The Best Gaming Graphics cards for the Money: November 2007

This one was pretty predictable with the 8800GTs release. Nice to read THG's opinion on the material though. Perhaps the article should be edited to talk about the current stock/price gouging issues of the 8800GT. At this point it almost makes more sense to wait and see what ATI brings to the table if you're going to wait a few weeks to find an 8800GT anyway. My 2 cents.

Well, Newegg doesn't seem to have ANY 8800GTs right now, and I want one.

8800GT --> me
my 7900GS --> wife
wife's 7600GT --> cousin.

Yeah im lucky they dont even sell the MSI OCed version anymore!..I paid 300$ for it,could i have waited. yeah but i wanted it now. Such a great leap from an 7600gt.

AMDx2 6000+
A-Data 2x 2g ddr2-800
580w psu
other things here and there.

link doesnt work?

Hmmmmmm, where is the Radeon 2900 GT?
Surely for 150 Euro and better than 8600 GTS performance it should be mentioned *somewhere*, anywhere?

The 2900GT is almost impossible to find which is why I suspect its not listed.
Last time I looked a few weeks ago, I could not find a single store that had it in stock.

The need for a HD 3800 for a comparrison to the 8800GT puts us back into the waiting game, same as waiting for Phenom CPUs. Seems like I spend more time waiting for stuff to come out than I'd like. But whether the HD 3800 is all that much better than a HD 2900 or not, I'm happy enough I didn't buy a new card before the 8800GT and HD 3800 came out. I hate it when I buy something and its outdated before I finish paying the credit card bill on it.

I wish AMD and ATI would hurry up with their releases as well as i am itching for an upgrade or even a new build probably come january. I don't really need a new cpu but a new gfx card would be nice but nothing worth investing in seems to be released.

god dammit, why are we only fed scraps and not meat.

The only proble I have is that they include both the 8800GTS 320 and the 8800GTS 640 but not both the 2900XT 512 and 2900XT 1GB(which the memory is clocked higher btw @ 1000(2000 effective)). It would seem that it is a card anyone can get and should be included.

Hell They put the 8800GTS640 above my 2900Pro 1GB and my card against a 8800GTS 640 with the same CPU, memory and everything else beats it pretty easily.

And I just wounder, when was the last time these charts were even updated? With all the driver releases there has been considerable performance increase on ATIs part and probably NVidia too.

I just think the VGA charts are not like they used to be. They used to grab and test every card possible and even update them when new drivers improved the performance by a certain percentage. But I guess the 2900Pro was hard to come by. I'm just glad I grabbed it the day it came out and for the lowest price too.

(I would not buy one) but the 8600GT OC versions by MSI and XFX are pretty good. The MSI one is less than 100 bucks after rebate. They perform close to the 8600GTS cards....I would consider a 8800GT for $250.00 but not $300.00.

I think until I upgrade to Vista I am gonna stick with my 7950GT it is a pretty decent card. Maybe the new GPU's will be even better next year........;-P

I thought that the US had more options than Sweden ... 4 of the biggest computer part stores in Sweden had HD2900GT in stock during October and they'll get the next shipment next week. They don't get a lot of these cards but they still manage to have them in stock and they cost about 40% more than the cheapest x1950pro PCI-e card.

Cleave, I just noticed in your Sig line that you have a 8800 GTX AND a 2900 XT. Now I've heard of 8800s in SLI or 2900s in Xfire, but pairing a 8800 with a 2900? That must take some serious software to make it work.

Nah, he has them running alongside a Matrox Parhellia PCI and has their awesome software handle those two crummy cards.

Heheh. Well, I have both cards, but I don't actually use them at the same time... I'm always switching them out though.

In reply to no one, I just have to add my few pennies:

1.) At this stage Nvidia seems to be the better price to performance supplier of graphics cards - their depth in the whole spectrum of graphics card levels are extremely strong going into the last two months of this year.
2.) AMD/ATi have some hard work ahead of them - and quite frankly I wouldn't sit around and wait for a card that will only serve to shrink the gap and in some cases beat NV marginally. Just to elaborate here: I exercised favouritism for ATi for many years, but it's price and performance or the combination thereof that lead the industry. Even if the ill named 38000 can come up with something it's way too late.
3.) When we look at what these cards were designed for, I'm also waiting for ALOT more DX10 titles that serve to expose the DX10 architecure on differing levels of programming in terms of utilization and efficiency.

As of now, I'd be hard pressed to upgrade to anything on the gcard front - and will gladly sit this year out with my sanity and wallet in tact - DX10 has proven to be an improvement over DX9 but it can be omitted to a degree still as DX9 still has alot going for it and time will allow DX10 to be really pushed to it's designed intent.

If I HAD to upgrade, the 8800GT hands down would be my choice.

What about you make a 'best cards for recycling' list?

I'm waiting for the new ATi card not so much to see whether it will be better or faster, but in the hopes that its presence will cause a price drop. I've had good luck with nVidia over the past few years, but if the 3800 series is faster and cheaper, and uses same or less wattage, then that's what I'll buy.

First, one too many zeros there.
Second, how is the HD3850 any more/less ill-named than a GT that suplants a GTS, and a relaunch of a GTS that beats a GTX and is different in specs than an old GTS?

For whatever reasons you can come up with for not liking the HD3800 name change, the same can be said for not changing the naming of the G9x series cards.

But that's really irrelevant, the Gf8 and HS2K are great DX9 cards too, so it's not like they dropped DX9 performance to ad DX10. Everyone keeps talking about DX10, and while the games with those features clobber the current cards, it's still just an additional feature, like having extra AA, you can chose to use it or not.

right now that makes sense, but who knows what else comes out, either a new GTS or a reply from AMD. For now though the GT is the easy favourite for most people in this category.

In the article it says "The 2600 XT is relatively new to the AGP scene, but almost as cheap as its PCIe cousin. This is the fastest DirectX 10 card available for AGP at this time, and surprisingly offers a great deal of performance at the $110 price point"

Where do I go to find a 2600 XT AGP for about $110?

I searched and even ebay's price was $130-150s. Has the price gone up that much the last few months?