The Short List: the Best Gaming Videocards for the money - Page 2

Where you seeing a 6800 holding it's own on the X800 pro? What are the clocks? I could see a couple wins maybe. I'd think the X800 pro would easilt beat a vanilla 325/700 6800 and not be too far behind the 6800GT. Maybe 75% of the way between them on average.

Actually just noticed at Digit-life, their 256MB 6800 is clocked 350/1000...ala 6800GS. We will have to see what the 350/1100 versions can do, and how well all of them overclock or unlock. SO we basically already had the 6800GS AGP ages ago right here.

To me it looks like the X800 pro and GTO will compete well performance wise with the 6800GS AGP. They will each have near an equal win/lose ratio. Anyway, have a look.
http://www.digit-life.com/articles [...] x0507.html

Nice find...

The review of the 6800 OC I saw was on Bjorn3d, and there was an overclocked 6800 on Digit Life.

Lots of 6800 vs. X800 PROs there. The PRO looks a bit higher than it on average, but then again the PRO is faster than the GTO. So I guess we can put them on par.

But are street prices approaching $200 yet? I might have put the bugger on the list prematurely.

I love the content...it should be sticky...but it would be nice if all the stickies were consolidated with the newest info from each rather than have so many seperate stickies.

:? 8) :x :!: 8O ..... 8) make it a STICKY

Thanks for the info I'll edit that in.

I'm assuming you meant something else, being you compared a GPU to a CPU...but what is it you meant to say?

Well even Digit-Life is reporting that it's still only VPU assist, and the CPU is still under load, just done faster. The VPU does not replace the CPU just makes that 50-100% more effective/efficient.

Just to clarify Ape, I'm not recommending the 6800 or Asus 6800, I was just using it's reviews as a "benchmark" for the upcoming 6800 GS, as it has the same clocks as the ASUS 6800: 350 core, 500 mem

Jan 13 modifications:

the 6600 AGP beats the X1300 in pretty much all games, and the 6600 can be found for $100 on newegg. I'm making the 6600 the $100 AGP reccomendation, but giving the X1300 honorable mention for decent gaming performance and excellent video performance.

Also added DDR & Effective memory speeds to card specs for clarity

[EDIT: I meant PCI-e when I said AGP, sorry]

I'm not even seeing x1300 AGP's for sale. I think for the same money, the plain X700 is as good a buy as the 6600. Both are just over $100 now. 9700 pro/9800 pro deals are vanishing; too bad. With Newegg having 6600GT AGP's in the $120's this week, I'd forget the 6600 and X700 unless they were much cheaper.

We need 6600GT and X800GT AGP for $100 no rebates. it would make the recommendations easier.

Depends I guess on the X1300 used.

On the PCIe side of things the X1300 is below the GF6600, the X1300Pro is equal to or better than the GF6600DDR2 and the X1300XT is near GF6600GT in most things.

AGP on the other hand there is very little info out there as there are very few out there period, which is what I assume Nottk is talking about since the PCIe variants are quite common.

Nice post: make it sticky!

This is a good accessory for THG VGA charts. THX^^

Edit

Language is a barrier, i know you will likely not understand this.

To add to what GGA said about integrated, nothing comes close; the three best integrated candidates are nVidia's GeForce 6100, ATi's Radeon Xpress 200, and Intel's GMA 950. As a breakdown:[*:f3e8b931ca]For SM support, the 6100 supports SM 3.0, the 200 2.0 extended, and the 950 2.0.
[*:f3e8b931ca]All of them have a measly two pixel pipelines as they are commonly defined; each appears to have 2 PSUs, 2 TMUs, and 2 ROPs. The ATi and nVidia chips also have either 1 or 2 geometry units. (not sure on that part)
[*:f3e8b931ca]Worst part: all of them rely on the PC's own memory interface; not only is it a slowpoke 64-bit interface, it's also stealing bandwidth from the CPU, killing your performance twice as fast.
[*:f3e8b931ca]Performance-wise, the nVidia and ATi solutions, respectively, fall noticably below their 6200 TurboCache and X300 Hypermemory solutions; indeed, both appear to be those cards, but with ZERO dedicated RAM, and only 2 pixel pipes. The GMA compares to a GeForce FX 5200, which is even worse.I'd have to say that you're making quite an exageration. After all, it should be noted that the 6600 and X1300pro, which are remarkably close in performance, no matter which you favor, also happen to compare to the Radeon 9700pro, which for a time was the world's most powerful video card, hands-down, when it crushed the GeForce 4 Ti. (see this very site's "pretender to the throne" article for details) They are by no means cards to sneeze at; for those among us not lucky enough to be able to dump $300US+ on a video card(s), it's quite nice.

They told stephen hawking the same thing.

MY FAULT GUYS, check the FAQ post itself, my brain farted and while I was thinking about the PCI-e X1300's and 6600's in the update post, I was typing AGP.

If you check the actual list up top, I haven't mentioned the X1300 in the AGP section. I know there's no AGP X1300 PRO yet.

Once again, Sorry dudes! I'll try to type what I'm thinking next time...

Wow. I haven't even caught wind of these things. I looked them up on Newegg, and there they were...

However, all the 128mb GTOs I saw there (and there are a few!) are 400 Mhz core and 700 Mhz memory... which makes them nothing more than re-branded vanilla X800's... 256mb GTOs have 960 Mhz memory clocks.

Still, would be interesting to find out if these 128mb "GTO"s actually have the overclockable R420 or R480 cores, instead of the R430 cores that are used in the X800's and X800 XLs.

I'm adding a note about the nomenclature in the list, though.

In the PCI-EXPRESS section!!!

Hi all,


Here comes a question that might make all you hardcore gamers cringe:
Can't we add the category "PCI Cards" to this category, please?

Reason being that I have an AGP Card, which I am satisfied with, but I have been hunting the web like a crazy for the best performing PCI cards, as I want to add two PCI cards to get the fastest possible 3-monitor setup.

At this moment it seems that the battle is standing between ATI Radeon 9250 cards and nVidia GeForce FX5500 cards.

However, I have still not been able to see anywhere a performance comparison between these.
I can see their stats an bandwidth, frequence on RAMDAC, GPU, etc, but that does not necessarily tell me which card performs the best.

I see that FX5500 supports DirectX 9.0, but I also read that it's simply too slow to even use the DX9 features...

So, either help me finding the best performing PCI cards, or let me know if there is an alternative method for 3 monitor setups.

And also, which would be faster: 3 monitors on a fast AGP card, or 3 monitors on each their own graphics card (1 AGP + 2 PCI)

Thank you for your understanding


//Xesc

Just a question for all the gaming enthusiasts outthere:

Are you REALLY that much into gaming that you pay 500$ for a videocard?

(guess you buy a "matching" CPU too )

Isn't this a little bit... too much?

I myself play a lot of NFS MW, AOE III, and used to play DOOM III last summer on my OC'ed ASUS EN 6600TD/128 Silencer and it works very good, not high sky framerates, but ok
(54fps in Doom3 1024x768 High Detail AA2X AF ON).

The $110 i have paid for the card seemed a little bit expensive, i mean come on, if you pay more than 100-200 for a component, the PC will end up in more than $1000 final cost.

I paid $700 for mine and about $350 for a samsung 730BF LCD, Logitech keyboard and mouse > $50, +somme ArcticCooling fans to make it silent and ended up in well over $1100 for a PC that to your standards is "Mainstream".

Aren't PC's supposed to be afortable? If we encourage producers to sell very expensive video cards.... they will just... sell more of them, more expensive, right?

(see what happened in CPU market where we have $1000+ worth CPU's on regulary basis)

I know that the state of the art components are supposed to be expensive, but come on... $500 for the videocard only? :?

I know i'm being a little bit(more) off topic but is anyone with me?

Are there others like me who think that the PC should stay afortable?

Are there others who think that the components should stay within earthly prices?

Remember the days when the PC games were not so concentrated on graphics and the reviews were more about the AI and the playability of the game?

I read a game magazine, THG and Anantech for a very long time now (i'm in the IT from the begining (since the first pentium 60Mhz and AMD K5 (my first PC) !!!)).

During this time I was always addicted to games, and my work ofcourse. The point that i want to make is that during this very long period, the games have lost the fun and the ...."game" (i don't know how to call it) and now they are just "video monsters" that stress out the hardware, BURN Prescotts (yes, I am an AMD fan since the beginning of K5 era) and I miss the old STARCRAFT BROODWAR that worked on any PC that didn't have to cost over 2000$ (it was 2D graphics) and the game was concentrated on "playability".
The teams were very well balanced and players were supposed to THINK in order to PLAY, thats why it becomed a world wide phenomenon 5-6 years ago.

Please show me that "perfect playability" now in AOE III or in other modern strategy game. AOE III looks great, great textures, shadows, reflections...etc. but it is "empty", it s like a shooter with 200 units at your command.

Seriously, talking about Video Cards is ok, but is that that interests you, the gamers? Is this what you want? More FPS? More Details? More Shadow s? More HDR?

WHERE IS THE GAME?

Three reasons it's not there:

1- The list is for gamers, and any computer with a PCI bus is not really suited for gaming;

2- The bus limits performance so much, it doesn't make that much of a difference which card you get

3- The best PCI card that was ever released, as far as I know, is the 5700. Look for one of those if you have a PCI bus.
But if you can't find one, a 5500/5200 or 9200 would be just fine, it really doesn't make that much of a difference, they all suck.

Three reasons it's not there:

1- The list is for gamers, and any computer with a PCI bus is not really suited for gaming;

2- The bus limits performance so much, it doesn't make that much of a difference which card you get

3- The best PCI card that was ever released, as far as I know, is the 5700. Look for one of those if you have a PCI bus.
But if you can't find one, a 5500/5200 or 9200 would be just fine, it really doesn't make that much of a difference, they all suck.


Hi there,


I am sorry, but these are probably the 3 most disappointing points one could mention, with a grain of strange attittude too.

As I mentioned, I have an AGP card installed, and I want a 3 monitor setup, to which I would need to add PCI Cards. And yes, computers with PCI bus are very well suited for gaming, well... For those of us that don't measure playability in FPS.

I have a hard time believing that due to the bottleneck PCI bus, that it wouldn't make a difference which card I add as my 2nd and 3rd video card. You might be right, but can you refer me to any resource, test or site that has tested this?

And to your list of cards, thank you, I appreciate it. I do think I have seen an FX 5700 PCI card somewhere once, but I cannot find one anywhere. It is very hard to find benchmarking tests between FX 5700, FX 5500, Radeon 9250, Radeon 9200 PCI cards.

As to your comment "They all suck" I can only say that I get the impression of you that you are a spoiled brat that was born into the Quake age after all the hard work was done, and to whom performance is simply a question of how much cash is available to replace your video cards weekly.

You obviously don't know that performance is what happened in the 80'ies, where the definition "Performance" was set by how much you can cram out of your hardware, and not how much hardware it takes to achieve what you want. (I am old enough to have seen the Amiga being born, grow up, set the agenda for performance and retire)


Thanks,
Xesc

Wow, this thread has grown a little riled here. At any rate, I don't think that it's really fair to be calling people names. Most PC gamers that are actually serious, and have at least a fair understanding of components, has benn in the area for quite some time. I, for one, have been gaming on the PC since 1990, before all those newfangled raycaster games like Doom, Dark Forces and Hexen became popular; not as long as some other people here, but definitely quite a long time.

At any rate, I think that now's the time the grpahics industry is going through another shift-change time. For AGP, it seems to look good; There is the AGP version of the X1600pro availible, for $149US. (Link; NewEgg should carry one soon) Also, there's the 6800GS, which while nVidia reduced the standard clock rate, most of their board partners responded by simply selling a higher proportion of "OC" cards. (oddly enough, the cheapest such card I've found is BFG's own model, with speeds of 370/1050MHz; I doubt the claims that it's 16-pipeline, though)

Then, of course, is the upcomming launch of ATi's X1900 series cards, which I'm given to understand will happen Monday.

OMG, these comment and the previous one I responded to are the reasons these threads need to be locked on their own, and have separate questions/comments threads.

How much cash do you think a PCI card costs?
I'm certain that if you buy ANYTHING NEW that a PCI variant will cost more than a much better AGP or even PCIe version.

Hi all,


First, please accept my apology, Cleeve, it was not right of me to go personally at you. I was just in a very bad mood when I came home last night, and then saw these posts.

And to you all, please read my entire post before commenting on PCI cards not being for gamers. As my post stated:

I have an ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB (that I will change to a GeForce 6800 GT I hope - to benefit from nView) which I am very satisfied with, and I have two 17" monitors connected to that one, and then I have a horrible old 1MB ATI card in a PCI socket to run outlook on a 3rd 17" monitor.

I do play games, but for me the game quality does not measure in FPS. At this moment I am playing EQ2, a very graphics intensive game, and I normally only play it on one monitor.
I tried a few nights ago to stretch the game, in windowed mode, across the two screens I have on the 9800 Pro card, and it worked out ok actually.

What I simply thought then was that now I want to play it across all three monitors, and I would need a new PCI card for the 3rd screen to do so.

And I started speculating if the performance would be best with one triple-head (Parhelia) AGP card, or with one AGP, and two PCI cards. Or even if I use the 9800 Pro for two, and add a PCI card for the 3rd.

That was all my question was about in the first place, I never intended to say that playing on a PCI card was useful, which I agree with you guys, it probably wouldn't be today.

And thank you, Cleeve, for the last post, where you include a test on PCI Cards, that was VERY helpful. I had been searching everywhere for a PCI Cards test, but with no luck.

Please understand that 2 screens will not do, as it is very annoying to have the center of your view split across two screens. With 3 screens I would still have my character on the center screen, and expand the area for inventory, stats, maps, etc.

And finally... I am talking about PCI cards, to all those of you who tell me to go for a SLI setup... I am not talking about a PCI-E card

I have a Dell 8300 computer, with a P4 3000 MHz HT CPU, 1024 MB Dual Channel RAM, 800 MHz FSB, WD 200 GB 8MB Cache HD, SB Audigy 2, etc. It has one AGP slot and a number of PCI slots.

Thanks again, all, and please accept my apology for being a jerk.


//Xesc