The Short List: the Best Gaming Videocards for the money - Page 15

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that is a x1950pro in the link, but get it anyways. The 2600xt is not a very powerful card.

as far as i know, after using the 7.8 drivers of AMD, 2600xt is better than 8600gt and a little less than a 8600gts.and its price is nearly the same as of 8600gt. so 2600xt must be the best buy for the category of cards in $115. what do u guys say.

Yep, that'd be a decent Bioshock upgrade.

Do an advanced search on ebay to see what the last ones sold for.

Compared with a 6600GT you will see a fairly big increase in performance. But, yes your cpu will bottleneck it a bit....but im sure it will work great.

The bigger issue here will be your psu. Make sure it has the watts and amps required to run the card. You will something around the 400-450 watt range with about 28 amps on the +12V rail(s).

How much can you spend?

and whats the rest of your system like?

AGP or PCI-e?

I suggest certain individuals call their primary care providers to set up an appointment to remove the huge stick from their ass.

You can't say this, you can't say that. c'mon people, next you'll be grading each others posts for proper grammar and punctuation.

By the way, it might look something like this:

"Nice post over all but I don't care for the wording of these two statements.

You can't realy(spelling-really) know at any givin (spelling- given) instant what percentage of people come here for a givin(spelling-given) reason. Please consider using the word "Many"( unnecessary capitalization) in place of 50%.

There is no guarantee that a bios update is going to make a(n) x800 as good as a(n) x850. If there was a guarantee(,) you could RMA the card if the extra pipes didn't (" )come on(" ) (suggest replacing with initiate). There may be a very good chance that a(n) x800 upgraded to basically be(to be, subject verb agreement) a(n) x850 but there is no guarantee (sentence fragment). Sorry to be nit picky(,) but if you are going for a sticky the post might as well be as perfect as possible( as, as, as: repetitive-consider revising). Please consider using (the phrase)"has a very good chance" in place of "basically guaranteed".

Here are the two killer deals I found on newegg.com

1.) Most likely the best price/perf at $115 presently:

SAPPHIRE 100199L Radeon X1950GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102034

Price: $115

2.) If you are willing to risk it with the rather unknown JetWay, then here's a better card for you at $120:

JetWay X19PR-ED-256M Radeon X1950PRO 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814153034

Price: $120

2600 XT is a bit better than the 8600 GT when AA is turned off, the 8600 GT is a bit better with AA turned on... although the 8600 GT isn't really fast ehnough to leave AA turned on at resolutions higher than 1024x768.

Out of the two, I'd go 2600 XT.

Instead of comparing it to the X1900XT you should try with the HD2900XT, I believe it draws about 20W less than the XT, which would end up being around the GTX area, give or take a few watts.

Think around... maybe double the power needed for it as a rough comparison.

Ah I'm exaggerating, maybe around 150-175% should do it.

Okay, my turn to throw in my dilemma. (All cards are new and prices include shipping)

Sapphire 2900XT - $330
Sapphire 2900Pro - $290
XFX 8800GTS 320 - $280 (+$20 MIR)

I was set on the 2900Pro when it was $265 shipped, but now the 8800GTS seems like the better deal.

Things to consider-
I do have a crossfire motherboard
I run 1680x1050 and I like to run a good bit of AA (can't stand those jaggies)

With AA enabled that 320 megs starts to fall on its face in newer games... especially at high res... At this moment if you are wanting to run high res with high AA then 512 megs in minimum IMO, but that is just me.

Rock on man.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] ards-money

There is a reason that link is to the sticky at the top of this forum section. Should answer any Q's on which is best for the money.

I'd have to disagree. Even Dx9 hardware will play upcoming titles like Crysis just fine. Low-end Dx10 cards aren't powerful enough to enable Dx10 features anyway, so unless you can afford an 8800 or 2900 XT, you'll probably be running in DirectX 9 mode anyway.

An X1950 PRO would be a fantastic upgrade to a 2.0 GHz Athlon 64.

Thanks guys. I forgot to mention that I'm using AGP...I'm putting off a new system for a couple years more.

BAUBAU - you said 'X2 3800 is way beyond that', how do you figure that? Isn't the X2 3800 a 2.0 GHz chip? or is it 4.0 GHz cause its dual core?

TigerDirect has the HIS RADEON X1950 Pro IceQ3 Turbo V2 for $184..so thats overclocked. I even read a review that said this card performs as good as 7950 GT...opinons anyone?

did you even read the list? Best for the money: 7950gt is not even on the list, this means that it is NOT the best for the money. What is on that list: 7900gs/1950pro or else you make the jump to a 1950xt... that is it. anything in between those is outclassed. Seems simple.

It is this very question that this thread (and the articles cleeve puts out once a month) is intended to answer. If you really have a question about the 7950gt then you look at the hierarchy chart and see that it is in the same slot as the 1950pro and is below the 1950xt. In the charts that spuddyt mentioned the 1950xt dominates on most (flight simulator is odd though) while the 1950pro and 7950gt trade blows. IMO the 7950gt is just not the better buy no matter how you look at it...

the pro will serve you well

My XFX 8800GTS 320 came in yesterday. Thus far, I am very impressed!

Neither of those two is the better one, this is the best card at that price range to buy:

SAPPHIRE 100199L Radeon X1950GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102034

Or even better with this one:

Foxconn FV-N79SM2D2-OC GeForce 7900GS 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814186013

Yes, but the 8600GT is only DX10 on paper because it lacks the raw performance to be able to keep anything other than a DX10 slideshow on screen.

Does anybody know what the noise level is for the Radeon 1650 Pro AGP in the below $100 section is??

The 2900 GT is about the same speed as the X1950 PRO. Not a great way to spend your money.

Hi All,

BEST PCI-E CARD FOR ~$200 - ~$300:
Geforce 8800 GT

The one tested on TH is Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GT 512MB, I've been looking around and most places are selling it for over $300 which makes me sad in the pants. Next, is there a big difference between brand names concerning performance? The Gigabyte GV-NX88T512H-B is Gigabytes version of the 8800GT and it's quite a bit more expensive then the Leadtek(+$100~$200) but how does the home user like myself know that he's not paying more for something that's not as good? So I guess my question is: How does the Asus compare with the Leadtek compare with Gigabyte compare with the XFX versions of the 8800?

Mostly because it's a monthly article, and the last one was published before the 3x00 series was released.

Hold on Tex, wait for next month.