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 $199 price point, we would almost certainly expect the (relatively) new X700 Pro to drop in price rather than EOL; our roadmaps do not reveal any reason to stop the X700 Pro from sticking around. Fortunately, Pigeon Hole Principle applies to PC hardware economics too.
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KristopherKubicki - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
PrinceGaz: We have a roundup scheduled for the very near future (days at most perhaps). From what I could gather from our internal conferences, nForce4 (Ultra and SLI) had several hiccups - but not showstoppers. With the proximity of the analysis, I'll let Wes go into more detail in his review.Kristopher
bobsmith1492 - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
Maybe because the xbox runs at like 640x800 resolution, and this hardware can run it at 4 times that resolution with AA and AF and the xbox is a mass-produced group of identical objects that makes it easy to progam for..... :PShizNet - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
how the f**k is it possible?xBox runs M$ OS and PC hardWare (including vidCard) and able to play new games just fine AND for only ~$200
where the same game for PC takes extra year to reWrite (i wonder why) and hardWare demands are about $2000 more - just to be able to play the same game??? can you say - we are giving run arounds here? CPU for $400+, memory for $300+, vidCard for $500+.. and ++
what we'd read if there'd be no need for new vidCards every 6 mo.? silver arctic paste review?
PrinceGaz - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
Please Kristopher, say more or tell us when the article that reveals the problems is due to be published. I'm one of those who is waiting for E revision A64 before jumping on the nForce4 bandwagon, and I'm glad I did if there are problems with the chipset.I never intend to use SLI though as I know it is more cost effective overall to sell the first card and buy a second-hand replacement instead of another duplicate card.
Are the problems limited to nVidia's nForce4 SLI implementation (which would be odd as you say Intel's Turnwater is fine, and nVidia created SLI), or something more fundamentally wrong with the PCIe implementation?
We need this information as a lot of AT readers are buying nF4 SLI boards every day and will be seriously upset if you have delayed information about a problem.
KristopherKubicki - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
Live pretty much answered everything for me. nForce4 beware for now.Kristopher
joeld - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
yeah, where are the high end nvidia cards?Regs - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
I would also like to know the issues with SLI on motherboards. Since everybody on the message board has been recommending or has all ready purchased a SLI set up, I think it would be of great importance to explain what you guys have uncovered.And I really like that you guys down with the Real-Time pricing engine. It's one powerful piece of programming ingenuity.
Live - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
Very nice guide! Keep up the good work. I did miss the 6800 U in the high end AGP tough. Or is it unavailable? I would hope to see a strong stand against paper launches in the next video preview (Hello agp from ATI?) Nivida and ATI are doing a poor job right now.#5 considering it was hinted that AnandTech were supposed to have published there SLI roundup this week I would guess they have uncovered issues in those creepy underground labs they call home. SLI only works on a few games and if you play an unsupported game you take a performance hit and a huge financial hit considering you played for 2 cards and get less performance then one.
#3 I am pretty sure it is supposed to be the 6800GT.
PrinceGaz - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
#3- I think it's supposed to say 6800GT, not 6600GT :)AtaStrumf - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
What exactly did you mean by:"With **issues** on nForce4 starting to surface, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense right now to throw all of your eggs into the SLI basket."
I'm not aware of any issues.