Price Guide, December 2005: Video Cards
by Haider Farhan on December 9, 2005 7:11 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Mid-Range Graphics
Moving on to the mid-range cards, the Sapphire Radeon X800GTO2 256MB [RTPE: 100130] is going for about $220. That's about a $30 decrease since our last video card price guide. Currently, it has become quite difficult to be able to find a Connect3D X800GTO that will unlock to an X850. You would be taking a big chance going with that card, if you had in mind that you would be able to unlock it like before. Meanwhile, for $170 shipped, the PowerColor Radeon X800GTO 256MB with VIVO [RTPE: X800GTO256MBDDR3] is a difficult deal to pass up.
As the GeForce 6800 GS cards have become more popular, the prices have also shot up. At the moment, the eVGA GeForce 6800GS 256MB [RTPE: 256-P2-N386] is the best deal, going for $207.00 shipped. Other's having shot up considerably higher, all the way up to $300! The 6800 GS is definitely one of the cards to consider this holiday season, but only if the price is right: $300 puts it in the same league as the 7800 GT.
Looking at the 6600 GT front, we have the XFX GeForce 6600GT (AGP) 128MB [RTPE: PV-T43A-ND] leading the pack, going for an even $130 after a $20 MIR. This is about as much as we would recommend spending on AGP card, given that few if any motherboards will support it in the future.
For you PCI-E users, the Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT 128MB [RTPE: GV-NX66T128D] is on sale for $122 shipped. There are a few others which are coming in close behind, like the Chaintech [RTPE: SE6600G-128] at $128, the XFX [RTPE: PV-T43G-ND] for $117 after MIR and the eVGA [RTPE: 128-P2-N368] for $110 after MIR. All of which are well under $130, so for the less demanding gamers these are great buys.
The X700 and X700 Pro are decent mid-range cards, although the 6600 and 6600 GT are generally considered better. For about $100, the Sapphire Radeon X700 128MB [RTPE: 100121SR] is an okay buy. The same goes for the Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro 128MB [RTPE: 100595], which is currently selling for $122.
The X1600XT has just recently hit the market and is currently being listed at only one vendor. From PowerColor, the Radeon X1600XT 256MB [RTPE: R53C-TVD3] is going for about $180. We're likely to see more of these cards to reach other retailers later this week. Given the performance preview, they're really not looking too interesting, but at least they're retailing below MSRP. As long as you can get a 6800 GS for around $200 - or the X800 GTO for $180 - X1600 is in something of a difficult spot.
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unclebud - Thursday, December 15, 2005 - link
@ best buy this weekbecause there may be people (like me) who only have pci slots and not any pci-e slots whatsoever on ANY of their machines
hth somebody. it did me
h7o - Saturday, December 10, 2005 - link
"...and less you're a diehard ATI fan" on the first page.semo - Saturday, December 10, 2005 - link
what the hell is happening with the low end cards. they're approaching the cost of mid-range and mid-range keeps getting higher and higher.this situation is not helped a lot by cards from the last century still being in the market me thinks.
GhostlyGhost2 - Friday, December 9, 2005 - link
Wow... And to think I was contemplatin buying a first 6800U and go SLI some time later as AnandTech always pushed as a wonderful idea. I'm sure glad I didn't make that ***COSTLY MISTAKE***.
I sure feel for those who did, though.
rrcn - Friday, December 9, 2005 - link
For the past few price guides, we've been restating that it's definitely better, performance and price-wise, to go with a single 7800GTX rather than two 6800U/GT's in SLi. ;)GhostlyGhost - Friday, December 9, 2005 - link
Yeah,. Ok. Great.But what will you say when the next iteration comes around? In the end, isn't SLI a pointless feature since (it appears) Nvidia can outdo itself in just one card generation?
JarredWalton - Saturday, December 10, 2005 - link
I put this in the article, as I never have been a strong proponent of SLI "upgrades":By the way, have we mentioned that purchasing a single high-end card now and planning on upgrading with the second high-end card in the future might be a bad idea? There's probably a decent number of people out there that by the 6800 Ultra for a lot of money, with the intent of purchasing a second one when the price dropped below $300. Now they're stuck with a single card and the option to upgrade to SLI at a premium that just isn't worth it. Until ATI and NVIDIA get their multi-card solutions to work across generations, we would suggest you either go the whole hog and buy two cards initially, or just buy a single card and stick with it. There will be occasions -- like the 6800 GT -- where the prices do drop to reasonable levels, but we certainly wouldn't plan on that.
Obviously, AnandTech has many writers, and we don't all agree on every point.
VooDooAddict - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
The best use for SLI that I have found is this:Two brothers are building new systems around the 7800GT.
Both get inexpensive SLI boards (Biostar or Abit KN8 SLI come to mind).
When one of the brothers upgrades to the next generation. The other can buy the replaced 7800GT and get a nice boost.
Sure, they have to get slightly beefier powersupplies. Is that really such a bad thing?
rgreen83 - Friday, December 9, 2005 - link
Where the heck are the 6600 non gt's? thats probably the most compelling card around the low-mid to low range right now which i am looking into for my little bro's pc.Cygni - Saturday, December 10, 2005 - link
Ya, i too felt the absence of the standard 6600 for comparisons sake to the X700 series. But... its not exactly the price/performance leader it was a few months ago. A vanilla 6600 is $99 at newegg... the DDR2 version is $117... and the 6600GT's in the $120-125 range. The performance of the 6600GT for only an extra twenty spot really makes it the best choice right now, and ive even seen 6600GT's drop as low as $105 AR. The performance of the DDR2 6600's is deffinitly stronger than the vanilla 6600, but not GT levels, and the price gap is too small to reccommend that purchase either.The 6600 is a solid card, to be sure, and its something worth keeping an eye on... but right now, the GT's are probably the better choice.