Price Guides, April 2005: Video Cards
by Kristopher Kubicki on April 23, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
What a week it has been for the price guides! Did you get a chance to see the redesigned beta webpage? NewEgg wasn’t the only one to scrap their original beta web design at the last second, apparently! Our working beta was nearing completion until we learned that the price engine code was just a few pixels shy of fitting in the AnandTech standard borders. We played around with some ideas and twisted some graphics around and finally settled on a layout similar to the one that you can see here. After we wade through some of the more cosmetic changes and updates, our guide engine will be finally ready to sit on the main site (we promise this time!).
Speaking of redesigns, NewEgg’s redesign launched just a few days ago. The new design is a little easier on wide screen displays and focuses more on user reviews. In any case, we like the new design, although it is definitely a large change from the old design and an adjustment if you were accustomed to it.
In video card news, X800 XL and X800 video cards are now in the mainstream AGP market and like so many things AGP, our disappointment can hardly be contained. After months of waiting, it looks like our friends at Sapphire were the only ones capable of bringing the AGP X800 XL cards into any sort of competitive pricing with their PCIe counterparts, but with inexpensive nForce4 motherboards and current Intel PCIe motherboards hitting their second iteration, it feels really difficult to give AGP much worth while praise.
We have received word from several motherboard manufacturers that GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache cards are going to start shipping with low end PCIe motherboards. Supposedly, this should help keep production costs down on low end boards as IGP motherboards will not need separate designs for end users. On the other hand, the end user might pay more for the additional packaging/production of the GPU on an external card. We will be following this very closely over the next few quarters.
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JarredWalton - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
20 - Doom 3 running smooth on a X300SE!? I'd like to see that, as I've tried Doom 3 on an ATI Xpress 200 chipset (roughly the equivalent of the X300SE) and it ran like a slug. Even at low details and 640x480 resolution Doom 3 couldn't pull more than 15 FPS on that setup.400 MHz RAM with a 64-bit bus only gives 3.2 GBps of bandwidth, which is simply not enough for Doom 3's shadowing engine. Maybe if you disable the shadows and specular highlights it would get 30+ FPS, but then what's the point?
semo - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
does somebody know if these are real radeon 9800pro cardshttp://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html...
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html...
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html...
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html...
(sorry to firefox users if the links are too long)
#13, i don't know what you mean by benefit. i have a friend who has a dell system (quit booing/laughing, there was a good reason) with x300se and p4 530 (3.0ghz) and doom3 and painkiller run very smoothly on it.
if you want eye candy upgrade your vid card
Zebo - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
DrMrLordX read between the lines what I quoted above: especially the part about "in a million years."AT don't recommend garbage or stuff that fails some basic price/performance standard. They keep it lean and mean.:)
KristopherKubicki - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
spittledip: The cards we list as 9800 Pros are in fact 9800 Pros; these are the 256-bit cards. The 128-bit Radeon 9800 SE cards that you are refering to retail for about $110.Kristopher
zemane - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link
Nice timing, I'm just buying a new video card!On page 5 "Low-End cards", second table, first row, the Newegg link for the Sapphire Radeon X300SE 128MB AGP opens the PCIe version page. And the corresponding "Check Prices" link is broken.
And the link that opens the comments popup says there is one more comment than reality.
DrMrLordX - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
Woops! Looks like you failed to mention the AGP 6200 cards as well.DrMrLordX - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
Interestingly, the 6800NU doesn't seem to be featured anywhere on your price list. Or, at least, I didn't see it.spittledip - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
I think someone needs to tell anandtech that those 9800 "pros" for 140$ are really SE models... and 9800 SE are really poor cards-- 9500 pro and 9600 pro beat those out!l3ored - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
nevermind... didnt read the second page yet. i have an athlon 64 3000 (754) and a 9800 pro. i think i'd benefit more from upgrading the graphics card first, am i right?l3ored - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
am i reading this right? "like so many things AGP, our disappointment can hardly be contained." you guys dont approve of agp anymore? i was under the impression that today's video cards dont require the bandwidth that pci-e gives and so the same card on either platform performs the same. or has that all changed?