Best priced video card?

[W1nTry]

Buying a card is a mix of performance and features. I think the ATI cards have more features and in the very high range the X1900XTX and the 7900GTX are neck and neck so the winner there becomes features: Nvidia's card runs cooler and has overhead for OCing, ATI's soln has HDR+FSAA/Avivo, more memory and 'normally' better performance on stock (such the factory OCed cards like XFX or BFG are great, but they do cost up to 50USD more too, so it's a trade yet again). I would go with a X1800XT since it will give solid performance and more features that we'll see more and more common in newer games AND older ones as well (Farcry supports HDR just to name one). Here's a review of Oblivion which is the level of graphics we expect to have when buying a 300+ USD card:
OBLIVION on all level hardware
In any event whatever your personal preference is what will determine what you buy since both cards are comparable. Whatever is most important for you (more FPS or HDR+FSAA/ Cooler vs More mem/ etc). They are all GREAT cards.

For good measure: G71 review

Pay attention to the part where it says the 7900GT remained at the bottom of the tests and the part about it being comparable to a X1800XT.

[Spazosaurus]

Yes on the @ti side of things, there are more features and the ability to run HDR+AA etc, but beat that as it may,the 7900gt shines especially when it comes to overclocking and mods. 20 fps more on the 7900 have the potential to make a BIG difference, not in games where frames are up to 40/50/60, but those games that run at a lower fps. Even 10 fps will make a huge difference from 20 on one card and 30 on another card. That fact alone will tip me towards the Nv over AVIVO etc, which are things that I personally do not use. HDR and AA is cool, yes but how much of a difference a couple samples of AA at a decent res like 1280*1024 and HDR vs the same rez with high IQ HDR and HQ textures etc? NOT FORGETTING the performance hit that might occur when both AA and HDR are used together.

Comes down to the features u need. You need AVIVO? Cool then @ti is your path.

I dont need those other features all i need is ah dsub on my card and all else dont matter...ill prolly lean to Nv.

[W1nTry]

I dont need those other features all i need is ah dsub on my card and all else dont matter...ill prolly lean to Nv.

Exactly, all about ur needs. I would lean ATI save and except the card reach EOL. That 512 will come in handy TRUST ME.

[Spazosaurus]

I telling yuh personally eh....i feel like i sitting out of this current gen of cards. I waiting to see what the next gen looks like becuse i will really kick myself if after i buy a current gen and before i spin round twice, new cards come out that wtfpwn mine. Worse yet if they coming DX10.

[W1nTry]

Well DX10 parts won't be out till closer to Vista... and that's like end of the year earliest... then take into account time to develop games for the new OS... the point I am getting at is... you'll be waiting a LONG time... and that's the story with computers on a whole, if you keep waiting you'll NEVER buy anything cause every 3-5 months they go through a product refresh. Daz why I bit the bullet and bought a Yonah instead of waiting on Merom.

[Spazosaurus]

Yeah you're right. Something is always on the horizon. Good thing we have the internet and this site so we could bounce ideas off one another in order to make the best decision possible.

[TriniXaeno]

true

No sense in waiting. Worse come to worse, you can always sell the recently purchased card and upgrade to the new one.

Hence why we have the trading grounds.

[TrinireturnofGamez]

Well DX10 parts won't be out till closer to Vista... and that's like end of the year earliest... then take into account time to develop games for the new OS... the point I am getting at is... you'll be waiting a LONG time... and that's the story with computers on a whole, if you keep waiting you'll NEVER buy anything cause every 3-5 months they go through a product refresh. Daz why I bit the bullet and bought a Yonah instead of waiting on Merom.

  actually i'm of the opinion DX10 parts will be released this year anyway , even if there are no games to support them and no vista for it to work with , the first company to release them has that sales pitch advantage ' DX10 compatible , vista compatible etc.'   Look how 64bit helped AMD and there was no windows 64 or any 64 bit programs save for linux , it would do the same to a lesser extent for ATI/Nvidia ...
   Also its a legacy to release a new ''Geforce'' line every year  almost, and according to any road map i can dig up , the Geforce 8000 series is due  mid 2006 !

 Big problem is we will have no DX10 games to test them on till 07 , so we can have another bloated  impotent Geforce FX style failure and never know it...

http://www.mikeshardware.co.uk/RoadmapQ306.htm

[Arcmanov]

talk about hijack.  the man want to know what is a GOOD AGP CARD FOR UNDER 150 US!!!
sheesh.


6600 GT, AGP 8x, 128 Mb of DDR3 VRAM, DVI and S-Video out
129 US on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009JDYAU/sr=8-4/qid=1146608921/ref=pd_bbs_4/104-3147702-4877511?%5Fencoding=UTF8

TALK DONE!!!
NEXT TOPIC!!!

[Jdcrys_Shinkuu]

talk about hijack.  the man want to know what is a GOOD AGP CARD FOR UNDER 150 US!!!
sheesh.


6600 GT, AGP 8x, 128 Mb of DDR3 VRAM, DVI and S-Video out
129 US on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009JDYAU/sr=8-4/qid=1146608921/ref=pd_bbs_4/104-3147702-4877511?%5Fencoding=UTF8

TALK DONE!!!
NEXT TOPIC!!!

i agree...lol

[W1nTry]

talk about hijack.  the man want to know what is a GOOD AGP CARD FOR UNDER 150 US!!!
sheesh.


6600 GT, AGP 8x, 128 Mb of DDR3 VRAM, DVI and S-Video out
129 US on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009JDYAU/sr=8-4/qid=1146608921/ref=pd_bbs_4/104-3147702-4877511?%5Fencoding=UTF8

TALK DONE!!!
NEXT TOPIC!!!

So that's about 900TT landing... what about 1250 for an X800Pro?

[Beomagi]

Nut Beo you haven't justified how having higher framerates is SUCH a selling point ?

simple - at that point you can possible use a higher res, perhaps AA, perhaps turn on features you could not run before.
oh - and room for 1 or 2 more add in cards (should have remembered that before :/), a quieter cooler pc etc etc

No this isn't intel vs amd because THIS TIME, The higher speed IS giving much higher performance.
http://sg.vr-zone.com/?i=3437&s=4

If YOU don't notice the difference, then fine - run at a higher res and appreciate the ability! I LIKE the idea of chalking up another 30% framerate. (ps, that graph shows a 51% boost, I'm using 30% as a conservative overclock figure)

Now on the aspect of HDR + AA - it's available only on oblivion so far - in fact they can't come up with a way to do it on Ghost Recon yet. Look when it comes to oblivion, the x1800 and x1900 series owns it - but that's just oblivion. Nvidia and ati trade blows accross the gamut. In fact, i can tell you again that ati's self shadow implementation looks very buggy and i run oblivion with it off, yet my 6800 gt runs shadows nicely. There's buggy shadows on grass, but self shadow bugs arn't noticable on nvidiaware. Does that information count for anything?

Avivo sounds great, but i havent had a need yet to do video transcoding, and even if i do - http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=654115
I'm still waiting for them to implement a hardware version of it - much like we waited on nvidia to deliver pure video to the 6800 series initially.

The big selling point is the extra vram - and while it's a factor at ultra high res, the overclock would also make up for that deficiency.

Finally note that I did outline specific criteria for people buying this card. I wholeheartedly would recommend an x1800xt to non tweakers, especially since they offer rebates at times that can drop the price to $250.

BTW : definitely take the x800pro if you can!
40% higher bandwidth, double the memory, higher fillrate.

[Spazosaurus]

talk about hijack.  the man want to know what is a GOOD AGP CARD FOR UNDER 150 US!!!
sheesh.


6600 GT, AGP 8x, 128 Mb of DDR3 VRAM, DVI and S-Video out
129 US on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009JDYAU/sr=8-4/qid=1146608921/ref=pd_bbs_4/104-3147702-4877511?%5Fencoding=UTF8

TALK DONE!!!
NEXT TOPIC!!!

We done answer that question long time in the first few posts of tis thread.

[W1nTry]

Here's something that DEFINITELY is a GREAT BANG for the BUCK ESPECIALLY for the PRICE:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102680
see a review here

[Beomagi]

good performance for the money

but a little unbalanced
http://www.sudhian.com/index.php?/articles/show/732/3
the x1600 line does have some strong showings, but see the x1600xt in that link? It's real jumpy. From competing against the 6800GT to falling below the level of the 6600gt. It's a 4 pipe card, so while it has the shaders and clock to compete, it's fill rate, and texture power suffers. In games where that's more necessary, it takes a back seat to the older 6600gt.
note - this is the 1600xt, not the slower pro model.

here's a review of the x1600pro, x800gt/gto/gto˛ vs 6600gt.
http://www.digital-daily.com/video/x1600_x800_6600gt/

While it has the memory that would help it in games where 512MB would help(there arn't many!), 2 of those games  quake 4 and doom 3 slow that card down due to it's misbalanced architecture. 512 would also help at super high res where combined with tripple buffering, actually takes up a significant perrcentage of the memory, but in this case, the card isn't suitable for usper high res anyway.

as I said, it's debatable vs other known cards. I'd feel more comfortable. spending a bit more or if i had to put down that much as a start (i.e. forgo the rebate), I'd put down for this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814140067
6800 vanilla agp - unlock to 16 pipes and you're golden.

[W1nTry]

Well I can't argue with you there Beo, the 6800vanilla with a mod to 6800GT is definitely a winner there. The way I see it though, is as the 6800 become unavailable your option at that time will be X1600Pro. We don't see many PCIe cards being bridged back to AGP these days (expected though). The 1600 will give you AVIVO and HDR+FSAA (even though performane will fall through the floor) but that's the difference I guess.

[TriniXaeno]

Yeah, I think the 6800  or the X800 GTO on AGP makes the most sense right now.

The x1600xt does not have the power to produce the speed we need at the higher res/ eye candy levels that it supports.

Personally, I'd do my darndest to get to PCI-E. Sell off the old stuff. Then it's 7600 GT lovin' or X1800 ftw.

[Beomagi]

I hate company politics

The dumbest thing is that with standard sli - you're using what's barely different from agp 8x speed per card, while using 2-3 times the bandwidth and there's no hit - the overprices sli32 boards arn't faster. These companies really screwed over agp users, without giving us a whole lot of extra bandwidth, which while not needed, would at least be some justification.

agp8x = 266MB/s * 8 = 2128MB/s
pci-e 8x = 2.5Gbps*8 = 2500MB/s

the only BIG difference is Vcard->board rates where agp is 1x speed or 266MB/s and pci-e can run at it's standard 2.5Gbps - and that only affects sli. If the serial -> parallel chip nvidia made for pci-e -> agp conversions were more popular, it would be cheap as hell, and not affect the agp price of cards.

[Spazosaurus]

PCI-E has not become so popular because of its negligible bandwidth increase, but because its the tech of the future, SLI...and a lil "lewwe shove this thing down dey throat" persuasion eh hurt neither.

[Beomagi]

I know, but it's annoying to know you have to get a new mobo - and possibly a new chip/ram too if you're on socket a or 478 just to use it.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28253

It's almost as bad as hdtv sets that wont do hdcp.

Is that Dave Chapelle in your sig?