Video Card Buyer's Guide - Spring 2009
by Derek Wilson on March 30, 2009 6:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
For our ~$100 price point (plus or minus a bit) we are going to strongly recommend that people wait for about a month. This price point will be shaken up a bit in about that time and we really aren't comfortable recommending anyone purchase something in this market until sometime in early May. This may or may not further compress the sub $100 market, but there really isn't much more room down there, so we don't expect much change except at right around $100.
~$100 Recommendation: IT'S A TRAP!!! (wait about a month)
It just so happens that this price point is also the highest volume price point. Certainly neither AMD nor NVIDIA will be happy that we recommend waiting, but this is all about the consumer. If you are going to spend about $100 on a video card, just try really hard to wait a little bit longer.
From $130 to $150 we are looking at the a tightly contested price point. At the lower end of the spectrum, the Radeon 4850 gets our nod, while at the higher end the 1GB GTS 250 does perform slightly better in our tests (we do not recommend the 512MB variant though). Whether that slight difference in performance is worth the $20 difference in price really has to be up to the end user, but you get a much bigger bump by jumping up out of the price range to the ATI Radeon 4870 512MB at $165 (which is why we don't recommend the GTS 250 1GB at this point).
$130-$150 Recommendation: ATI Radeon HD 4850
| ATI Radeon HD 4850 | |
| PowerColor | $129.99 |
| Diamond | $159.99 |
| XFX | $169.99 |
This next bit is a little more tricky. Between $165 and $180 there exist the 4870 512MB and 4870 1GB. These cards perform nearly the same at lower resolutions, so for gamers with 1680x1050 and lower resolution monitors, we would recommend the 512MB variant with the caveat that some games are becoming memory hogs. The 1GB might be slightly more future proof, but it's really hard to say whether or not that will last beyond when you'd want to upgrade both either way when talking about 1680x1050 and lower.
$165 (At 1680x1050 and Below) Recommendation: ATI Radeon HD 4870
| ATI Radeon HD 4870 | |
| ASUS | $164.99 |
| HIS | $169.99 |
At resolutions above 1680x1050, the 1GB 4870 and the GTX 260 core 216 are both viable options that come in at $180. So save $20 at average to lower resolutions or make a choice based on the games you play (or preference for a hardware designer) at higher resolutions. NVIDIA and AMD really do trade blows depending on the games we choose to test, so if you want the best performance at this price point, you'll have to pick the games in which performance matters most to you.
$180 Recommendation: End User Preference (4870 1GB or GTX 260 core 216)
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just4U - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
260/216 and the 4870 are sweet spots currently for that resolution.JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
For me personally, I'd shoot for something at the level of the GTX 260 Core 216 or HD 4870 1GB... those will handle almost all current games at 1080P without difficulties. If you're willing to drop details, you can get by with a 4830/4850 512MB card, or the GTS 250/9800 GTX+ cards, but I'd try for more rather than less.bwanaaa - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
I think I am dreaming. Did I see that for 170 bucks x 2 ( that's 2 copies of the 4870 1 gb) you get a crossfire solution that is the second fastest thing going?! (just below an sli setup of 2 copies of the 295!)barn25 - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
Its articles like this i dont like if you gonna post something like dont say wait a month. Just post about what there then amend it when the time comes!7Enigma - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
I disagree. There are probably several people reading this article that were going to build there system this week. If Anandtech had posted the article without mentioning to wait a week/month those people could have gone out and built a system and then immediately felt like they made a mistake. I personally thank them even though I'm not currently building a system because back in January when I did build a gaming rig it was these types of articles that helped my buying decision. If I had been in that situation now, seen this article (without mentioning to wait a week/month, instead having the "choice" for a particular price point) and purchased a card that was a worse choice a week later, I would be very VERY peeved.RamarC - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
even with the impending shakeup, that's a great card for $90.alfredska - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
Why would you publish this article now, instead of at the end of the week? As it stands there are two categories that say, "wait". At least at the end of the week you could reduce this to one, and perhaps even be able to provide more insight into why we should wait for the ~$100 price range.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 - link
Clucking for red cards and dissing the green ones couldn't be resisted. Come on man, don't you know who you're reading ?chrnochime - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
I don't understand how a NDA bars AT from even mentioning the name of the cards. Might as well not include those two categories if all we're getting in either one is a big wait sign.Sigh.
The0ne - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
You're being fed information that is not normally public yet. There are several issues with releasing some of the information ahead of the intended time. There's too many details on the subject alone to warrant a discussion here. You have marketing, pricing, customer schedules, testing, etc.I actually don't understand why you guys wouldn't want to know that products are going to be release shortly. It's almost a catch22 with many of you that feel this way. On one hand Anandtech is giving you a heads up on products within a weeks time and on the other hand you bitch about Anandtech not giving you a heads up when they do mentioned it in the article the same day it's release.
Wouldn't it be better for you to know that there are changes coming within the week rather than being surprise at the point and bitching that you could have gotten some warning before the announcement? You can't have it both ways, and seriously you're not in the business to be fed the info anyhow. So consider the heads up previliged information.