Introducing - Fbucks! Continued
The resulting ranking in our Fbucks! tables is interesting indeed. We see that the Radeon 9600 Pro/XT and the GeForce FX 5700 Ultra based boards offer very good value for money. When image quality settings are raised, the Radeon 9600 XT is an easy recommendation. Not surprisingly, the enthusiast models don't cut such a good figure owing to their high price - at least in the standard tests. In the quality tests, on the other hand, the Radeon 9800 (non-Pro) looks very attractive indeed. NVIDIA's top models, meanwhile, have no such luck, due to their comparatively low scores. With the newly introduced GFX 5900 XT (alias SE), NVIDIA is picking up where it left off with the GF4 Ti 4200 - a lower-cost card with all the features enabled, but running at a lower clockspeed. Since it is only slightly less expensive than the "full" FX 5900 (non-Ultra), this card has a hard time grabbing a higher rank in the Fbucks! chart.
| Standard Image Quality - Prices from December 2003 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Card | Summary | Price ($)* | Fbucks |
| GF FX 5950 U | 959.7 | 409 | 2.35 |
| GF FX 5900 U | 944 | 345 | 2.74 |
| GF FX 5900 | 891.4 | 235 | 3.79 |
| GF FX 5900 XT | 870.6 | 213 | 4.09 |
| GF FX 5800 U | 921.8 | 278 | 3.32 |
| GF FX 5800 | 833.3 | 193 | 4.32 |
| GF FX 5700 U | 799.2 | 169 | 4.73 |
| GF FX 5700 | 673.5 | 154 | 4.37 |
| GF FX 5600 U (FC) | 660.5 | 169 | 3.91 |
| GF FX 5600 U | 603.5 | 169 | 3.57 |
| GF FX 5600 | 553.7 | 109 | 5.08 |
| GF FX 5200 U | 519.6 | 99 | 5.25 |
| GF FX 5200 | 408.7 | 52 | 7.86 |
| GF4 Ti 4600-8x | 708.9 | 172 | 4.12 |
| GF4 Ti 4600 | 706.9 | 140 | 5.05 |
| GF4 Ti 4400 | 660.6 | 120 | 5.51 |
| GF4 Ti 4200-8x | 622.7 | 100 | 6.23 |
| GF4 Ti 4200 128 | 589.6 | 100 | 5.9 |
| GF4 Ti 4200 64 | 598.9 | 94 | 6.37 |
| GF4 MX 460 | 399 | 75 | 5.32 |
| GF4 MX 440-8x | 389.6 | 43 | 9.06 |
| GF4 MX 440 | 341.6 | 36 | 9.49 |
| R 9800 XT | 962.5 | 425 | 2.26 |
| R 9800 Pro 256 | 936.1 | 366 | 2.56 |
| R 9800 Pro | 938 | 275 | 3.41 |
| R 9800 | 885.6 | 225 | 3.94 |
| R 9800 SE | 703.9 | 171 | 4.12 |
| R 9700 Pro | 890.3 | 230 | 3.87 |
| R 9700 | 821.4 | 193 | 4.26 |
| R 9600 XT | 722.9 | 157 | 4.6 |
| R 9600 Pro | 678.8 | 143 | 4.75 |
| R 9600 | 499 | 109 | 4.58 |
| R 9600 SE | 332.4 | 89 | 3.74 |
| R 9500 Pro | 713.2 | 190 | 3.75 |
| R 9500 128 | 563.1 | 149 | 3.78 |
| R 9500 64 | 528.8 | 143 | 3.7 |
| R 9200 128 | 397.3 | 56 | 7.09 |
| R 9200 64 | 396.9 | 43 | 9.23 |
| R 9000 Pro | 451.9 | 55 | 8.22 |
| R 8500 128 | 493.2 | 52 | 9.48 |
| R 8500 64 | 506.2 | 81 | 6.25 |
| XGI V8 Duo | 516.3 | na | Row 42 - Cell 3 |
| XGI V5 Ultra | 295.7 | na | Row 43 - Cell 3 |
| XGI V3 | 113.1 | na | Row 44 - Cell 3 |
| S3 S8 256 | 421.3 | na | Row 45 - Cell 3 |
| Parhelia 128 | 315.6 | 335 | 0.94 |
| Enhanced Image Quality - Prices from December 2003 | |||
| 1024x768-32 | Summary | Price ($) | Fbucks |
| GF FX 5950 U | 144.5 | 409 | 0.35 |
| GF FX 5900 U | 138.8 | 345 | 0.4 |
| GF FX 5900 | 123.3 | 235 | 0.52 |
| GF FX 5900 XT | 119.7 | 213 | 0.56 |
| GF FX 5800 U | 136.9 | 278 | 0.49 |
| GF FX 5800 | 112.1 | 193 | 0.58 |
| GF FX 5700 U | 109.2 | 169 | 0.65 |
| GF FX 5700 | 87.9 | 154 | 0.57 |
| GF FX 5600 U (FC) | 88 | 169 | 0.52 |
| GF FX 5600 U | 80.9 | 169 | 0.48 |
| GF FX 5600 | 71.5 | 109 | 0.66 |
| GF FX 5200 U | 59.2 | 99 | 0.6 |
| GF FX 5200 | 42.2 | 52 | 0.81 |
| GF4 Ti 4600-8x | 70.5 | 172 | 0.41 |
| GF4 Ti 4600 | 70.5 | 140 | 0.5 |
| GF4 Ti 4400 | 64 | 120 | 0.53 |
| GF4 Ti 4200-8x | 58.4 | 100 | 0.58 |
| GF4 Ti 4200 128 | 54.8 | 100 | 0.55 |
| GF4 Ti 4200 64 | 39.1 | 94 | 0.42 |
| R 9800 XT | 214.4 | 425 | 0.5 |
| R 9800 Pro 256 | 200.9 | 366 | 0.55 |
| R 9800 Pro | 198.5 | 275 | 0.72 |
| R 9800 | 175.4 | 225 | 0.78 |
| R 9800 SE | 110.1 | 171 | 0.64 |
| R 9700 Pro | 177.3 | 230 | 0.77 |
| R 9700 | 158.8 | 193 | 0.82 |
| R 9600 XT | 121.3 | 157 | 0.77 |
| R 9600 Pro | 111.1 | 143 | 0.78 |
| R 9600 | 75.8 | 109 | 0.7 |
| R 9600 SE | 48.3 | 89 | 0.54 |
| R 9500 Pro | 121.2 | 190 | 0.64 |
| R 9500 128 | 83.3 | 149 | 0.56 |
| R 9500 64 | 70.6 | 143 | 0.49 |
*Prices from 12/2003 - determined using BizRate.
Update 01/05/2004: The prices we found for the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 and 4200 card models were not correct. This was caused by mislabbeled offering we've overseen in our price search. We apologize for the confusion this caused. The numbers of the card models are revised now.
