Budget Graphics Card Roundup 186
Anonymous Coward writes "Not all of us are prepared to drop $500 for a killer graphics card. Generally, the sweet spot in price and performance is in the budget category of GPUs. Joel Durham Jr. over at ExtremeTech reviews nine current graphics cards, all of which are below $250, some below $150, to determine which cards are worth the time and money for the gamer on a budget. In the sub $150 category, the ATI Radeon 4770 performed the best for its price. Spend a little more and Joel recommends the GeForce 260."
YES! Cheaper video cards at last! (Score:3, Insightful)
As the other components in a PC got steadily cheaper, video cards seem to have stayed stubbornly pricey until recently. But that's changing very fast. I'm astounded by the price/performance breakthroughs we've seen over the last year or so. AMD/ATI deserves full marks for taking the lead on this stuff lately, especially in using a 40 nm process for their GPUs and passing the resulting savings on to the customer.
Too bad that as a Linux user, I can't really consider running ATI video since their binary drivers seem to be of considerably lower quality than the ones turned out by their arch-rivals at Nvidia.
By the way, another great article on these new cheaper video cards is at Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-graphics,2296.html
Re:Wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
No problem, take two Radeon 4770 cards ($100 each) on a crossfire motherboard and they will run circles around cards in the $200 range. Together they will use less power than the $200-$300 cards, too. See this [tomshardware.com] for more info.
Re:Wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the problem is the definition is changing. $200 used to be in the lower quadrant. Now it is definitely mid-range. The high-end has dropped out as there is no point to be pushing X trillion pixels.
Re:Wait for the good deal... (Score:5, Insightful)
3) Your current card fails.
My budget card from 2005 recently started producing artifacts during light use and failing in bigger ways during heavy use. It had served me well. I was unable to play some modern games (e.g. BioShock) but there are so many interesting older games that I still haven't had time to play. It seems like what I gain from the price of a video card diminishes as the selection of games grows.
Re:YES! Cheaper video cards at last! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not cheap enough. Seriously, $150 is a budget card? Hell you can buy an Xbox 360 for that. If I were to buy a $150 video card it would be the single most expensive component of my computer.
If you're on a budget, and you care about value, you'll get a lot more bang for your buck by simply turning down the quality settings. After all, it's about the game play right?
Re:Wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't paid over $100 for a video card in 12 years. I've always been able to max out the settings in every game I cared to buy that was available by the time I bought the card.
And in the first half of that period, I really cared about gaming and gaming performance. I'm sure Best Buy would like you to believe that $200 is a low end device, but you're seriously much better off getting a sub-$50 card now, and another sub-$50 card in a years time if you really need to.
Here's a prectical question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone know of a video card that doesn't draw much more power than my old Radeon X1650 but is better? I want to upgrade one of my machines, but I don't want to replace the PSU. I'm holding out on a new system until the i7 machines start to come down in price and I see if Windows7 is worth bothering with.
I actually like playing last year's games. I bought Far Cry 2 for 15 bucks on Steam (they were having some sale a few months back). I like to wait a while before shelling out for the new games because a surprising number of them tend to suck, and the real reviews don't start showing up until well after the release, when most reviewers are drunk on hype.
The exception are the Half-Life 2 episodes. I buy those right away, hoping that Freeman is finally gonna bone that Alex chick. Now that would be some FPS I could get behind.
Re:YES! Cheaper video cards at last! (Score:2, Insightful)
No, $150 is more midrange than budget, at least in my book. In the Tom's Hardware article I cited, they mention an ATI Radeon HD 4670 for $65 and an Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT for $80. Those are today's budget cards. I've had a 9600GT myself for a little over a year now and it gives me all the performance I need. I paid considerably more than $80 for mine a year ago - the price drop wouldn't have happened without the stiff competition from the HD 4670 and other ATI cards. The point is that we're getting a lot more bang for the buck now than we were a year ago.
Let's leave the Xbox 360 out of this particular discussion - I don't think anyone could argue that PC gaming is anywhere near console gaming in cost effectiveness. And there ARE other uses for accelerated video besides gaming, you know. :)
Re:Since I don't game.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Especially when it comes to laptops I'd agree with you. Or I would have until I saw how slowly Google Earth ran on my niece's otherwise perfectly capable 1-1/2 year old laptop with integrated Intel video. It was unuseable. My own 4 year old Toshiba Tecra M3 laptop, on the other hand, has Nvidia video - the modestly-performing GeForce Go 6200. Google Earth runs very well on it. And there's other good stuff coming to make use of the graphics chip - Nvidia's VDPAU for video playback is a good example.
Re:Sub-$50 card (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't really care if it improves on the GPU speed, I just need dual-link DVI to properly drive a resolution of 2048x1152. Analog is annoying, though surprisingly adequate given the six foot extension cable in the signal path. It's slightly worse than it was without the extension, but it was worth it to exile the computer to another room (and keep all the goodies in here).
Whether a card's DVI links are single or double is something that generally is omitted from reviews, much to my consternation.
Mal-2
Budget? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:YES! Cheaper video cards at last! (Score:1, Insightful)
If I only purchased from RMS' list of acceptable hardware, I think I'd have the slowest PC on the planet for a price that really isn't bargain basement. Somehow the practical aspects of following his beliefs seem... not so acceptable.
Re:YES! Cheaper video cards at last! (Score:3, Insightful)
So the options are:
a) Buy a game console for game console games
b) add a video card for 0.5 to 1x the price to be able to play PC games.
As you can see, it boils down to whether you prefer console games or PC games.
I'd consider it more valid (Score:3, Insightful)
if they tested "budget" cards on a "budget" system.
I'm sure lots of people that buy i7/X58 with 6GB of DDR3 put budget cards in their top end system. ;)
Re:Don't buy Nvidia! (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, in practice with ATI you still have to use "their proprietary piece of shit drivers" and in addition you can neither upgrade your kernel nor X because ATI regularly takes several months after the official release of the versions to get their drivers working again (even beta drivers). Don't even think of using rc versions of any of these.
My general guide to pricing (Score:3, Insightful)
$250 a *BUDGET* card? Are they INSANE?
Yes. All review sites are like that, completely unable to comprehend money in any realistic sense. They're little more than hype machines with only a few exceptions.
In my mind the GPU lineup goes something like this:
<80: Low end
80-150: Mid range
150-220: High end
>220: Crazy
If you're on such a tight budget that 80 is too much, there's no point in getting a graphics card. Just get a motherboard with an integrated GPU from AMD or Nvidia. They can still do HD decoding and all that good stuff.
For most people, a 9600GT or HD4770 is absolutely fine. They're 80 and 100 dollars respectively and will do a good job at most games at 1440x900. If you want to run everything at max settings, get a HD4850 for 130.
If you have a large monitor (1920x1200 or more) and still want high settings at native resolution, get a HD4870 1GB or GTX 260 Core 216 for 190.
That's as high as it goes before you start losing value for money. Unless you're doing something weird there's no need to spend any more than 200, so just forget about the crazy range if you have any sense.