Low-End Graphics
With this video card price guide nearing completion, we will close with a quick look at the budget graphic cards available for purchase. Honestly, the vast majority of users are better off purchasing a midrange card, which in many instances are two or three times as fast as the budget offerings (sometimes more). If you don't intend to play games, you should probably just use whatever graphics card you already have - even integrated graphics is sufficient. As we look at the various products, the reason we make this recommendation should become clear.
Firstly, we have the X1300 cards. For the AGP users out there, most of the X1300s seem a bit overpriced. For that price, you can easily pick up a 6600 GT and get much better performance than an X1300 can deliver. The same goes for the X1300 for PCI-E applications: you can easily pick up an X1600 Pro, 6600 GT, or 7600 GS for about $100, which we would unquestionably suggest you select over an X1300.
There really isn't much we can say here regarding these X300 cards. Any one of these cards should be adequate enough for its application and the only thing we would suggest is you try to stick to about the $50 mark. We see no real need to spend much more than that for a card of this caliber. The real question is why you even need this card in the first place. You can't really play games -- unless you want to play 3-4 year old titles -- with the X300, and if you don't want to play games you might as well hold off upgrading a while longer. About the only reason to purchase a $50 graphics card is if you want a DVI output for an LCD display, since most integrated graphics omit that feature.
Here are the GeForce 7300 GS cards which are meant to replace the 6200 TurboCache cards. We recommend you stick to the lower end of this spectrum as well as the ~$100 midrange cards are a far better choice. Previous tests showed that NVIDIA's 6200 series cards were slightly faster than ATI's X300 cards, while ATI's X1300 comes out ahead of NVIDIA's 7300. Given the poor gaming performance either way, it's mostly a non-issue.
We mentioned DVI outputs as being one reason for a budget graphics card, but of course there are a few others. The HTPC market often prefers a cheap (fanless) graphics card over integrated graphics, due to the improved video decoding quality (AVIVO/PureVideo) and additional connectivity options (component out). Both ATI and NVIDIA have various cards that fit those requirements, if you're interested.
This completes this week's video card guide. We'd like for you to join us again next week, where we'll be taking a look at all your storage needs. Thanks for reading!
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hkBst - Sunday, May 28, 2006 - link
If all you need is a cheap graphics card because your mobo doesn't have one, then it is probably better to consider a mobo which does have integrated (DVI) graphics.Another reason for considering a low-end card though is for dual dvi outputs to drive two monitors, if you don't play games. I haven't seen any integrated graphics which support dual monitors.
JarredWalton - Sunday, May 28, 2006 - link
Actually, Derek has most of the GPUs I think. I've got lots of other stuff around, and enough spare GPUs (most of them I purchased), but parts get scattered. I don't even have any X18/1900 series cards right now, just a couple X1600 Pros.drewintheav - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
"...but if you don't mind dealing with the hassle of filling out forms, photocopying UPCs and mailing them out, and perhaps waiting eight weeks for your check to arrive..."Since when did they accept a photocopy of the UPC?
:)
JarredWalton - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
You can tell how often we fill out mail-in rebates. ;-)Seriously, I've purchased about five products in the past year that had a mail-in rebate, and I haven't filled out a single one before the expiration date. One of them arrived two days before the expiration date, and in the end I just look at it, shrug, and figure $10-20 isn't worth the hassle. I figure mail-in rebates are usually a precursor to price cuts anyway, so if you're really worried about saving money just wait another month or two.
Sunrise089 - Monday, May 29, 2006 - link
"...in the end I just look at it, shrug, and figure $10-20 isn't worth the hassle."I think we see where all the anandtech flashing banner add revenue is going, and to think I didn't block them to try to help the site ;)
Seriousely Jarred, you more than earn whatever they pay you, but there are a lot of us on budgets that have the $$$ in the bank to put forth up front, but then need the rebate ammount to make the purchasea affordable. For me spending 10 minutes on forms is worth $20, since I'm not quite pulling in the $120/hour that is basically equivilent to.
PS - I noticed you signed your post to the first poster above. Assuming you actually read this, is "Hardware Editor" a promotion, or were you just assuming a non-regular wouldn't know you were staff?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, May 30, 2006 - link
Techincally, I now post (most of) the articles into the engine. I also am doing more work than just SFFs and occasional other articles. Basically, Gary Key and I are now full-time with AnandTech (whereas we were both part-time a few months ago). I used to call myself "SFF and Guide Editor" since that's what I did. Now, "Hardware" is generic enough that I stuck that on, though I should probably drop everything other than "Editor" at this point.It's not the 10-20 minutes that I care about, it's the fact that it usually ends up taking two+ months to get the rebate. You also send in the UPC usually, preventing a return in case you change your mind. There are also some shady MIRs out there, where you never do get that rebate back - I don't think anyone we track does that, but I know places like Officemax have had issues in the past. Cheers!
Jarred
Josh7289 - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
I haven't been paying attention to the computer hardware, especially the video card, market for about six months now, and this is exactly what I needed to bring me back to what's going on. I see there are a few cards that are new to me that you didn't mention in your guide. Can anyone explain to me what the X1900GT, X1800GTO, and if you want, 7300GS are? Also, didn't there used to be an X1300 vanilla?This quote caught my eye, too:
"The best/only price we are able to find on a 7800 GT is the BFG GeForce 7800 GT OC 256MB [RTPE: BFGR78256GTOC] going for $305 shipped. With only 20 pipelines compared to 24 on the 7900 GT, there's absolutely no reason to recommend a 7800 GT anymore."
Speaking about pipes, could anyone refresh me on the amount of pipelines each of the ultra-high end cards has, if you don't mind?
Finally, to me, reading this feels very weird:
"The GeForce 7800 GT/GTX used to be very popular."
^^ Anyway, if anyone could help, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thank you very much!
ImJacksAmygdala - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
Josh7289,The video card market can be very hard to keep track of. The best places I use to track the market is Anandtech's price guide articles, and Adrian's Rojak Pot comparison charts.
ATI
http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88&...">http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88&...
Nvidia
http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88&...">http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88&...
Hope this helps...
JarredWalton - Saturday, May 27, 2006 - link
There are a few cards that we didn't try breaking down further, so the X1300 and X1300 Pro are grouped together. 7300 GS is a competitor to those cards, but really they're all very slow in comparison to the midrange products.X1900 GT is like the X1900 XT, only with lower clock speeds and 12/36 pixel pipelines instead of 16/48. (Basically, the X1900 chips can do three shader operations per pipeline per cycle, or something similar to that.) X1800 GTO is basically the same thing (12 pixel pipelines, 12 ROPs), only using the older R520 court instead of the newer R580 core. X1800 really isn't that bad, but X1900 is just better.
Clock for clock, the ATI X1900 pipelines are now a bit more powerful than NVIDIA's, but NVIDIA has 33% more pipelines with slightly slower clock speeds, so it more or less equals out. Drivers still play a critical role, so there are games that continue to perform better on NVIDIA even though the X1900 hardware is generally faster. I would also have to give the advantage to SLI over CrossFire -- CrossFire is still a far less elegant solution in my opinion.
On the other ultra high-end cards, 7800 GTX and 7900 GT/GTX are all 24 pixel pipelines, 16 ROPs, and 8 vertex pipelines. 7800 GT has 20 pixel pipelines, so even at the same clock speeds it ends up being slower than the others. X1800 XT/XTX are all 16 pixel pipelines and 8 vertex pipelines, also with 16 ROPs.
Hopefully, that clears things up for you. :-)
Take care, and happy Memorial Day weekend!
Jarred Walton
Hardware Editor
AnandTech.com