Price Guides, February 2005: Video Cards
by Kristopher Kubicki on February 19, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
The Low End
Anand's benchmarks in December told us all that we needed to hear. NVIDIA clearly dominates the low end PCIe market with their TurboCache solutions, and even if they didn't, the non-TurboCache cards still manage to out-muscle ATI's X300 lineup. ATI's HyperMemory will be upon us soon (again), so in the meantime, we just have to wait and see. At the very least, we are excited that the PCIe low end video cards are actually sub-$100 video cards. Considering that the 6200 TC GPUs have only been available in mass quantities for a few weeks, we should start seeing $50 offerings in a few months for those really on a budget.AOpen leads the pack with their 64-bit and 32-bit options. Don't expect to get a particularly immersive experience in World of Warcraft - particularly considering that the cards are paging from your system memory; but for everyday computing and office productivity, TurboCache is your best bet. Our industry sources have hinted that mainstream NVIDIA IGP might be replaced by $50 TurboCache options in the near future, and given the raw power of the 6200 TC versus GMA900, TurboCache is probably the more economical purchase anyway. Anand's benchmarks show that the TurboCache lineup scales very linearly, but the sweet spot for price and performance on the low end is right at the 64-bit range.
If ATI's HyperMemory proves just as useful at TurboCache on the low end, we could be in for a real interesting battle. ATI has a long roadmap of IGP chipsets ahead of them, so we know that they do not expect sub-$100 video cards to replace their IGP market. However, with ATI just beginning to get a taste of NVIDIA's aggressiveness on the AMD platform (RS480), best laid plans could quickly change.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
33 Comments
View All Comments
KristopherKubicki - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
PrinceGaz: We have a roundup scheduled for the very near future (days at most perhaps). From what I could gather from our internal conferences, nForce4 (Ultra and SLI) had several hiccups - but not showstoppers. With the proximity of the analysis, I'll let Wes go into more detail in his review.Kristopher
bobsmith1492 - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
Maybe because the xbox runs at like 640x800 resolution, and this hardware can run it at 4 times that resolution with AA and AF and the xbox is a mass-produced group of identical objects that makes it easy to progam for..... :PShizNet - Saturday, February 19, 2005 - link
how the f**k is it possible?xBox runs M$ 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.