Holiday 2008 GPU Guide: Price Cuts Galore
by Derek Wilson on December 18, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Movin' On Up: $180 - $220 Graphics Cards
And here's where it gets really messy. The competition is brutal in this market and price cuts have bounced back and forth since this past summer. It's great for the consumer, but it makes it much harder to recommend products.
The graphical quality you can expect at this price point is terrific for everything short of a 30" monitor. It might not always grab you 4x or more antialiasing at the highest resolutions, but these parts will do high quality at high resolution (1920x1200) in most modern games. This is really the minimum spec graphics card you should look at if you've got a 30" display and want to game at full resolution, but you won't always be able to hit the highest quality options and AA will be really tight (especially in games that make heavy use of a lot of framebuffer at ultra high resolutions). Gamers who bought a 30" monitor for gaming and still have money left over will want a higher performance card.
The hardware up for debate here is the GeForce GTX 260 and the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. It's not quite that simple, as it could be with the price wars going on. And NVIDIA has been pushing for us to get out reviews of with all the games released last month. We are definitely working on testing all those new titles, and we do clearly see more competition from NVIDIA with the addition of these games. Clearly, it is possible for NVIDIA hardware to shine given the right title, but we know AMD hardware is no slouch either. Far Cry 2 is one of the games NVIDIA was pushing as a win for them, but in our recent tests we saw it was more of a wash. And washes are fine with us, as that means the consumer is really the winner.
Honestly before November, we would never have recommended the GeForce GTX 260 over the Radeon HD 4870. This time around, considering the increased competitiveness of NVIDIA hardware both in terms of performance on recent games and price mean it's not as clear cut. We also have the Core 216 to consider and the fact that manufacturers offer overclocked versions of NVIDIA hardware far more frequently than AMD hardware.
At the low end of this market, we are going to stick with recommending the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. Finding this part for under $200 is now possible (this is the original price point of the Radeon HD 4850 back at launch), and it competes with stock clocked GTX 260s with 192 SPs. If you want to stay in this general market segment and have a little extra money to spend, it's possible to find GeForce GTX 260 core 216 cards with modest overclocks that could push a buyers decision in that direction for an extra $20 or so. Really, with the pricing like it is here, you just can't go wrong no matter which option you go with. Solid recommendations are hard because of the variety of options and the tight pricing, but really the beneficiary is the consumer buying cards in this market.
Thus, we've decided to make a recommendation here based on platform. We still have some qualms with the AMD drivers running on Core i7 systems. Because people spending this much money should not have to worry about whether or not upcoming drivers will iron out all the outstanding issues, we will recommend that people with a Core i7 system go with the GeForce GTX 260 and those with other platforms pick up the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. Of course, if price is the absolute deciding factor for you, the cheapest 4870 we found did beat out the cheapest GTX 260 we could find.
Unexpectedly Affordable: The Radeon HD 4870 512MB (Image From newegg.com)
Non-Core i7 Recommendation: ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
| Newegg | ZipZoomFly | TigerDirect | Buy.com |
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MB | HIS Radeon HD 4870 512MB | HIS Radeon HD 4870 512MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MB |
| $190 | $230 | $235 |
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260, a better mate for an i7 system (Image from productwiki.com)
Core i7 Recommendation: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
| Newegg | ZipZoomFly | TigerDirect | Buy.com |
MSI GeForce GTX 260 | MSI GeForce GTX 260 | EVGA GeForce GTX 260 | EVGA GeForce GTX 260 |
| $191 | $220 | $237 |
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JonnyDough - Sunday, December 21, 2008 - link
I'm a bit confused about the budget cards for an HTPC, although this article did help me a bit. It's something I've been looking into. I have a projection t.v. with HDMI that runs 1080P. With the desire for multi-channel hi-def sound figured in, I would assume I should go for an AMD 4670 or a 4830 card. But I also want to make sure it's producing good hi-def picture too. If it won't give me the same quality as a Blu-Ray player I don't want to bother with it. Right now I'm using an HD-DVD player for upscaling my movies, and I have a chassis, Windows XP MCE, and some older systems for an HTPC. All that's left is the right card and a Blu-Ray drive/software.This card will likely be paired up with an old Athlon X2 running at 2.0ghz or a single core Pentium4 2.2ghz.
If I can get away with an even cheaper card, let me know. I'd like to do some light gaming on it (TF2, etc @ LAN parties) but the gaming is a distance second in importance to watching movies.
What's the cheapest reasonable solution for a good movie experience when pairing a card with an old processor, 2GBs of RAM, and a huge tv? Sound isn't really an issue, as I have an X-Fi that can do the job - although I'd prefer to keep that with my gaming system.
marc1000 - Monday, December 22, 2008 - link
your card would be the 4670 or maybe even the 4550 if gaming is not important. but sound is a issue, for sure. because you can not play blu-ray content without a "secure channel" for the audio. of course, you can always use the lower-quality sound channels, but I remember reading something about the hi-quality sound on blu-ray discs and special software and hardware needs. browse some articles here at anandtech and you will find the answer. BUT if your display is 24hz then the only options are the 9500gt or 9600gso.teohhanhui - Saturday, December 20, 2008 - link
It points to the 4830...Noobnugget - Friday, December 19, 2008 - link
Nothing like be horribly inaccurate by quoting mail in rebates(which you may not even get back) as the actual price you pay. When will people learn..?JonnyDough - Sunday, December 21, 2008 - link
Seconded. I made the same statement on Tom's Hardware I think (or else it was here) for using rebates as a buying decision factor. Don't purchase MIR items unless you're ready to pay full price for what you're buying. Rebates are a way to steal money from consumers. Nothing more than a cheap gimmick to rob you.BLaber - Friday, December 19, 2008 - link
ahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhaLMAO :- CORE i7 RECOMMENDATION MY A$$
JonnyDough - Sunday, December 21, 2008 - link
From everything I've read I have to agree. Unless you're doing memory specific work or games that require more memory bandwidth, there's no reason to upgrade from a Core2Duo or Core2Quad to i7 yet. Maybe with the next tick or tock (I don't keep track of which is which) then it will be more worth upgrading. Wait for i7 to be seasoned a bit (new proc revisions) before bothering with a change from a Core2 system. Not many modern games really make good use of multiple cores yet anyway. I'm looking forward to GPUs made on smaller dies and Windows 7. PC gaming may make a come back. But these $300 GPU's that create massive amounts of heat and run up my electric bill, and a lack of solid SSD support for XP and Vista make me want to wait a year or two to upgrade my PC from my old socket 939 Athlon X2 systems.kevinkreiser - Friday, December 19, 2008 - link
any opinions on the best single slot gpu? i'm looking to make a small computer that can do graphics intensive work, but i'm limited to using up only 1 slot). maybe i could water cool a dual slot to make it a single slot? no idea. suggestions welcome. thanks.SiliconDoc - Tuesday, December 30, 2008 - link
How about an EVGA 9800GThttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
How about this one with a free full game
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Single slot superclocked core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
XFX
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool...">http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...tails.as...
marc1000 - Friday, December 19, 2008 - link
that would be the radeon 4830, because it runs cooler than the 4850 and these are the only high-end single-slot gpus today... or you could stick with older hardware.anyway, who will be REALLY jealous is the people overseas and below the equatorial line... i live in Brazil and we have no such price wars here. the cards stay with the initial price for their lifetime... i mean, a 4670 that was 130USD when it debuted, still cost 130USD today over here... and the 4830 that launched later have a "premium tag" because the 4670 costs 130USD... so the sellers charge the 4830 for 150USD... and these prices will not fall. that is really something to be jeaulous about. (PS: of course our currency is not dollars, i'm converting the values here)