Price Guides May 2004: CPU and Video

ATI Video Cards

Now for the part everyone is waiting for; ATI's graphics card lineup. Unless you have been living under a rock for the past week you should already be aware that ATI went live with new cards based on their R420 architecture, albeit a few weeks after NVIDIA "launched" their new cards.

ATI Radeon X800 Pro. That's the answer ATI came up with for the future of gaming, and it's not a bad answer at all. This card frequently DOUBLES the performance of existing 9800XT's without sacrificing the one-slot design, single power connection, and lower heat output that some dedicated gamers have grown accustomed to. To top it all off, the X800 Pro also edged out the GeForce 6800 Ultra in numerous benchmarks while only falling behind in a few categories and even then not by enough to push this model out of the running.

Overall, if you need to have the latest, the greatest, and you have a bank account to support it, this card would be the one. Even with NVIDIA's 6800U still waiting for it's chance to grace shelves at your favorite local and online PC retailers, the X800's slightly better performance in today's games, lower heat, power and size requirements place it at the lead when it comes down to the bottom line; The mighty dollar. On that note, it is advisable to wait a few more weeks to run out and purchase the X800 since the prices are still showing the very young age of this product. Since its first appearance among online retailers the card has already dropped by almost $50 and should level out near the $400 mark that ATI initially planned. Offline merchants like Best Buy are pricing the card more aggressively, but availability is somewhat of an issue.

The 9800 Pro still continues to be our favorite pick if you are looking for great performance that won't break the bank. Yes, it performs at less than half of what the X800 shows us, but it also costs half as much, and for that reason remains a solid choice for casual-to-moderate gaming. This is one of those rare circumstances where price and performance scale together.