Price Guides, April 2005: Video Cards
by Kristopher Kubicki on April 23, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
GPU Mid-range
Moving into the mid-range sector puts the ball back in NVIDIA's court, particularly for a certain ever addicting online MMORPG. While you lose the next 8 weeks of your life killing dragons until you hit level 60, you might as well do it in style. Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro [RTPE: 100596] prices have fallen slightly since last month, but nothing to really get excited about. Below is a graph of X700 Pro prices over the last three months:The 128MB Radeon X700 cards are priced very reasonably, but the $10 difference between it and a moderately priced GeForce 6600GT is all the evidence that we need.
We were very excited this week to see the price difference between AGP and PCIe 6600GT video cards disappear. While we shun AGP video cards on the high end, mid-range AGP video cards are extremely reasonable right now. Below, you can see the behavior of the XFX GeForce 6600GT AGP [RTPE: PVT43AND] over the last few weeks.
XFX's GeForce 6600GT PCIe [RTPE: PVT43GND] has behaved similarly as well, with decent price cuts in the last couple of days, bringing the price of that video card down to $170 even.
Aside from the fact that GeForce 6600GTs are priced the same as X700 Pros, ATI has a lot of work to do to catch up in the $150 to $200 market. ATI regains a little bit of ground at the $100 mark, pairing the Radeon X600 Pro against the GeForce 6600 vanilla edition. For a $100 video card, Gigabyte has a very solid offering, although the other video cards for the same price point don't advertise nearly the same prices.
Before we completely jump off the mid-range and into low end cards, we wanted to point out a deal that we spotted on Radeon 9800 Pro AGP video cards. Check out the week's prices on the Sapphire 9800 Pro [RTPE: 100556] cards!
Usually we wouldn't even bring up the Radeon 9800 Pros in favor of the AGP GeForce 6600GTs, but these are still killer cards, particularly for $140! In any case, if you strictly stick to DirectX games and don't want to part with AGP, $140 for a Radeon 9800 Pro is certainly not a purchase that you will regret.
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MJA - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
newegg.com new site looks cool on my dell widescreen 2005WPFKristopherKubicki - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
Zar0n: You can actually do that: Type in the product here:http://labs.anandtech.com/
Rike: You are correct, I am not sure how that typo made it through the editorial process.
Kristopher
Rike - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
#8 I think it should read: "We were very excited this week to see [the price difference between] AGP and PCIe 6600GT video cards disappear."PrinceGaz - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
On page 4 "We were very excited this week to see AGP and PCIe 6600GT video cards disappear."Was that meant to say something else?
Spacecomber - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
Following up on #4, they really should call them what they are, "testimonials"; they aren't reviews. If you read NewEggs fine print, they as much as say this, but I do feel that NewEgg's continuing to refer to these as "reviews" is misleading.(They also are willing to do a major editing job on a "review", to the point that it almost isn't recognizable, even if you originally wrote it.)
As to the PriceGuide, it seems like the 6800 NU fell through the cracks?
Space
Son of a N00b - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
I read the reviews for little tidbits of info like not including cables or something, but i would never buy anything without reading a review here or somehwere else....btw HATE neweggs new design i go so used to their old one after the past 4 months selecting parts for my next computer and keeping em in my cart or wish list and got very very used to where everything was i could go with my eyes closed...then they changed and my cart and wishlist got deleted and i do not like the flashy colors and things...lol oh well i guess i gotta get used to it and ask newegg for my cart back for my account..if they can......
xsilver - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
#2 --- people come to AT price guides to drool :P#4 its called "marketing" .... what a review telling you the product is crap and not to buy it, why would they print that???
toyota - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
i like newegg but i dont trust a lot of their reviews. i have tried leaving reviews that were not positive but they would never post them. i even tried to post a consructive review on an Asus video card stating that it was not really a 6600gt and they wouldnt post it. i emailed them asking why they would not post some of my reviews and they replied with "we have to approve the reviews". that does not make a whole lot of sense to me considering some of the reviews i have read there. they will always post a review with a 5 egg rating no matter how stupid it is. some product reviews are from people who never even bought the product.Zar0n - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
It would be really nice if we could see those neet price graphics for any hardware part.What about a “Price graphic“ link next to “check prices” :D
Zebo - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link
LOL gotta a kick out of this:"For whatever reason, we always seem to catch some flak from our readers if we don't mention the ultra unaffordable high end stuff. We would never buy this stuff in a million years, and it would be very silly for us to recommend any of it (these are price guides, aren't they?)"