per month).

Am I willing to spend a little bit more if it gets me a little more performance? Sure, but I definitely have limits. I would never spend more than $200 on a video card.

I just use the internet, play music and watch movies. If I had an actual reason for needing a good video card (such as having an interest in working with any kind of 3D modeling) then I would certainly feel differently.

I just consider myself a "regular" computer user, with no special needs other then having a picture come on my screen without any major slowdowns.

As an aside, I am a console gamer. With my salary, I simply can not afford to keep buying the new parts required to play the newest games.

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That's a popular point that for most people there is no reason to spend so much on a computer to do jut regular tasks. This is why Netbooks are emerging. (I wish they had Netbooks when I started university 4 years ago)

For some people however, who do very intensive computing for their job or for fun, and time is money, then spending the extra few hundred dollars or even one thousand can be worthwhile if it saves them 1 hour a day, every day. Or if not money then it is time that could be spent doing other things.

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So I would assume you don't have a mobile phone and broadband is out of the question for you as these are generally >$20. For your needs, it doesn't even look like you need a computer. Get a $200 netbook to surn the net, watch movies on your TV, and use a stereo to listen to music.

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"As an aside, I am a console gamer. With my salary, I simply can not afford to keep buying the new parts required to play the newest games." (quote function doesn't seem to be working)

I understand that there are valid reason to stick with console gaming, but price isn't nearly as clean cut as you imply. You said yourself that you are a regular user and $500 seems to be your target price. If you were wise in the purchase of said system, the cost of making such a system gamable is usually the cost of a decent video card. If you spend ~$150 for a Radeon 4850 or GeForce 9800GTX(+), you can get some pretty stellar gaming on reasonable monitors. I consider 1680x1050 monitors to be reasonable as the price jumps going to higher resolutions. Given your target price, I'd say you're looking at 1280x1024 or similar. If this is true you could spend even less on a card like a Radeon 4670 and still get good results. Of course you could also spend ~$250 on a GTX260+ or a Radeon 4870 1Gb and push games some modern games at max settings (sometimes even high AA levels) at resolutions of 2560x1600. If you need memory, 4Gb DDR2-1066 can be had for less than $50 (less for slower modules).

Now compare this to the price of a console. Consider that consoles max out at the graphics capability of an X1900XT/7800GT (XBOX360/PS3). Sure, the 360 utilizes 3 PowerPC cores for its CPU and the PS3 has the cell processor. However, only two of the three PPC cores in the 360 really get used in games. Further, the power of the cell currently only really shows value in blueray decode. By the time they make good use of these (if they can while being graphically limited) quad cores will be extremely cheap and much of the cpu load (I.E. physics) will be shifted to the video card anyways.

Now think about the price of games. In my experience, big release titles are 1/5 to 1/3 more expensive for console releases than PC releases, even for the same title (examples: Fallout 3/CoD:World at War/FEAR 2 PC:$43/$47/$45 360:$57/$57/$57). So even if you decide to spend a little more for upgrades, depending on how much you game and how long between upgrades, you can still spend less overall.

I have a system based on an Athlon64 X2 5600+ with 2Gb RAM and a Radeon 4850. This system allows me to max out C&C: Tiberium Wars, C&C: Red Alert, Stalker: SoC, and Stalker Clear Skies (DX9 as I'm using WindowsXP) on my 1680x1050 monitor (Far Cry 2 runs extremely well, too). I have a buddy with a single core P4-2.8GHz (no HT), 1Gb ram, and a Radeon 3670 ($80 at the time). I can still play Stalker (both) with full dynamic lighting and some settings scaled back on his monitor (1440x900 I think). It still looks good and is a very enjoyable experience. I could name a whole lot of cheaper systems that are used in the small LAN parties I host that are perfectly adequate for modern games.
Note: We typically playing Stalker, Tiberium Wars (tried Red Alert 3, but didn't like the system as much), FarCry (might switch to or add FarCry 2 when I can convince some people that FarCry isn't the end all be all), and even some old school Deus Ex. We would still play Generals if it weren't for the endless "sync errors".

The point is, you only have to upgrade your system if you feel the upgrade in gameplay is worth the money. I could have just stuck with my X1900XT and got almost exactly the same gameplay experience as an XBOX 360 (save control differences). With newer games, I'd just adjust the settings to my system. It would still look as good as comparable games on a 360. The situation is slightly more complicated for the PS3 due to developers having a harder time extracting performance, but it's still effectively the same situation. The beauty of the PC is that, if I deem it worth the cost, I can move beyond the current capability of consoles.

I have an old AthlonXP based system with a Radeon 9700Pro that I use as a spare in LAN parties (We use it for Tiberium Wars mostly). It still plays many modern games at low levels of detail. Sure the eye candy isn't as nice as my newer systems, but it is nice to still be able to play a modern game on a system that's around the age of the original Xbox. Try playing a 360 game on the original XBOX.

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+1 to JP on that.

No offense to the original poster, but to say that you make a decent living, then follow it up with "can't afford PC gaming" is bizarre.

If you want your 360 to look even halfway decent, you must have a hi-def TV or monitor, so you could afford that. You can afford the more expensive games. What about the costs of Xbox Live service? And where can I pay less than $20 a month for decent high-speed internet access? Sign me up!

I've got an ancient athlon 3700+ and an 8800GT. Right now I'm playing Fallout 3 at high detail with HDR lighting etc. and it looks great at 1280x1040 or whatever the default is on my monitor. The GT cost me $120. Before that, I had a 7600GT that cost me about $110. I upgrade my card every 18 months and my PC every four years. No, I'm not a stickler for ultra-high graphics, but I've played 360 lots and I'm not missing out on anything. In fact, many times, I can customize the graphics to look better than the 360 version. Plus, I can login to Steam and play TF2 for FREE anytime I want.

Console gaming is great, but it's not really any cheaper than PC gaming, unless your talking about pushing the resolutions on the PC game well beyond anything a console can handle. And if you do that, you're comparing apples to oranges.

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Props and +1pt for that very detailed break down. See folks, this is the reason the Post-a-comment feature. If not, people read an article and just assume it's unbiased and exactly the way to go — until you read guy's comment above! Thanks bro!

I personally won't purchase a card over $200, realistically $200 + MIR. The vid card industry has INFECTED PCs and now basically dominates/controls the industry. Note how PSU makers have directly catered to this ridiculous SLI crap. PSU prices have gone up, power requirements have risen, heat, noise, dust, blah blah all have increased b/c of POS "gaming" zombies... take all that money spent on fanboy upgrades and zealotry = could be taken a trip overseas, paid for certs, treat yourself to something in real life Vs colors on a screen... lol You noobs will learn when you get much older (some of you will never learn) all that time and money spent was in VAIN on an isolated, "experience!" Get off the tube/keyboard and save your cash.

BTW- Unplug yourselves and listen to Alex Jones INFOWARS: Distractions in the form of "entertainment" are keeping people stupid watching sports and "gaming," while people are robbing us all blind!

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I like the article and the simplified take on the poll. Just a small thought however: considering the the price different between a cheap card and the highest end cards is several hundred dollars, I think the choice increments of $5 in the 2nd question is a bit moot and should perhaps be something like +/- $10, $25, $50, $75, $100 and infinitely.

I also like the idea of a poll on people's take on coupons and mail-in rebates and if they affect their purchase decision.

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Agreed, I didn't know which price category to pick because often the after-rebate price of something I buy puts it into a lower category.

Another question helpful in differentiating customer needs would aim to sort by non-gamer, infrequent gamer, and frequent gamer, though I suppose the non-gamer these days has little reason to buy a video card at all except for features instead of performance.

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With what's out there today, I'd prefer to stay between $100-$150, +/- $15. Although, 1680x1050 is my resolution so I can afford to fall within that price segment. Had I a larger display, I would likely have to increase the amount I was willing to spend.

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For a particular level of performance (i.e. 60fps, 1920x1200, full eye-candy) what is the cheapest way to get there. This will be different for different games, as well as being unobtainium for some games.

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I tend to aim for £150 - £200 (UK Pricing), which works out to around $250. I'm quite flexible though, but I find that such pricing gives the best bang-for-the-buck; like the 1GB 8800GT Palit Overclocked card I've got now - runs 1920x1200 with no issues, but didn't break the bank.

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thus far, when i have aimed at getting a new graphics card for gaming, my budget has landed somewhere in the $200-250 range (average). there are a couple instances when i have gone with less because thats all i needed at the time (HD4670 at 1240x1024 for quake wars?), but in general i aim for the kickers, since i like the pretty, but i dont want to have to upgrade every 6 months to keep it that way. usually the $200-250 cards are good for at least a year and a half to 2 years at at LEAST medium quality textures at 1650x1080 with maybe 8xAF 2xAA. it varies from game to game, but you get the picture. however, there have been times when i aimed my budget +/-$50 from my usual price range, like i will probably be doing when i upgrade my video card soon. assuming that there isnt anything new out by the time i do it, im going to be picking up an HD4850X2 2GB. the card may cost $40 more, but the extra performance over say an HD48701GB is insane. of course, at $8 an hour part time, that may be a little while, since i have other higher priority items on my plate first. if what im hearing is true, the HD5XXX series is coming out this summer. maybe i will look into picking up something from that, depending on the performance gains/$ the cards offer

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I think it is important to keep a distinctions between regular computer user, gamers, and people doing 3D modeling, because the demands are completely different. I liked the way you separated things in your christmas round up I like to se more of that, and more articles in $100-105 range. Although I do a faire bit of gaming and will spend up to $250 on a card, most of my friends who I would build computers for would not.


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that would have been a good question to ask ... perhaps in a future poll we'll try to determine how much of our readership are PC gamers, console gamers, both, or neither ...

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sorry about the typo, I meant $100-150

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I typically buy a new gpu every 2 years or so and try to stay under $300 unless there is a good deal at another price point(higher or lower).

My main concern these days is that it can run modern games at 1080p with high/max details, and do hdmi out w/ audio.

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This describes my philosophy as well :-)

I'm a fan of hooking my PC to my TV for gaming. I like big :-)

If I could afford a 2560x1600 monitor for personal use I'd totally be there, but I'll opt for a 50" 1080p TV over a smaller monitor.

i know, i know, i always complain about DPI ... i'd like smaller pixels everywhere, but >2x AA becomes increasingly useful with larger TV sized pixels :-)

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i skimmed the article
really all i think you need is a brief line and then the two questions

also the article can sometimes skew results.
"But we suspect that the majority of our readers, while interested in high end or even halo parts, will care much more about lower price points and bang for buck metrics."

you wouldn't think this would affect anything, but sometimes, lines like this actually can effect peoples answers to the questions.

no biggie though

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How did you guys decide on the granularity for those two questions?

If I was targeting the highest figure in any of those ranges or the lowest or the middle, the maximum spread using the highest flexibility is still just 2. Assuming people picked price points within the ranges given evenly and using the results people gave in their flexibility, you really didn't learn anything from asking the question on flexibility.

After reading the question I came up with the answer +100, but the highest option was 50!

Consider this: I was willing to spend $250 on a graphics card and when the 8800GTs were at $112, it was stupid not to buy one of those. It was well below my target price but the price/performance was so great, I would have been a moron to pick anything else. The people spending $20 less for 1/3rd the performance were also equally stupid. Are people really this inflexible when it comes to picking a graphics card?

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I used to buy the $499+ cards but I've realized that I get just as much (or little) enjoyment out of my games using a $200 card.

I am however flexible enough that I'd spend 25% more if that translated into a >25% performance improvement.
I think it's ridiculous the way the market is flooded with very similar cards that are only a few FPS apart and are also priced <$10 apart. Does the world really need one $149 card, one at $155, another at $169, another at $172 etc? Surely if you can afford a $149 card you can also afford a $169 card - it's the same market segment IMO.

I would have preferred if ATI and especially Nvidia had fewer cards in their lineups.

$99 for new pc gamers just coming from integrated

$199 for the mid-range/mainstream crowd (possibly also one at $149, but I personally feel that it's unnecessary - the $199 card would drop to the $149 - $169 price point soon enough anyway)

$299 for the enthusiasts

$499+ for those with more money than brains.

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Agreed, but that's what makes these reviews so important. Options are good, especially if there's no clear winner, but having too many definitely complicates things.

I'm a $200 GPU consumer, but I'll go up or down $50 to find the sweet spot. I'm not sure how to answer the questions based on that. I think I said $150-200 with a $50 swing, but I don't think I'd ever buy a $100 video card.

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My friend picked up a 9800 GT for ~$100 three months ago; I think it was a great buy. I would have done the same had I not just bought an 8800GT in April 2008 for $200!


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It's funny (or rather... sad ?) and very revealing that the second question is also about price. Personally, I'm not willing extremely flexible on price, especially since a higher price generally actually lowers the perf/price ratio. There's a lot of money to be saved playing 2y old games on 2y old hardware.

I am willing to spend more for quality, durability, stability, and silence. The first free are barely ever mentioned in reviews. Noise, for some reason, has made it. I've been repeatedly disappointed (stuff not working, becoming very noisy fast, bad service...) by Asus, which for some reason seems to have a sterling reputation with journalists, for example. I've never had a problem with Asrock, go figure.

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Yeah. I here you.

All in all, I'm all about current yet fully established technology. I mean, my 8GB of DDR2 ram suits me just fine, I don't need 12GB of DDR3 RAM for four times the cost. Even the very act of trying to be a computer snob leaves me open to "value priced stuff" because what you just "had to have" last year is now available in an overall better package at a lower cost.

I think a healthy budget is where you can afford to update your equipment at that price every 18 months or so. Like if you're budget is $3000 for a desktop but you can only afford to do get a new one in five years... then you really couldn't afford the $3000 desktop to begin with . Even as improvements have cooled down somewhat because of decreased demand, I still think progress is quick. So, you're better off updating frequently, even the resale value of your used equipment is maximized at that time when it's still not quite obsolete.

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The poll was hard for me to anwser. I always run more then one machine. Usuallly i have one thats armed to the teeth with bleeding edge hardware, and three others ranging from mainsteam to enuthist level gear.

Example. Currently my main rig is a water cooled QX9650 running at 3.6 24/7 with a 4ghz profile in my bios mainly for crysis on a Evga 790i. 8 gigs of DDR3 1600 linked and sync'd, 2 intel SSD 80g MLC's raid 0, running recently installed 3 EVGA GTX 285 FTW's on a 1080P 42" display.

Ok yes i understand 90 percent of games get minimal gains if any at my resolution with these GPUs. For this rig i honestly care about the maximum visuals and filtering Vsync'd un the most demanding games with filtering vsynced when possible. So do i care if card number 3 losses me 15 frames overr 2 cards but i can still lock up my vsync. Who cares. They are frames my monitor never would have seen anyways. Now take a frame rate and drop below my 60...then i start to care. On this rig at least.

My last upgrade is an excellant example. I had 3 8800GTX's. The basically played ever game on the block maxed out with filtering at a factor of 8 save crysis until the release of Far cry 2 (could do max visuals but only 2x filtering and still vsync) . So for good reason i didn't see much point when the 280's hit a year ago to buy new cards as at the time only crysis could cripple my system and 3 280's at stock still wouldn't vsync crysis with any filtering. A stock 280 gives you like a 20% performance increase over a 8800GTX.

Only with far cry 2 and EVGA's new FTW's did my mind start to change. with such a high over clock the 285's by EVGA convinced me to upgrade...the first time i vsynced crysis at max setting and 8 filtering followed by the same on far cry 2. I stopped doubting my purchase. It was beautiful.

Now all my other systems...I still like high frame rates but its much more about bang for the buck. A Phenom II @3.6 with 3870X2 + 3870 tri-fire on a 28" 1920x1200. A Q9300 at 3ghz again with 3870's tri-fired on 52" 1080P doubling as a HTPC. Have no plans upgrading those cards/rigs tell Direct X 11. They are basically LAN machines for friends/family. Tri-fire for that series of card and resolutions works well in 95% of games with maxed out settings are possible with 4 to 8x fitlering.

Generally in terms of GPU's unless there is a game presently able to drop my main rig below 60fps...i find i need to upgrade every other GPU generation.

Ultimately i think every rig I build i do so with differant budget and frame rate in mind....though the later weighs heavily. No one likes playing crap frame rates with bad visuals. On the same note i don't need every rig i own to leave me gushing O negative to have me feeling satisfied with my gaming experience.

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Indeed. I mean, I'm less extreme... but it's the same concept. Main system I want most games to work great, but I become even more value conscious with other systems. And in particular, if things changed from how they are right now, I'd be willing to upgrade my main computer's power supply to say a 700W supply and add a $300 video card say (not with the current games and the current offerings but if things changed). But there's no way, I mean NONE that I'd have my other computers killing a bunch of electricity for the two or three times a month someone might use it for gaming.

Other issues for me that's dear to me are noise level, hassle and driver compatibility. I run Ubuntu from time to time and SLI or crossfire "scares me".



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Noise and power consumption are more important to me than either price or performance. I tend to buy the fastest passively cooled GPU available (excluding the occasional power-hungry GPU with crazy big passive cooling which would require me to beef up case cooling).

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There are still interesting trade-offs, eg does this small increase in wattage give me a big increase in performance? Also idle power consumption is often more relevant than max power consumption (I can cope with a bit of extra noise when playing a game).

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I generally buy cards at the 150+/-40 point. It takes a great card for me to fork out $180, and a great bargain for $110.

If I had to get a new card, I'd probably get either a 9800GTX+ 512MB ($150 before rebate) or a 9800GT 1GB ($150 before rebate) on nVidia's sideor be split between a 4870 512MB ($165 before rebate) and a 4850 1GB ($162, no rebate) on ATI's side.

The 4870 1GB's are too much, and the 4870 X2 and GTX260's are well out of my range at this time.

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I'm really glad you did this posting, too bad it was only after the other two multi-GPU articles had come out. Oh well. I am really glad to see Anand focus on readers' input, to integrate into the article, and going further than simple polling but also a briefing to help explain the need/target for the polling.

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I'm willing to spend as high as $500 because I know I'll be using the card for 4+ years. But one thing I won't tolerate is for the graphics card to be engineered as a pig.

Three power sources (PCI-e + 2 power connectors) and 300 watts of power consumption? For a single graphics card? That is absurd. And don't tell me that it only uses that power when in 3D mode. With contemporary desktop environments your card is *always* doing 3D rendering. And don't get me started about the waste heat produced and the ever-more-extreme cooling methods required to remove that heat.

I won't buy a pig at any price.


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My rigs are built as toys, and as personal rewards. As a result, I have little issue with spending extra to ensure they're top-notch. Looking forward I plan to do big upgrades every 2-3 years and little things (quiet fans, etc.) in between, assuming of course that it is financially doable.
I enjoy the wide variety of video cards available, and also understand that some of it is due to weird circumstances in marketing. The only real issue I have with the current GPU landscape is the concept of renaming cards piecemeal. It can make sense to rename cards IF it makes the product landscape more sensical, but I don't think it is the case currently.

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Fire up GPU-Z and you will see that your card switches to low speed/power when in desktop mode. Even in Vista with all the eye candy on my 285 drops to something like 100MHz clock from 700MHz and 300MHz memory.

But I still agree that I'd like to see smaller and cooler cards.

Z.

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I think most people will have a flexibility in their price point that relates to the amount their willing to spend on the card in the first place.

So for example, if someone willing to pay $100 typically has $20 flexibility, you might expect someone willing to pay 500 to have a flexibility nearer to $100.

The flexibility histogram would therefore be expected to reasonably mimic the one for the purchase price.

Although I would never buy one of the "halo" cards, I always enjoy reading your reviews of them. It's helpful to read that there's no point in buying anything faster than card X for resolutions of 1680 x 1050 in game Y and so on.

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I once spent $4300 for a PC with no monitor. It was the hottest thing going.

Six months later, a faster model, with monitor, was under $2500.

Lesson learned.

If a customer wants something super-hot, and is willing to pay for it, I'll build it, but, generally, I'll recommend something a couple of steps down from the top.

For most people, this puts us into the 4670-4830 range.

Excellent value for a few bucks.

Just an opinion.

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I purchase a new graphics card every 2-3 years to upgrade my PC. It is easy to sink a lot of money into a graphics card unreplacement unless discipline and restraint are exercised.

What is important to me when I consider a replacement graphics card are the following criteria I strictly abide by:

1) The existing graphics card must be service for at least 2 years before replacement.
2) The replacement card must realize at least double the performance and double the memory for the same or less cost of the original graphics card.
3) The replacement graphics card may cost between $150 to $200.
4) The replacement graphics card power draw must be 55W to 65W at full load and preferably be a single slot card.

I am waiting for a suitable replacement for the 7950GT this summer. The nVidia 9600GT does not quite meet the double the performance criteria while it meets my power, memory and cost criteria. The nVidia 9800GT meets the double performance, memory and cost criteria, but fails the power draw criteria. To me, any card drawing more than 65W at load requires too much power.

When GPUs are released this summer with 45nm process, then graphics cards will be released worthy of consideration.

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I am assuming you have heard of the 9800 Green Power? It does not require an external power connection (all power comes through the PCI-E slot connection.)

I beg to differ on your "double performance" bashing of the 9600GT, by pure numbers it has much more than double the performance in any modern game (AKA one using shaders, like any released in the last 2 years.)

The 7900 series (Which I love, my main card is a 650mhz 7900GS) has 20 or 24 pixel shaders, and 7 or 8 vertex shaders, and 1400mhz DDR3.

The 9600GT has 64 Unified Shaders, is stock clocked at 675mhz and 2,000mhz DDR3.

I had a G92 and G80 card, sold them both, why? Because the older games I was into actually showed a decrease in FPS from my 7900GS. BUT! I recently picked up an 8600 GTS (2,000mhz 128-bit bus ~$40 on ebay), and it really is much much faster in modern shader-laden games such as Grid. I would say that since the 8600GTS is about half a 9600GT and the 8600 will solidly trounce a 7900 card, you can safely get a 9600GT. (Why you don't just get an HD4830 is beyond me, it sounds like your perfect card.)

I think you may be a little too picky with the "65w too much power" argument, after all CPU's have drawn more power than that for years and did you bitch about that? And the GPU is doing so much more work for crying out loud.

Not to knock being picky, I am unbelievably picky, but I channel it into action and modify an existing solution.

Might I suggest a 9800GT with a volt-mod to reduce the power, and clock it back a little? Although if you wait a little bit the factory will release the Green Power model for you.

I don't know why you need a single slot card either, do you demand that your CPU function with a 1U cooler on it? No, of course not, it would be silly. Why force your video card GPU to labor under the heat it can't rid with a single slot cooler?

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Getting value from a graphics card is more than performance/dollar at time of purchase. It also means using the card for a certain period of time to recoup your moneys worth. Depreciation on graphics cards is worse than that of automobiles. That's why I will keep a graphics card for 2 years before I replace it.

Also, the cost of electricity is high where I live. Performance / watt is important to me -- though I did not adequate express this in the above blog.

I am also picky about the power load because I think it ridiculous a graphics card would draw more power than the CPU. Any PC that requires more than a 350W power supply is a workstation, not a PC.

I currently use an E6600 which draws 65W. I use a 500W Seasonic power supply which could easily power more powerful graphics cards than the 7950GT (65W) in the 100W to 130W class. However, I use 500W because power supplies are most efficient between 40 to 60% of max load -- 250W for my rig at max load.

No, I have not heard of the 9800 Green Power. Where can I find power draw and performance figures for this card. This card may operate at lower voltages, but the frequency is also lower because the G94 chip is being used.

The 9800GT draws 83W which exceeds my criteria. It is possible to reduce voltages but not by much. Its conceivable that 75W could be achieved with lower voltages.

The HD4830 is a very good card with more than double the performance. However, the HD4830 draws 85W while the 7950GT draws 65W.

Both the HD4830 and the 9800GT have better performance/watt than the 7950GT. But I still want to limit loads to 65W.

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