Price Guides July 2004: Video Cards and Memory
by Kristopher Kubicki and Howard Johnson on July 9, 2004 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Video Cards: NVIDIA
Brand loyalty, and the fact that the GeForce 6800-series are neck-and-neck with the performance of ATI's X800s, brings the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra to mind. Just as powerful as its ATI brethren, the 6800 Ultra makes a solid addition to any gaming rig. Unfortunately, the cost is still far too prohibitive to jump on the bandwagon just yet, unless you're able to spend a lot of money for technology that will be somewhat outdated by the time any games come out that are capable of really stressing it.Of course, you could always wait and see what NVIDIA comes out with to utilize their SLI technology, but don't expect prices for this to be anything short of astronomical, unless NVIDIA provides a way to lower the price for the 2nd card.
Back to the real world, our recommendation for NVIDIA-based video cards has to go to the BFG GeForceFX 5900 Ultra 128MB. The 5900s are quite capable of giving ample frame rates in almost every current PC gaming title without sacrificing very much, if any, quality. If, however, you can wait a little while for prices to go down and other variations of the 6800 cards to arrive, it may very well be worth the time in money saved. This won't happen overnight, but even a couple of months can make a huge difference in finding the perfect deal. Additionally, PCI Express versions will soon trickle into the market, which is something to consider if you are building a new system from scratch instead of merely upgrading your existing rig. One card that is a good buy, which utilizes PCI Express, would be the Gigabyte GeForce PCX 5900. Priced competitively, this card would be a good option if you want to move into the PCI-E world right away.
As always, not everyone is shopping to get an extra 50 FPS out of their favorite game. In that case, we would recommend the AOpen GeForceFX 5700 128MB.
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PrinceGaz - Friday, July 9, 2004 - link
If you're an overclocker on a budget (and which overclocker isn't, else they'd buy the more expensive higher-rated parts with less headroom), the memory recommendation would have to be that 512MB Corsair XMS4000 stick for $127 I mentioned.Or maybe the OCZ PC4000 from the same store as I see that is now listed at the same price, though AT haven't tested it so I don't know how its timings compare and definitely not how high it might go beyond 250FSB. Though every stick is different anyway so its always luck of the draw to some extent.
Video-card overclocking recommendations are not too difficult to deal with. They'll all overclock to a certain degree which depends on the cooling and memory chips used, but its unlikely you'd get 10% extra performance out of a different manufacturers card by overclocking it further to justify a 10% cost increase. Thats for cards in the sub-$200 region like the Radeon 9800 Pro or FX5900 (NON-Ultra). So just get the cheapest you can find provided it has a 256-bit memory bus and you'll have got best value for money. 9800 Pro's and FX5900's offer the best bang for the buck at present.
gimper48 - Friday, July 9, 2004 - link
How about a recommendation for overclockers. Maybe an ATI recommendation, a nvidia one and a memory one just to spice it up. Granted most overclockers already know their stuff when it comes to this kind of thing but opinions are always welcome.PrinceGaz - Friday, July 9, 2004 - link
That 512MB Corsair XMS4000 for $127 seems like great value if you're overclocking a Pentium 4. Also should be ideal for lowering the multiplier and raising the FSB of an Athlon 64 with a mobo with a working PCI lock.