Buyer's Guide - Entry Level, January 2005

Video Cards

Since we have selected budget motherboards that include integrated graphics on the socket A and socket 478 platforms, an add-in graphics card is not required for them. If you want to add a graphics card to such a system, that's easy enough to do, but in that case, you're better off getting a motherboard without integrated graphics. An add-in graphics card is pretty much a requirement for running most recent computer games, and other tasks like video capture will also benefit from having a discrete graphics card. In the past, we have heard some requests for a budget system that doesn't bother with a graphics card, and so that's what we have in this Guide. We still prefer getting motherboards without integrated graphics, but most, if not all, of us also tend to play computer games now and then, so we're biased. Having used and supported various systems with integrated graphics in other environments, we feel pretty safe in saying that the majority of budget computer users will do fine with such a setup.

As far as the card selection that we present here, we're going to push the boundaries of "budget" a little higher than normal, on the assumption that if you're not going with the integrated graphics recommendation, you probably want a little more from your graphics card. The GeForce 4 MX440 and Radeon 9200SE are still the cheapest "reasonable" graphics cards, but they're only moderately faster than the integrated solutions. You should be able to find one of those models for $40 to $50 if you want to really cut costs, but buying even a budget Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 system and then pairing it with crippled graphics is a questionable decision. We're not looking at truly capable gaming solutions here, but they should be able to run any current game at reduced detail settings without difficulty. If you would like more information on gaming graphics cards in particular, we recommend checking out our recent Gaming Guide.

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AGP Graphics Recommendation: Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB DDR 128-bit, 400/600 GPU/RAM clock (bulk/OEM)
Price: $105 shipped

For moderate 3D graphics performance, the Radeon 9600 Pro offers the best bang for the buck. We have selected a Sapphire OEM model here, but really most of the cards perform at about the same level, and when you're on a budget, such concerns as noise levels and overclocking potential take a back seat to price. If you can find a 9600 Pro card for less (or about the same price), then you should be safe buying it. Be careful that you get a standard version and not an "Advantage" or other similarly named model, as there are cards with reduced GPU and RAM clock speeds on the market that share the "9600 Pro" name. The normal clocks for the 9600 Pro are 400 MHz for the core and 600 MHz DDR for the RAM. We have seen 400/400 models with the Pro name, but when you consider that the standard 9600 has a 325/400 clock and can be had for about $30 less money, the semi-Pro models are not a good bargain.

Going up in performance from the Pro is the 9600 XT, which is $30 more typically. With a 500 MHz core clock and the same 600 MHz RAM clock, however, we don't feel that it's worth the additional cost. The 9600 Pro should be more than adequate, and if it's not, you're probably better off spending closer to $200 or more rather than settling for the roughly 20% performance increase that the 9600 XT offers. We have chosen to go with a bulk/OEM model, as the additional programs that ship with a 9600 Pro are not usually worth the added cost, but if you feel differently, you can find retail versions starting at $10 to $15 more.

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PCIe Graphics Recommendation: Albatron GeForce 6600 128 MB DDR 128-bit, 300/550 GPU/RAM clock (retail)
Price: $122 shipped

When we move to the PCI Express side of the equation, things change a bit. The absolute cheapest PCI Express graphics cards come in at about $70, and they are basically the equivalent of the Radeon 9600 SE. For those who don't know, the SE usually means that the part has a 64-bit memory interface (typically a bad thing where 3D performance is concerned), and despite the difference in numbers, the X300 and X600 are more or less the same chip with the only difference being the clock speeds. (Technically, the X300 uses the RV370 core and a 110 nm process while the X600 uses the RV380 core and a 130 nm process, but in terms of performance and features, we are not aware of any major architectural differences.) The X300SE and X300 correlate to the AGP 9600 SE and 9600 while the X600 Pro and X600 XT correlate to the AGP 9600 Pro and 9600 XT. Hopefully, if any of you were confused on that subject, we've managed to clear things up a bit.

All that talk of ATI parts may have led you to believe that we were selecting an ATI-base card, but that's not actually the case. The X600 Pro costs about $110 and is the PCIe equivalent of the 9600 Pro. That would make the two platforms equal in graphics performance, but there is a better option for PCI Express. When you look at the superior feature set and performance of the NVIDIA 6600 parts, we feel that they are worth the small bump in price. They include 8 pixel pipelines instead of only 4, which more than makes up for their 300 MHz clock speed. (The X600 Pro would basically need to run at 600 MHz to match the 6600 core's 300 MHz.) Add to that the Shader Model 3.0 support and we feel that the $10 price hike is more than worth the cost. The RAM performance is actually slightly lower, but so long as you don't enable antialiasing or run at really high resolutions in games, you should be fine. There are also 6600 cards that have a 64-bit memory bus, and you should definitely avoid these as they only save about $10 and offer half the memory performance of the full 6600 cards.

None of our graphics card recommendations here are what we would actually call "fast", but they offer reasonable performance for just about any task. Remember also that with the next version of Windows (codenamed Longhorn), 3D graphics support will actually be required in order to run it properly. Specifically, the word is that Pixel Shader 2.0 support will be required. That means that neither of the integrated graphics solutions will be able to run properly, but when you consider that Longhorn is probably two years off, we wouldn't lose any sleep over that fact. The two cards that we've listed here should meet the minimum requirements for Windows Longhorn, and by the time it actually ships, you will probably be able to buy much faster cards for less money. Just remember that if you don't get a decent graphics card now, you will have to buy something in a couple of years. This is why we insist that any newly purchased computer system now include an option to upgrade the graphics at the very least, so no matter how tempting an OEM system might look, if it doesn't have an AGP or PCIe slot, we would stay away from it.