Price Guides October 2003: Video Cards
by Kristopher Kubicki and Howard Johnson on October 18, 2003 9:17 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
The good news is if you want a high end card you don’t have to spend $300 to get it. Usually, the Radeon 9700 Pro cards retail for about $250, putting them halfway between ATI’s most aggressive midrange card, and the ultra high end 9800 Pro. Aggressive midrange card, you say? As you might know, ATI unveiled the 9600 XT of course. (There is no particular reason why we keep linking to the Unreal2K3 benchmark, it just happens to have all the cards we keep talking about). ATI is starting to take preorders on the 9600 XT for $199 on their website, but we digress. Edit: Several readers have pointed out to me that the 9600 XT will be shipping with the single player version of Half Life 2. Naturally, if you were going to buy Half Life 2 anyway, you save yourself about $30 bucks or so by going with the XT card.
Derek and Anand trumped ATI’s 9600 XT the midrange champion, but as most of us conscious shoppers know, price can be a larger deciding factor than performance. Gigacube and Sapphire both market 9600 Pro cards for $50 less than the XT. It all depends if your $50 (25% percent of the cost) is worth 4 FPS in UT2K3 (13% percent performance). Nay, $150 is the right price for a midrange video card. However, in 8-10 weeks it sounds very plausible that the 9600 XT could fall to that magic $150 level.
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Anonymous User - Monday, October 20, 2003 - link
both are great cards. you cant go wrong with one of those. but if i had to say which card performs better, id give my vote to the 9800np.Anonymous User - Monday, October 20, 2003 - link
which is the better deal? ati radeon 9800(non-pro) from circuit city for $249 plus tax or e-vga geforce fx 5900(non-ultra) from newegg for $229. which card performs better? although if the 9800 can be converted to a 9800 pro then that would be great!! anybody know of anywhere i can get instructions to flash bios for this ati 9800 card??Anonymous User - Monday, October 20, 2003 - link
#11The ones from Circuit City are the "Built By ATI" versions. I received one with Infineon 3.0ns BGA memory(max 333mhz on paper) :( , but from what I hear it is a 50/50 chance of getting one with Samsung BGA memory. But it is still a nice video card stock. I only OC it when I play games/benchmarks.
Anonymous User - Sunday, October 19, 2003 - link
i read that the version of half-life 2 that comes bundled with the 9600xt or 9800xt will only be the single player game not with multiplayer. something to consider.Anonymous User - Sunday, October 19, 2003 - link
#13: Thats a good point. I didnt think about that.Kristopher
Anonymous User - Sunday, October 19, 2003 - link
"It all depends if your $50 (25% percent of the cost) is worth 4 FPS in UT2K3 (13% percent performance). Nay, $150 is the right price for a midrange video card."think they should have mentioned that $50 of that will be going toward half-life 2 ,and if your looking forward to that , that 9600xt then becomes a $150 card.
sounds like a good deal to me
Anonymous User - Sunday, October 19, 2003 - link
I think the eVGA GeForceFX 5900 128MB deserves to be noted as well, as it offers a lot of performance for its $229, much more than a $ 249 Radeon 9700 pro, that was mentioned as pick of the week in the performance section.Anonymous User - Sunday, October 19, 2003 - link
#10: Yeah. I think they carry the Sapphire ones with the SAmsung BGA right?Kristopher
Anonymous User - Sunday, October 19, 2003 - link
The 9800 non-pros (not the SE version) are available online from Circuit City for $250+free shipping. I would try to get one while they still have them in stock. The Samsung BGA memory is preferred over the Infineon BGA memory if you want to flash the BIOS to a 9800"pro." However, you can still OC them nicely though. Just my two cents.Anonymous User - Sunday, October 19, 2003 - link
I thought the review was very cogent and not at all biased towards one camp or another. #5's comments were completely unfounded.