Squeezing Value Out of Lower-End Cards

Card Configurations

There are as many graphics cards makers from which to choose as there are model versions within a class of a graphics card. Some are feature rich or have faster memory, while others have inexpensive components and a price tag to match. To serve as a reference point, we used a $350 NVIDIA 7800 GT and the $550 NVIDIA 7800 GTX 512 to help make sense of where these cards fall into the grand scheme. The results are encouraging and even surprising. Included below is a chart of various GPU and memory configurations. This is by no means an exhaustive listing but it will give you an idea of the diversity of cards that exist in the marketplace.