Price Guides, April 2005: Video Cards

by Kristopher Kubicki on 4/23/2005 12:05 AM EST
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  • cryptonomicon - Tuesday, May 10, 2005 - link

    neat stuff.

    hard to decide between 6600GT and 9800pro as it just dropped in price. i'll have to do some benchmark comparisons against price ratios.
  • semo - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link

    yep

    €428 = $553 according to this site: www.xe.com/ucc/
  • KristopherKubicki - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link

    patrick0: I am not 100% sure of the exchange rate, but I know the USD against the Euro is not favorable. €428 is definitely more than $459.

    Kristopher
  • EODetroit - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link

    Its a shame about Newegg, they used to allow negative reviews. I remember shopping for a DVD burner back when they were new and expensive, and people who write stuff like "This burner sucks, avoid it at all costs! Newegg rocks, they got it to me in 2 days, but don't buy this burner, it sucks!". Those reviews were really helpful. But now you don't see anything negative so you can't trust the reviews any more :(. I still shop at Newegg all the time but I don't recommend them to all my friends like I used to 'cause of this.
  • junyor22 - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link

    On page 4 they mention a 256MB 6600GT offering from MSI...
    The link actualy goes to a 128MB version of this card and looking at MSI's website
    http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_list.asp?clas...

    They don't offer this card. Only a 256MB AGP 6600 (non GT)

  • patrick0 - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link

    Forget about the $70-$120, that's what alcohol is doing :)

    Still the X850XT PE is about $40 cheaper.
  • patrick0 - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link

    I really don't understand why you always compare prices of these expensive stores.

    A Radeon X850XT for $460, I can buy one for €378 (GeCube) or €385 (PowerColor)
    Radeon X850XT PE for $459, I can buy one for €428

    Even if you have to pay international shipment, over $70-$120 diference will make up for that.

    I suppose you can buy in the USA for these prices as well. For those who care, these are prices of a store in Barcelona (Spain)
  • Phiro - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link

    Hey, where's the regular 6600's? Don't they fill the gap between the $180 6600GT and the $100 6200?
  • Souka - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link

    Pretty useless article.... my opinion... nuff said.
  • intellon - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link

    I'm a student and I have a P4-2.8GHz 533FSB with 512mb RDRAM and an AGP 9700 pro AND it's a Dell!!!(please spare the bashing)
    now strictly economically, should I bother to replace 9700pro with a X800XL or a BFG-6800GT OC (Both can be had for $500 here in Canada) or should I dump the dell and build my own PCI-e rig?
    Note: Money matters. So need the total cost to be minimum in the end.
  • semo - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link

    it certainly does Kristopher
    thanks

    the issue with x300se running doom3:

    had no time to check the settings and i just played the firts 10mins of the game (just shot one worker) and it wasn't choppy. that impressed me because on my 7500 even the main menu was choppy (not talking about walking and jumping just changing control settings). while playing i saw some smoke and it did not look good so there was no eye candy but at least it run ok.

    anyway, my friend is now playing painkiller (ragdolls and particles flying all over the screen) and he says there's no slowdown. my 7500 gave up on the 3rd level :( . (see why i'm looking for a radeon 9800)
  • dripgoss - Monday, April 25, 2005 - link

    LOL on the Newegg reviews.. yeah I posted up a very thorough and honest 2/5 "egg testimonial" on an MSI 6600GT and they wouldn't post it. I bumped it up to 5/5 and it went through but when it finally goy posted to the site it came out as "Nice card" verbatim!! And then they turn around and post testimonials from people who either don't own the product or bought it elsewhere! If they hae to approve the reviews before posting, that's funny..
  • spittledip - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    My apologies! I am used to scoping out all the prices almost daily through pricewatch, and they always have 9800 SEs listed as pros. That is one sweet sweet deal!
  • LoneWolf15 - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    I think there's an important thing to mention regarding the ASUS X800XL video card. The price is far higher than competitors, and yet some models of their X800XL cards use DDR RAM instead of GDDR3 like the others, and the RAM is clocked far lower. This makes it really hard to tell if you're getting a good card for your money. Should you get the lower clocked DDR-based card, you'll be paying a lot more for less performance. I'd recommend Built By ATI, Powercolor, or other brands of cards for this reason.

    ASUS card specs (for comparison)
    http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=Extreme%20AX80...

    Powercolor card specs:
    http://www.tul.com.tw/global/productlist.aspx?fold...
  • KristopherKubicki - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    semo: The first 2 and the last one are definitely 256-bit, Radeon 9800 Pros. The 3rd one did not mention whether or not it was 128-bit or 256-bit, but I am pretty sure that particular SKU is 256-bit.

    Hope that helps,

    Kristopher
  • KristopherKubicki - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    Vol2005: It's a borderline situation with that rig. I would say you would be OK, but anything less and you would be better off getting a PCIe motherboard and video card.

    Kristopher
  • toyota - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    #20 what are you talking about an x300se gets 10 fps in doom3 at 1024x768. even in 800x600 its only 14 fps. you must be playing the game while you are stoned if you call that smooth gameplay.
  • Vol2005 - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

  • Vol2005 - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    Anybody could tell me, please...
    if I will upgrade my graphics to AGP X800XL,
    would the power of my AXP2500@3200 be enough for it or am i gonna upgrade cpu/mb too
  • Vol2005 - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

  • JarredWalton - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    20 - Doom 3 running smooth on a X300SE!? I'd like to see that, as I've tried Doom 3 on an ATI Xpress 200 chipset (roughly the equivalent of the X300SE) and it ran like a slug. Even at low details and 640x480 resolution Doom 3 couldn't pull more than 15 FPS on that setup.

    400 MHz RAM with a 64-bit bus only gives 3.2 GBps of bandwidth, which is simply not enough for Doom 3's shadowing engine. Maybe if you disable the shadows and specular highlights it would get 30+ FPS, but then what's the point?
  • semo - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    does somebody know if these are real radeon 9800pro cards

    http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html...

    http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html...

    http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html...

    http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html...

    (sorry to firefox users if the links are too long)

    #13, i don't know what you mean by benefit. i have a friend who has a dell system (quit booing/laughing, there was a good reason) with x300se and p4 530 (3.0ghz) and doom3 and painkiller run very smoothly on it.

    if you want eye candy upgrade your vid card
  • Zebo - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    DrMrLordX read between the lines what I quoted above: especially the part about "in a million years."

    AT don't recommend garbage or stuff that fails some basic price/performance standard. They keep it lean and mean.:)
  • KristopherKubicki - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    spittledip: The cards we list as 9800 Pros are in fact 9800 Pros; these are the 256-bit cards. The 128-bit Radeon 9800 SE cards that you are refering to retail for about $110.

    Kristopher
  • zemane - Sunday, April 24, 2005 - link

    Nice timing, I'm just buying a new video card!

    On page 5 "Low-End cards", second table, first row, the Newegg link for the Sapphire Radeon X300SE 128MB AGP opens the PCIe version page. And the corresponding "Check Prices" link is broken.

    And the link that opens the comments popup says there is one more comment than reality.
  • DrMrLordX - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    Woops! Looks like you failed to mention the AGP 6200 cards as well.
  • DrMrLordX - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    Interestingly, the 6800NU doesn't seem to be featured anywhere on your price list. Or, at least, I didn't see it.
  • spittledip - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    I think someone needs to tell anandtech that those 9800 "pros" for 140$ are really SE models... and 9800 SE are really poor cards-- 9500 pro and 9600 pro beat those out!
  • l3ored - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    nevermind... didnt read the second page yet. i have an athlon 64 3000 (754) and a 9800 pro. i think i'd benefit more from upgrading the graphics card first, am i right?
  • l3ored - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    am i reading this right? "like so many things AGP, our disappointment can hardly be contained." you guys dont approve of agp anymore? i was under the impression that today's video cards dont require the bandwidth that pci-e gives and so the same card on either platform performs the same. or has that all changed?
  • MJA - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    newegg.com new site looks cool on my dell widescreen 2005WPF
  • KristopherKubicki - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    Zar0n: You can actually do that: Type in the product here:

    http://labs.anandtech.com/

    Rike: You are correct, I am not sure how that typo made it through the editorial process.

    Kristopher
  • Rike - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    #8 I think it should read: "We were very excited this week to see [the price difference between] AGP and PCIe 6600GT video cards disappear."

  • PrinceGaz - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    On page 4 "We were very excited this week to see AGP and PCIe 6600GT video cards disappear."

    Was that meant to say something else?
  • Spacecomber - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    Following up on #4, they really should call them what they are, "testimonials"; they aren't reviews. If you read NewEggs fine print, they as much as say this, but I do feel that NewEgg's continuing to refer to these as "reviews" is misleading.

    (They also are willing to do a major editing job on a "review", to the point that it almost isn't recognizable, even if you originally wrote it.)

    As to the PriceGuide, it seems like the 6800 NU fell through the cracks?

    Space
  • Son of a N00b - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    I read the reviews for little tidbits of info like not including cables or something, but i would never buy anything without reading a review here or somehwere else....

    btw HATE neweggs new design i go so used to their old one after the past 4 months selecting parts for my next computer and keeping em in my cart or wish list and got very very used to where everything was i could go with my eyes closed...then they changed and my cart and wishlist got deleted and i do not like the flashy colors and things...lol oh well i guess i gotta get used to it and ask newegg for my cart back for my account..if they can......
  • xsilver - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    #2 --- people come to AT price guides to drool :P

    #4 its called "marketing" .... what a review telling you the product is crap and not to buy it, why would they print that???
  • toyota - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    i like newegg but i dont trust a lot of their reviews. i have tried leaving reviews that were not positive but they would never post them. i even tried to post a consructive review on an Asus video card stating that it was not really a 6600gt and they wouldnt post it. i emailed them asking why they would not post some of my reviews and they replied with "we have to approve the reviews". that does not make a whole lot of sense to me considering some of the reviews i have read there. they will always post a review with a 5 egg rating no matter how stupid it is. some product reviews are from people who never even bought the product.
  • Zar0n - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    It would be really nice if we could see those neet price graphics for any hardware part.
    What about a “Price graphic“ link next to “check prices” :D
  • Zebo - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    LOL gotta a kick out of this:
    "For whatever reason, we always seem to catch some flak from our readers if we don't mention the ultra unaffordable high end stuff. We would never buy this stuff in a million years, and it would be very silly for us to recommend any of it (these are price guides, aren't they?)"
  • g33k - Saturday, April 23, 2005 - link

    Because of their redesigned website, I've seen 6800gt's on sale for $300 at Newegg. Maybe they're not done tweaking it, but I still think the old Newegg website is better. :P

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