The Short List: the Best Gaming Videocards for the money - Page 12

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Yup. If I had money burning my pockets and needed a monster card, I'd certainly dive into G80-business. 130$ for going from 256 to 512Mb? Eh. I don't think that 400$ price point makes sense. It's already very expensive, but not enough to be worth being very expensive.

Yeah, I doubted that I'd ever post again here, as I had explained to Dr_Asik on another forum... But here I am.

Doing well; I'm personally pleased to see the elimination of "fixed" price ranges (200-250, 250-300, etc.) and replaced with the more "floating" prices.

But a couple questions/suggestions...[*:c024499118]Why is the Radeon X1950pro labeled as "R580?" As I recall, wasn't it actually based on an all-new 80nm revision, called RV570, that dropped 1/4 of the processors? (hence making an "XT flash" impossible) Of course, it'd be easy to confuse with RV560, used for the X1650XT...
[*:c024499118]Also, what do you think of the replacements for the X1600 line? the X1650XT is far to expensive right now, (more expensive, yet slightly weaker, than the 7600GT) but what about the X1300XT? It's definitely weaker than the X800GTO, but at this point, when I can Find it for $77US, and I'm having difficulty finding an X800GTO at any justifiable price, I begin to wonder about it.

Okay, I'll take your word for that; I've not been able to find such a card myself searching there in months, though not too long ago, Dr_Asik had given me a working link to one that was just as you said, and in stock; I'll just say that NewEgg doesn't want to let me search normally.

Also, the scene looks a little better for AGP users at the moment; I've just spotted an AGP X850XT on NewEgg for $140US. Obviously much better than the X850pros they're selling for the same price.

From what I've seen, the X1650 XT is slightly better than the 7600 GT...

But I do agree with you as far as price goes, it's overpriced compared to the 7600 GT for sure and will not be in the recommended buys list next update if that continues to be the case.

That X850 XT will certainly make the list next month if they remain at that price and in stock...

Yeah, I was just telling someone it seems to be gone now... I guess everything changes fast.

The $88 7600 GS seems to be the way to go now (assuming it's still there, checked it an hour ago...

The prices are there because they represent the next step that's worth paying for. If the 7600 GT is $130 and the 7900 GS is $180, and you have $150 to spend and don't see a $150 card there, that's because the 7600 GT is a better card than a $150 card.

Prices will change all the time and that's an inevitability, it's impossible to be 100% on that without spending every day all day updating the list ansd that's not going to happen.

The list is intended as a guideline, not a bible.

Benchmarks ARE included however, linked to at the bottom of the list. If you need something more precise, look to google. Good hunting!

And BTW, the X1950 PRO is better than the 7900 GS if you]'re looking for something for a buit more $ but with a bit more oomph.

Price is not an indicator of performance. Paying "a little more" will earn you much crappier performance more often than not if you aren't careful. When a 200$ video cards is faster than all 180-350$ offerings on the market, nobody's going to reccommend a 300$ card.

The large gaps in Cleeve's list are an indicator of how irrelevant price is to performance on the market.

scvs are the absolute worst builders in Starcraft they occupy spaces around what they are building so you can't properly organize your base like protoss or zerg; plus they get stuck between buildings if you're not careful. They're a total pain in teh @zz.

And I don't scv rush because I only play the Ultimate Loser Map, better known as ~Zero Clutter 2vs2 nr20 no lag no noobs~!!!!


God knows what this has to do with graphic cards though.

Price is not an indicator of performance. Paying "a little more" will earn you much crappier performance more often than not if you aren't careful. When a 200$ video cards is faster than all 180-350$ offerings on the market, nobody's going to reccommend a 300$ card.

The large gaps in Cleeve's list are an indicator of how irrelevant price is to performance on the market.

Agreed. I got that Saphire radeon x700 PRO in my sig. for only $46 at newegg a few months ago, but the same card is now over $70...

what happened with the December list??
I'm about to buy a new machine and I need to know what GPU should I buy

Coming on Tuesday or Thursday I think...

how come the 7950 doesn't get a mention. is this a bag of crap compared to the 7900?

As a new user and someone who just cracked my computer open for the first time, I think the original post is perfect. If your arguing which is the best performer, the post is not for you anyways.
Ron

Newegg has a Sapphire X1950 XT for $249.99
check it out:
http://www.newegg.com/product/prod [...] 6814102067

CHeck this review:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] -analysis/

Your X1600 PRO will perform close to halfway between the 9700 PRO and the 7600 GT.

Yep, you got it.

The 7600 GT performs very close to the 256-bit X850 XT, regardless of the bus...

wonder how those bad-boys would perform in crossfire? 8)

aww man, no crossfire?! well screw THAT, I'm not gonna buy 'em now. lol


seriously though, all the companies try to get rid of older tech in many ways, some under new names... this can be misleading. If you know what you are getting you can usually find a good deal on these things if you need a cheap 2d (so-so 3d) card for an old system/server, but some ppl don't see that and buy it for primary gaming

Not sure which is worse though, giving an old chip a new name or NOT renaming anything with an "FX" moniker. GrapeApe pointed out in another thread that many stores still sell FX5500s! yikes...

What would you buy?

HIS ATI Radeon X1950 Pro ICEQ 3 TURBO SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (H195PRQT512DD-R) £158.61

OR


Leadtek GeForce 7900 GS 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £110


I need to run a 30" 2500x1600 and games like GHOST RECON 3, Flight Simulator 2004

Thanks

Hey, Wal-Mart in my area still sells the frikin GeForce MX 4000 and ATI Radeon 9250 PCI!!!

Under AGP, the Radeon X1650 Pro is listed in both ~$120 and ~S175. Thats a little confusing. Does this card compare to the GeForce 7600 GT.

Thanks

I thought I was losing it. My AGP card from my Dell9300 3Ghz died. The XFX 7600GT is $10 more at NewEgg than the HIS X1650XT. Recommendations?? Thanks...

Cleeve,

Thanks for all the work you have done over the last year+ on this thread. I frequent this thread often and point friends to it when they ask me “What videocard should I get”.

It’s incredibly nice to have a list that is always up to date and cuts right to the point. With so many videocards out there, and so many different versions of the same model, this thread saves hours and hours of research.

Thanks!

Yup, this list is one of the best things about this forum. All the other sections envy the graphic cards section because of this. It's a shame they're isn't an equivalent for CPUs, for motherboards, etc.

There was one for CPU's, but since the user who wrote the articles seemed to be so incredibly biased in almost every other article as far as preference to AMD over Intel, it never caught on. I personally thought despite his obvious bias in other areas that his article about CPUs was quite well done--but maybe that is just me.

That type of thing will definately work with cpu's and we need to get one in the works. Who wants to put forth all the time and effort to get one started though? Cleeve can only do so many things, I think he needs to focus on graphics since he does so well on that (not to say he can't do cpu's, but he could potentially lose credibility on all his articles if he misrepresents even one issue regarding cpu's, so he needn't risk all of his famedom over that).

Any volunteers?

Booo, Sapphire x1950xt down to $219 !!! Open Box HIS x1950xt is $209 at newegg. Closing on best for ~$200 tag.