Price Guides, February 2005: Video Cards
by Kristopher Kubicki on February 19, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Mid-Range
Now that the X700XT is officially dead, the X700 Pro lineup is the only sub-$200 PCIe competitor that ATI can call "mid-range". The vanilla X800 PCIe cards are nowhere near the originally quoted $199 price range; some cards are priced as high as $355 (which puts them only a few dollars less than their XL counterparts) [RTPE: Radeon X800 -XL -XT -Pro - SE]. However, to be fair, we do need to emphasize that the retail launch for these products only occurred a few days ago.On the AGP side of things, NVIDIA has another easy victory in the sub-$200 market. Given that the Radeon 9800 Pro has actually increased in price over the last year, the GeForce 6600GT doesn't have to work too hard to corner the $199 price point. For example, the Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro [RTPE: 100556] (which couldn't keep up to the GeForce 6600GT in November's benchmarks) continued to spike in price as availability dried up from two of its larger US distributors.
When we change gears and look at the PCIe mid-range, the choices aren't as clear cut. Our retail Radeon X700 Pro exploration from a few months ago clearly demonstrated vast performance differences between the major manufacturers. Sapphire consistently came out near the top in each of our benchmarks, occasionally even ahead of the GeForce 6600GT in DirectX benchmarks. If you don't plan on playing too many OpenGL games, the Sapphire X700 Pro [RTPE: 100595] clearly offers one of the most well-rounded cards that you can buy, particularly for the price. This is only the 128MB version - which puts it very close to the Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB in terms of performance.
If the Radeon X800 replaces the X700 Pro in the $199 price point, we would almost certainly expect the (relatively) new X700 Pro to drop in price rather than EOL; our roadmaps do not reveal any reason to stop the X700 Pro from sticking around. Fortunately, Pigeon Hole Principle applies to PC hardware economics too.
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bigpow - Sunday, February 20, 2005 - link
Wait a sec.[quote]XFX dominates the 6600GT AGP landscape, and without a doubt, the card [RTPE: PVT43AND] remains our AGP mid-range pick.
[/quote]
I thought AT recommended Leadtek 6600GT PCI-E on a previous comparison test?
Which one is it? XFX or Leadtek?
ShizNet - Sunday, February 20, 2005 - link
AGAIN - all details are behind us (quality/image/expandability)what is reason to purchase $400+ vidCard? one reason - to play GAMES (pc) - you don't need this beast for e-mail
OR you can buy xCube/gStatioin/pBox (any puns are welcome) - pay same ~$50 for same game
AND get same pleasures out of building/shooting/conquering
going back to the start:
does all this HardWare advances are OVERRATED? - because they won't last for a year
i won't even touch HERE what you can do w/ lil mod to those xStations/pBoxes
and i am NOT a fan of M$ or Sony, just a fan of story: 'little train that could'
semo - Sunday, February 20, 2005 - link
#19doom 3 is not playable on p4 1.8 with a radeon 7500
have to get a geforce ti i guess
KristopherKubicki - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
ShizNet: I would first look at who is taking a year to rewrite games from console to PC. Obviously MS has a vested interest in keeping Halo on the XBOX before putting it on PC. It's not that its fundamentally really hard to do, but my guess is it's licensing and politicking that keep releases on the console.As for the hardware argument - given the same PC hardware I would not be surprised if many of thsoe same games look/feel identical. I think your argument is moot because 1.) CounterStrike is definitely not a benchmark of performance/quality for PC or XBOX and 2.) San Andreas will hit PC and XBOX at the same time. And I bet you it'll continue to look better on the PC anyway. I really haven't seen a single title on XBOX that was better than the same title on PC with the exception of the purposely crippled Halo.
Kristopher
ChineseDemocracyGNR - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
Actually Doom3 is playable in a Pentium 4 1.5GHz with a GeForce MX 400.You can't have both an outdated PC and good quality image settings, you gotta pick one.
ShizNet - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
i'm not arguing here the quality of the image or the way the business runs (at loss or gain)LOOK deep into issue on hand - xBox (hardWare/softWare) is 2 yr-old and it still can 'catch up' w/ brandNew-hingEnd PCs. try to run 2 yr-old pc -- HL2 @ ~20 fps and doom3 @ ~10 (if at all)
while xBox chopping away @ Halo, CS, not to mention SanAndreas and others
don't you think there is someThing wrong with this picture?
KristopherKubicki - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
PrinceGaz: Many (most?) new Xbox games have 1080i or 720p capability.But yeah, the XBOX is sold on a loss just for people to buy games. And believe me even on HD, games on my XBOX look like garbage compared to my PC :)
Kristopher
ShizNet - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
#13is it your answer? or is it your 'MAYBE'?
do you even know how code is written? first you write the way it should be, then you 'optimize' it to hardware (of your choice ati/nVidia/other)
so you telling me it's easier to write for 2 yr-old nVidia (dx 8.x) than for dx 9.x APIs? there are no lowLevel coding in vidGames anyMore. if you haven't heard games are based on engines (APIs): doom, source (halfLife2)... same s**t for console or pc.. and drivers are provided/adjusted by ati/nvidia, not the other way around
with your idea about 640x480 - plug your HIGH-end pc card in the same TV and see the quality of image and tell me about AA/AF
go put that P from your - :P - where it should be
PrinceGaz - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
The X-Box normally runs at 640x480, which is all a standard TV set can take (and may be slightly blurry at such a "high" resolution if it isn't a good quality TV).As with all consoles though, the reason why the X-Box is cheap is really because it was sold for less than the manufacturing cost, as the real money is made from consoles with game sales and every X-Box game sold netted Microsoft a good few dollars.
ChineseDemocracyGNR - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
KristopherKubicki,sorry for the off-topic, but did AnandTech also test K8T890 boards? So far only two are available (from ASUS and Soltek), but from what I gathered the ABIT, Gigabyte and Albatron boards should be out real soon.