Complex video card specifications and reviews are great if you have the time to do the research, but at the end of the day, what a gamer really needs is to find the video card their money can buy.

Cant wait to read it. Shame there is a delay in being lifted to the UK site :x

Great article, very informative for non-enthusiasts.

There seems to be a significant typo though.....in the 8800GTX section, it says, "In all honesty, the $ 150-cheaper 8800 GTX would probably serve anyone well...."

I believe it should read the $ 150-cheapter GTS....", correct? Might wanna fix that


Can't wait for the article when the R600 comes out......that'll be an awesome discussion/read.

What would make the article really informative would be to reference cards that are included in the VGA charts. Neither of the two cards mentioned in the $270 price range (X1950 XT and GeForce 7900 GTO) are included.

I am a big fan of the CPU price/performance charts, because it's a great resource for selecting your next processor. You get to pick your own price/performance trade-off.

I would be very interested to see a similar price/performance for video cards. Some sort of averaged performance over the various benchmarks would have to be created, and this won't suit everyone's particular needs (I use 1280x1024 on my monitor, which puts me in a different bracket than those in the 1600x1200 or higher resolutions). However, the generalisations necessary for the CPU performance estimates are no more compromising, are they?

Case in point: in some very specialised cases, the old NetBurst tech still performs extremely well. Given, these are few and far between. I'm no NetBurst fanboy.

It might be necessary to select only the best cards for each price category for the charts, as there seems to be plethora of products over the last two years.

Opinions?

P.S. I do find the current Video Card review format very useful, as I generally do know how much I want to spend before I go shopping.

I have not seen the 7600GT AGP flavor available in stock for quite some time--perhaps it has recently resurfaced, but still, I have never seen it available. If that one's out, what would you have to say about the Radeon x1650 AGP? Does it address the "odd duck" problems the x1600 had or no? In your opinion, if price were the same, would you prefer the x1650 or the GeForce 6600GT?

Sorry if I'm bothering you, just I haven't really seen any reviews on the x1650 so I don't know how it holds up...

The X1650 PRO is a decent AGP card, about as good as the 7600 GS.

The upcoming X1650 XT AGP should be about as good as the 7600 GT AGP, but I haven't seen those in retail yet.

The article isn't any less informative, it just doesn't have any numbers to back it up.

So if you want to test the article's validity, I suggest you google some specific reviews that include the cards you're considering...

One thing to keep in mind regarding the 7900GTO is that it is sold out everywhere I have looked and no more will be put into production. The only way to get one is eBay or something similar.

Been watching them on eBay the last month or so and cheapest I saw one go was $280 I think, average is like $320 and have seen MANY 7900GTX's go for $300ish lol. People...

I am in agreeance with bfcj that the 7900 GTO should have been mentioned, but it is only available at auction sites currently "eBay", but still a kick a** card for the money. Me personally, I love my X850 XT PE I picked up for like 130 US Dollars. Kicks major butt in WOW, AOE III, Halo, and CS:S at 1366x768 on my 32" LCD, but the stock cooler could be quieter.

agree. The x1950 XT should be included someplace. Maybe I missed something.
I also still like the 7800GS. Other cards are faster or cheaper, but there is still no 24 pipe 7900 GT AGP.

The 8800GTX is fast.
I hope someone can explain why the 128 Universal Shader Units isn't like 3x faster than the x1950 XTX. I know I expect too much.

you did miss something - the X1950 XT is the best card for ~$270, and it's in the list.

I regret missing something so obvious. Must be too focused on work.

I am not sure if the UK site is necesary. Maybe just have one English site that includes material from every English locality. I don't decide this anyway..

Bottlenecks, plus the fact that the X1900's shader units are much more complex than the 8800's I expect.

ahhh! I got my pc in February of 05 now its close to 2 years later and my video card(ATI X700pro pci express) is showing its age....badly. This review proves it with the cards i can get now for the same price I paid 2 years ago. I guess i should be happy that with my first build I was able to make such a "future" proof computer as I did.

I am still completely satisfied with its performance on everything with the exception of the graphics end of things. I could use a bump up on graphics and with vista on approach probably wouldn't hurt to get more than a gig of ram in the thing.

Woo. I bought the 7900GS a few weeks ago on sale. It's been treating me well (except for a little driver mishap, but with NVidia, those are easy to fix).

I love the site. One thing that might help is if you list cards that come in 2nd and/or maybe the 3rd place for the price range. Right after I bought an X800GTO for my brother late November, I wanted to look at one for myself but everyone was out of the ~$80 Powercolor and the next X800GTO was around $130, making it not under the $100 level. Of course now Newegg has 2 X800GTOs under $100 now, but they didn't have the cards at that price for almost 2 weeks.

This typo was in the original thread, too. I almost said something then, but didn't want to seem picky as I thought it would change soon anyway. But this is a copy-paste of that, so maybe I should have spoken up then. :?

Still a great resource regardless of one-letter typos. Keep it up Cleeve.

Useful article as previous iterations have proved.

One question for you Cleeve, one of my friends is looking for an AGP upgrade (from 9600xt) and I found 3 cards that seem ok in different price segments:

7600gs - $155
x850pro - $189
7600gt - $221

Note that all of these prices are in CAD and are available locally for me. Which one seems like the best deal? I have recommended the 7600gt, but he seems reluctant to spend that much money since he just wants something faster than his 9600xt (for Call Of Duty 2 at the moment).

BAD TOM'S! You missed one!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102070

This is the best ~$200 card out there. First off, it's a X1950Pro - which isn't a XT, but it's very close. But look at the picture. Yep, it has a factory-installed Zalman cooler! Not the crummy one, either, but Zalman's biggest one they make!($30 plus DIY install otherwise)

Easy as pie to overclock or leave as-is for nearly dead-silent operation.

It also has dual DVI out, a crossfire cable/operation(if you want to later on), and GDDR3 - not the cheaper memory found all too often.

Newegg is out of stock, but I ordered one last week from them - and it's not like the supply is all gone, either at other places.