Affordable Modern Graphics Cards 484
EconolineCrush writes "If graphics cards that cost more than a mortgage payment make your wallet quiver, it's worth checking out ATI's Radeon X700 and NVIDIA's GeForce 6600 series. Both are based on cut down versions of latest and greatest graphics chips, but at under $200, they sell for a fraction of the price of high-end cards. What's more, these $200 wonders outperform last year's $500 cards, sometimes by embarrassingly large margins. The Tech Report has in-depth reviews of both the GeForce 6600GT and Radeon X700 XT if you're in the market for a next-gen graphics card that's a little more affordable."
Why just PCI-E (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted that Nvidia is releasing a good quality card at a reasonable price, I realize that PCI-E allows for the very cool SLI technology, and I intend to buy one eventually, but seriously why not come out with AGP cards at the same time, my copy of DOOM3 is already starting to dusty while I wait
These aren't midrange cards! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't bring myself to buy cheap graphics cards (Score:4, Insightful)
Just have to wait six months. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sell for a fraction... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I bought a Radeon 9200SE for $99 about 6 months ago (give or take), and it meets or exceeds the requirements of any game I've ever seen.
Great (Score:3, Insightful)
~S
Affordable and fast... but that's all (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition to that the few places that do sell these cards are in the US and they only ship to US, Canada and USFPO.
the 9800 is cheap as chips too (Score:2, Insightful)
What about... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's last year's chipset. But weren't they all the shit last year?
Aah, basking in the lagging edge of technology. Bug free and cheap games. Besides, I have a life and an airplane to build. Don't have time to camp out on the doorstep of Egames, waiting for the latest release of 'Death in the Dark, Part XXX', and then spend a week trying to get it to run so that I can say, "Ooh! Shiny things!!"
Re:Rats (Score:4, Insightful)
Heck, Far Cry was almost as demanding as doom 3 and it came out last summer. Some people even liked it more, especially when Ubisoft released the Pixel Shader Model 2.0 patch for it, to let it make use of the new shader technology on the GeForce 6800 cards - which, by the way, looks pretty cool, if you haven't seen it yet.
Re:Can't bring myself to buy cheap graphics cards (Score:3, Insightful)
Visa loves me, now.
Re:Why just PCI-E (Score:5, Insightful)
I think perhaps Nvidia and ATI are hoping to get these cards out in large quantities for the OEM system market in time for the Christmas buying season. Retailers are likely to be pushing the new PCI-Express systems as the wave of the future for the holidays.
Re:These aren't midrange cards! (Score:3, Insightful)
I do think that this time around parts scarcity has something to do with it. I found it almost impossible to find a 6800 GT when I went looking.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you don't want to pay what they're asking for it, wait a year. The prices will drop.
Re:A mortgage payment!!!???? (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally prefer being a little less literal at times.
$99 card for any game? (Score:2, Insightful)
The 6600GT and X700XT are what people ready to upgrade should be looking for. It shouldn't take "too" long for the agp versions but I could always be wrong. Seeing how both ATI and nVidia made a fast card for a bargain price, I assume they'll work their ass off as fast as possible to be the first releasing the agp version and see the # of sales rise up like the tower of pizza.
I don't know what they are thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or if you want an nvidia card (i.e. you have Linux and want drivers that, uh, work), the 6800GT is almost as fast and at 400 dollars, its a great deal.
The 6600 and x700s seem almost as fast as the 6800NU (300 dollars) at first, but note--they have 128-bit memory. This means that they will suffer a much larger hit when enabling antialiasing, as their memory is slower and AA requires a lot of memory bandwidth.
I don't understand how 400 dollars is too much for a card, as I can easily assemble a high-end computer for 1200-1400 dollars, like one of these:
Athlon 64 3200+ (200), Asus A78 (150), 1GB Dual Channel Corsair (300), 6800GT (400), 160GB hard drive (100), 480 watt power supply (100), case and floppy and crappy cdrom (50). That's 1300 dollars for something better than the 4000 dollar computer that Dell is offering, and as good as a 3500 dollar Alienware. So don't bitch about the price of graphics cards--you get so much for your money these days its insane.
Re:These aren't midrange cards! (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Up until a few months ago, I was using a Diamond Speedstar A50 (8MB, _EARLY_ AGP card). Then I tried playing a game. I had to go to a 32 Meg card. Then I tried playing a real game. I thought 32 megs was pretty good until I realized that these days, anything more complex than Tetris requires 128MB. Crazy. When 128MB is low-end, there's a problem somewhere.
Re:A mortgage payment!!!???? (Score:5, Insightful)
As an avid gamer, I view my $5,000/yr hardware habit the same way a sports fan looks at his season tickets. It's simply the cost of entertainment.
I play games almost every day, for about two hours a day. I'd rather play CS than watch The Apprentice, and I like to play on high-end hardware. It just amazes me, the way every time I think it can't get much better... it gets much better!
Besides, us early adopters are great for the rest of you. Without us, your speedy $200 video cards would be $1,000.
Price/Performace (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can't bring myself to buy cheap graphics cards (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rats (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:What about... (Score:1, Insightful)
who cares about "edges" at all? (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect a *lot* of people are less concerned about "ultra-high performance" and more concerned with "price point". After all, it's the real world that matters most, and who can stop buying groceries for a month just to increase their framerate by 50%?
(Those cheap games don't suck either, but don't delve TOO far back or the bugs come back too...)
I'd rather buy a PS2 for those prices (Score:3, Insightful)
You've really gotta love marketing... (Score:3, Insightful)
So to generate more revenue, cards no longer bleeding edge are not reduced in price. Instead the newer cards are just bumped to a higher price and the original $200 sticker is now labeled 'Affordable.'
Beat last years cards? (Score:4, Insightful)
EQ2, forget about putting up shadows. Doom3 runs okay but by okay I mean 15 - 20FPS average (and not all the options on.)
So, if you're saying these can beat my Ti4600, then I'm not very impressed. They need to CRUSH it for me to be impressed.
Is paying $200 worth it? Spend the $400, and you'll get a card you can use for a year and a half. If you spend $200 you'll be wanting more in 6 months when new games demand more.
I got my Ti4600 when they were brand new, and it cost me. But I've been using it for a long time, which is worth it.
What I find amazing personally... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a 9800 Pro that I bought for $198, and I am certain that will carry me thru for another year or so until the x800 XT becomes $200, then I'll upgrade to the 'midrange' card again. I don't need bleeding edge technology -- I can suffice by lowering the quality settings to play games. If I am playing single player, I can turn up the eyecandy because FPS don't really matter, and if I'm playing online, then I turn them down to get the high FPS.
There's really no need to buy a $400 graphics card, and no need for them to cost that much. It's just for players who need the extra 5 or 10FPS when they are already in the 50 FPS range... which is damn stupid.
Not News (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:These aren't midrange cards! (Score:5, Insightful)
"All told, NV40 weighs in at 222 million transistors, roughly double the count of an ATI Radeon 9800 GPU and well more than even the largest desktop microprocessor. To give you some context, the most complex desktop CPU is Intel's Pentium 4 Prescott at "only" 125 million transistors. Somewhat surprisingly, the NV40 chip is fabricated by IBM on a 0.13-micron fabrication process, not by traditional NVIDIA partner TSMC." source: The Tech Report [tech-report.com]
PCI-Express (Score:5, Insightful)
Having said that, the nVidia 6600 is a great line of cards, especially the 6600GT. The X700 is too little too late, unfortunatly, but ATI diehards will probably appreciate the middle ground they're offering. I myself was put off by ATI's lack of dynamic range, unlike nVidia, which is why I bought a nVidia 6800 (vanilla) a couple of weeks ago, and I must say, it's one hell of a card. Counter-Strike: Source and Doom 3 are smooth as butter.
Re:A mortgage payment!!!???? (Score:3, Insightful)
Beyond that, just because small towns don't have all of the commerce of a city, that doesn't mean that there's nothing to do in them. Most evenings I go home and sit around with the wife talking. I'm too tired to go out and do anything. If I do, we go for a walk in the park. What part of that requires me to be in a city?
Different strokes for different folks.
Re:I don't know what they are thinking. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry any video card at $400 is not a great deal. That's starting to be 1/3 the price of a computer. Why when every other part of a computer has gotten cheaper over the years do video cards get more expensive? I've heard it's because they have more transistors and stuff on them, but that is tru for cpu's too, I think ever since the lack of competition in the market prices have only gone up. There used to be alot more players in the game. (3dfx, nvidia, mga, s3, ati etc. .
Console (Score:3, Insightful)
High Dollar != Best Value (Score:3, Insightful)
Affordable and under $100 (Score:3, Insightful)
2D quality (Score:2, Insightful)
Half-Life 2 cards... (Score:3, Insightful)
Needless to say, I am quite pleased with my decision to wait a little bit.
As a matter of fact, I didn't pick up and play Half-Life (the standalone version) until 2 years ago. I can hear the gamers recoiling in horror now. You know what though? The game was still awesome. When I got stuck, a quick search on the net would offer help. After I finished the game, I was able to download and play some cool "unofficial" mods. Got the game cheap, still enjoyed the hell out of it, and the hardware requirements to play it were not a problem at all.
Needless to say, I don't plan on buying up any more games when they first come out. I apply the same philosophy to movies as well, and it has worked out. If I want to see something, it really doesn't matter to me how soon I see it. We seem to have really been suckered into this "consumerism" mindset. Instead of buying a CD within the first two weeks of its release, before they jack the prices up, I'll just wait until it shows up in the used CD stores.
I am glad that there are some people out there who gobble up the latest and greatest stuff, because it drives the prices down on all the "obsolete" stuff for guys like me.
Re:I don't know what they are thinking. (Score:3, Insightful)
Add that to the fact that a lot of these boards come with high speed memory a generation or two ahead of your system ram. (GDDR3 at 1ghz).
Re:These aren't midrange cards! (Score:3, Insightful)
As Abe Simpson said: Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. 'Give me five bees for a quarter,' you'd say.
Face it, things cost more than they used to. It doesn't cost a nickel to take the ferry, and top-of-the-line graphics cards cost more than $300.
Re:Consoles are driving up PC video card prices (Score:2, Insightful)
Second, if 640x480 is too little resolution for you to enjoy Doom 3, it's not going to be any more fun as a console game.
Re:A mortgage payment!!!???? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't know what they are thinking. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:These aren't midrange cards! (Score:2, Insightful)
Are modern games that much better? In my opinion, no. I think this is a major part of the sentiment here: software has become less efficient and some people don't like the stress on their wallets that comes with keeping up the hardware for these bloated, overtaxing games and operating systems.
Re:A mortgage payment!!!???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A mortgage payment!!!???? (Score:1, Insightful)
And in London, we call that "a 2-bedroom flat".
3D graphics cards are niche market (Score:5, Insightful)
First, there are essentially no games out there that tax a high end card. Even games like Doom 3 run light lightning with a 128MB Radeon 9800. The high and ultra quality settings scraping for improvements, like not compressing normal and specular maps, things that buy you almost nothing in exchange for massive bandwidth requirements. So all of these people clamoring for X800s and all that...there's no need, not yet.
Second, a minority of PC owners run 3D games or otherwise need 3D acceleration. Partially this is because of compatibility and driver issues--and how those issues don't exist on consoles (cue the guy who always brings up RTS games as a counterargument)--but it's also partially because it's hard for the average person to know which games will work. DirectX 9? Pixel Shader 2.0? Video memory? Most people don't know anything about this. They buy a game, it doesn't work, they can't return it, and then they buy an Xbox for less than the price of a video card.
Third, the fragmentation and wide variations in the PC market result in all but a handful of game developers shooting for the high-end. Heck, over half of all PCs sold are notebooks. Is the 15% of the *gamer* market that owns X800s a viable target? Wouldn't it be better to tone things down and run on a wider variety of cards? Sure, you can write a game to scale based on the hardware it is running on, but this is expensive and time consuming.
In a lot of ways, the whole PC video card market is thriving on a sizable group of people--though still a minority--who upgrade obsessively.
Re:Console (Score:3, Insightful)
-JDF
Re:Consoles are driving up PC video card prices (Score:2, Insightful)
Gaming is my hobby and I enjoy it more with good equipment. Just like any other hobby.
Can't afford it? If it matters that much to you, save or get another job or whatever. I busted ass on some freelance work to pay for my computer upgrades. Spent half my profit on upgrades and put the rest in savings.
As for your console commment. Sure go for it. It is much cheaper. Also much lower res and if you are used to mouse and keyboard then the controller is kind of lame for FPS games.
My other complaint is the there aren't a lot of good strategy games on consoles. No Civilization 3 or Rise of Nations.
I have a PS2 and a GameCube - they are good for what they are - but don't get nearly as much usage as the pcs.
Re:3D graphics cards are niche market (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because you're running a completely different render path which is simply not able to do as much "fancy stuff" as you can on a newer card. The 6800 series has hardware features which (a) are used by Doom 3 if possible, and (b) simply don't exist on the 9800.
Also, if you think your 9800 pro is so hot, can you run D3 in "high quality" mode at 1280x1024 with 4x AA and 8x AF? I haven't tried it, but I doubt it.
Do you need to run in 1280? Maybe not. I, though, have a 21" monitor, and for years played games in 800x600, looking at very pixellate images, wishing I had something like the 6800GT that I have now - the same resolution that I use for my desktop, and AA/AF to make it look even better.
Second, a minority of PC owners run 3D games or otherwise need 3D acceleration
Every family I know with a PC has asked me how to get better 3D performance. They have kids, kids play games. Pretty much the only people I know who haven't asked for faster 3D performance are old, single people - and they're not the majority of PC users.
Is the 15% of the *gamer* market that owns X800s a viable target?
Evidently it is, or it wouldn't be profitable, and they wouldn't do it. This whole capitalistism thing doesn't usually reward people for losing money.
In a lot of ways, the whole PC video card market is thriving on a sizable group of people--though still a minority--who upgrade obsessively.
In the $300+ market, you're right. But in the $100 market, there are a sizeable amount that go into major manufacturer's PC's. You see, even the major manufacturers have realized that if the kids can't play their games, then the parents won't buy the computers...
steve
Re:3D graphics cards are niche market (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, if you think "running good" means 640x480, then yes it runs good. But try playing in 1024x768 at Ultra quality on a Radeon 9800 card. Even a Radeon 9800XT will struggle to maintain 15 frames per second. And trust me it's very noticeable -- I have a Radeon 9800XT and I've pretty much given up on playing DOOM III on that card. (I could use a faster CPU, but unless I completely retool for a 64-bit system, the effects will be minimal.)
It was true that FPS were the only games that really needed a high-end vid card. Obviously the isometric view in Diablo or C&C Generals isn't as GPU-intensive. But if Rome: Total War is the harbinger of the future, we will soon have fully immersive 3D environments dominating the RTS camp.
And the previous poster is correct: The DOOM III enginge actually has four different chunks of render code, optimized for the various GPUs that nVidia and ATI have on the market.
I hope that DOOM has over-extended themselves a bit with their engine, because having to buy a $300 or even $400 video card every two to three years really sucks.
But don't forget that consoles inherently have it much easier -- NTSC is roughly 640x480, whereas PC gamers want four times that number of pixels. Now, I believe you can output your XBox to HD, but I've never seen this happen, and I don't know if it's really HD-quality. (I mean broadcast HD quality, which is sharper than a DVD for instance.)
My strategy with video cards has been to buy last year's hot card. That's why I got the 9800XT. My strategy has let me down -- at least when it comes to playing DOOM III. You are quite correct that the "early adopters" are driving the market -- that's the way it is in the PC field in general. There are a few other specialized niches out there (like VIA's ultra-low power CPUs) but in general it's all about faster, faster, faster, more more more.
Don't blow your cash (Score:5, Insightful)
As a rule of thumb, I try not to spend over $200 - $250 on a graphics card. 8 months down the line, the chances are your card will have gone down drastically in price, leaving you feel foolish.
I currently own a PNY Geforce 4 TI 4200 64 MB. I bought it when it was a fairly new product, and it cost me only $130. Years later, I can still run ut2004 at 1280 x 1024, with very playable framerates.
The 6600 GT looks like a great card... it has all the features of the 6800, only with less pipelines. Don't tell me that it "stunts the performance". If you saw a card for $750 that had 32 pipes, would you buy it?
Don't be stupid, get your cards cheap. :)