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Price Guides, April 2005: Video Cards

 by Kristopher Kubicki on April 23, 2005 12:05 AM EST
41 Comments | Add A Comment
41 Comments

GPU Mid-range

Moving into the mid-range sector puts the ball back in NVIDIA's court, particularly for a certain ever addicting online MMORPG. While you lose the next 8 weeks of your life killing dragons until you hit level 60, you might as well do it in style. Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro [RTPE: 100596] prices have fallen slightly since last month, but nothing to really get excited about. Below is a graph of X700 Pro prices over the last three months:

The 128MB Radeon X700 cards are priced very reasonably, but the $10 difference between it and a moderately priced GeForce 6600GT is all the evidence that we need.


We were very excited this week to see the price difference between AGP and PCIe 6600GT video cards disappear. While we shun AGP video cards on the high end, mid-range AGP video cards are extremely reasonable right now. Below, you can see the behavior of the XFX GeForce 6600GT AGP [RTPE: PVT43AND] over the last few weeks.

XFX's GeForce 6600GT PCIe [RTPE: PVT43GND] has behaved similarly as well, with decent price cuts in the last couple of days, bringing the price of that video card down to $170 even.


Aside from the fact that GeForce 6600GTs are priced the same as X700 Pros, ATI has a lot of work to do to catch up in the $150 to $200 market. ATI regains a little bit of ground at the $100 mark, pairing the Radeon X600 Pro against the GeForce 6600 vanilla edition. For a $100 video card, Gigabyte has a very solid offering, although the other video cards for the same price point don't advertise nearly the same prices.


Before we completely jump off the mid-range and into low end cards, we wanted to point out a deal that we spotted on Radeon 9800 Pro AGP video cards. Check out the week's prices on the Sapphire 9800 Pro [RTPE: 100556] cards!

Usually we wouldn't even bring up the Radeon 9800 Pros in favor of the AGP GeForce 6600GTs, but these are still killer cards, particularly for $140! In any case, if you strictly stick to DirectX games and don't want to part with AGP, $140 for a Radeon 9800 Pro is certainly not a purchase that you will regret.


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  • semo - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link

    it certainly does Kristopher
    thanks

    the issue with x300se running doom3:

    had no time to check the settings and i just played the firts 10mins of the game (just shot one worker) and it wasn't choppy. that impressed me because on my 7500 even the main menu was choppy (not talking about walking and jumping just changing control settings). while playing i saw some smoke and it did not look good so there was no eye candy but at least it run ok.

    anyway, my friend is now playing painkiller (ragdolls and particles flying all over the screen) and he says there's no slowdown. my 7500 gave up on the 3rd level :( . (see why i'm looking for a radeon 9800)

  • dripgoss - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link

    LOL on the Newegg reviews.. yeah I posted up a very thorough and honest 2/5 "egg testimonial" on an MSI 6600GT and they wouldn't post it. I bumped it up to 5/5 and it went through but when it finally goy posted to the site it came out as "Nice card" verbatim!! And then they turn around and post testimonials from people who either don't own the product or bought it elsewhere! If they hae to approve the reviews before posting, that's funny..

  • spittledip - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    My apologies! I am used to scoping out all the prices almost daily through pricewatch, and they always have 9800 SEs listed as pros. That is one sweet sweet deal!

  • LoneWolf15 - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    I think there's an important thing to mention regarding the ASUS X800XL video card. The price is far higher than competitors, and yet some models of their X800XL cards use DDR RAM instead of GDDR3 like the others, and the RAM is clocked far lower. This makes it really hard to tell if you're getting a good card for your money. Should you get the lower clocked DDR-based card, you'll be paying a lot more for less performance. I'd recommend Built By ATI, Powercolor, or other brands of cards for this reason.

    ASUS card specs (for comparison)
    http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=Extreme%20AX80...

    Powercolor card specs:
    http://www.tul.com.tw/global/productlist.aspx?fold...

  • KristopherKubicki - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    semo: The first 2 and the last one are definitely 256-bit, Radeon 9800 Pros. The 3rd one did not mention whether or not it was 128-bit or 256-bit, but I am pretty sure that particular SKU is 256-bit.

    Hope that helps,

    Kristopher

  • KristopherKubicki - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    Vol2005: It's a borderline situation with that rig. I would say you would be OK, but anything less and you would be better off getting a PCIe motherboard and video card.

    Kristopher

  • toyota - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    #20 what are you talking about an x300se gets 10 fps in doom3 at 1024x768. even in 800x600 its only 14 fps. you must be playing the game while you are stoned if you call that smooth gameplay.

  • Vol2005 - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

  • Vol2005 - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    Anybody could tell me, please...
    if I will upgrade my graphics to AGP X800XL,
    would the power of my AXP2500@3200 be enough for it or am i gonna upgrade cpu/mb too

  • Vol2005 - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

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