Price Guides September 2003 IDF Edition: CPU, Motherboards and Video Cards
by Anand Shimpi & Laura Johnston on September 18, 2003 2:56 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Unfortunately, there isn’t much to say here. The deck is stacked against NVIDIA, on more than one front. The fact that some NVIDIA hardware is down 20% from last week is also foreboding. For example, MSI GeForceFX 5900’s were priced $50 more last week, around $400. Our engine currently lists the card around $350. eVGA’s GeForceFX 5900; $250. Valve’s Half Life 2 is making NVIDIA cards look bad. Although Aquamark and HL2 are not the final word on how the GeForceFX line will perform in DX9 territory, they do represent an enormous error on NVIDIA’s behalf.
Even though ATI fans enjoy the good news (for now), is this really better for the consumer? If ATI can write its own check in the video market, pricing will eventually fall victim to markets of scale. If 9600/9800 Pro cards have no direct competitor, there is no justification to lower prices.
While we are on the topic of competitors, who is XGI? A somewhat unexpected announcement in May declared the merger of SiS’s Xabre division and Trident’s design team. Thus, XGI was born. This week, XGI held their first press conference to announce the release of half a dozen video cards including a dual core 16-pipeline behemoth. Although the specs are impressive, so were the specs of the Trident XP4 of last year (which was an unfortunate flop). As far as we can tell, XGI seems fairly confident they will produce some exciting results. Time will tell as the AnandTech team will surely get up close and personal at Computex next week!
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
17 Comments
View All Comments
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
You could have gotten the motherboard Evan gave the Editors Choice to for $79, the EPoX 8RDA+http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1759&am...
DBaron - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
Whats wrong with the Nforce single channel boards? I was all set to buy a Soltek NV400, till I read this article. It seems like a good mobo for the price , and its fairly inexpensive too...76 at new egg. Is there something I am missing?Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
geez can anyone say WHEN the 9800XT NDA will lift or is that NDA too. >:(KristopherKubicki - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
#3: We will add some more 9800 NP cards. They didnt really dissappear, just resellers all decided to reorganize their SKUs are the same time.KT600 and nForce2 are priced about the same and perform about the same. Dual Channel memory is the largest difference between the two. If it doesnt cost you anything more, why not?
Kristopher
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
R9800 (non pro) is becoming widely available and should not be replaced by R9800SE becauase that's a cut down garbage version that should not be allowed to bear the R9800 name...A question on the article. Why stress the fact that The KT600 boards are single channel, when dual channel does so very little for SocketA boards in general? When looking at practical performance it basically doe not do much good at all. I'm objecting because so many people looking for motherboards believe the myth that dual channel is an important feature. Don't keep it alive.
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
I thought the 9800np were pretty much OEM cards like for Dell, etc? I didn't think the 9800np was nearly as common as the 9700np, 9500np, etc...I imagine the 9800SE will replace the non pro though.
Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
No comment about the disappearance of the ATI 9800 non-pro cards?