Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1560
Video Cards Price Guide: Demystifying December Edition
by Kristopher Kubicki on December 5, 2004 10:43 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Video Cards Price Guide: Demystifying December Edition
It's been a couple weeks since our last guide but fortunately we have a lot to show for it today!
A few days ago, we put out the announcement concerning our QuickSearch RSS Feed. For those of you that don't use Firefox yet, here is another great reason. All of our products are listed in a condensed RSS feed that we update every few minutes with price and shipping information on every product in our database! We are also giving away developer RSS feeds for anyone who would like one as well with custom pricing information.
For those interested in the QuickSearch feed, simply grab a copy of the newest Firefox from Mozilla's website. Next, go into the bookmarks menu and then into the Bookmark Manager. Navigate to "File", then "Add new Live Bookmark". When the window pops up asking for a "Feed Location", you want to put in the address: http://labs.anandtech.com/rss.aspx
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This RSS feed is a bit bigger than most, with several hundred products each having their own entry. However, you can quickly navigate through these links as they are sorted by category (either in the dropdown or the Bookmark Manager).
When we put our RSS feed live, a few readers found the little Easter Egg we left for them (complete access to the Price Guide Backend!). As most people know, we are very proud of our link traffic software that we developed in house to compete with PriceWatch and other engines. Traditionally, the only way to search this engine was via our RealTime Pricing page here on the AnandTech servers. For those of you that like to live on the edge a little, you can also search via the Beta search engine found on labs.anandtech.com.
Simple enter the product you wish to search for, then click on the "Filter" button on the next page. Filtering tells the engine which product you meant to look for exactly. In cases where an exact match was found, the engine brings you to the correct page on its own. Below you can see what the engine returns if we enter the search string "NEC 3500A".
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From here you can see a list of merchant prices we have recorded and a simple plot of prices we have tracked for the product over the last 120 days. In some cases you will see spikes in the plot; these are days where there was usually a deep discount day or a day where a better merchant ran out of stock and the engine was forced to list a higher priced merchant. In any case, enjoy the Beta engine for now, and be prepared for a bigger announcement once we finalize things. We now bring you back to your regularly scheduled Price Guide.
Also, don't forget to check out the AT Staff's Holiday wish list! Each editor has a few picks each week concerning great gift ideas for the holidays.
Introduction
There was so much video news this last week that it's easy to imagine how anyone could get lost in the video card frenzy over the last two weeks. We had five new video card launches from ATI, a few from NVIDIA, someone mentioned the word Volari here or there, and Half Life 2 showed up on our desktops (well - if you didn't get banned from Steam anyway). Here is a quick rundown of what's been going on in the review-space and retail-space over the last few weeks.
- November 16, GeForce 6600GT AGP Launched (Article)
- Half Life 2 Launched (Article I, Article II)
- Mobility Radeon X800 and X300 Launch (Article)
- GeForce 6600GT AGP starts to hit shelves
- ATI Launch - Radeon X850, X800 (Article)
- Radeon X700XT AGP just starts to hit shelves
With all the numerous launches and NDAs, it can be difficult to decide which card makes sense to buy - not just which is the fastest. In fact, our benchmarks show it is very easy to determine the best $600 video card design win. Alas, buying such a video card is kind of a moot point since "video card availability" and "nonexistent" are two common phrases that often end up in the same sentence. Regardless, buying a video card never used to be something that cost a month's paycheck, and it still shouldn't be. The price guides emphasize buying smart, so today we are going to go through a few video card options and do just that.
Video Cards GeForceFX
As expected, those fifth generation GeForce continue to dry up and as a result prices are slowly back on the climb. NVIDIA's GeForce 5900 and 5900 Ultra remain the only really worthwhile cards left in the series. Anand's recent Half Life 2 analysis showed the GeForceFX 5900XT - which is clocked slower than the 5900 and 5900 Ultra counterparts - performing very capably in the "midrange" ~$200 arena (I remember when we used to call midrange $60!).
However, just because a video card is capable does not mean you should go out and buy it. Of course, that's assuming you can still find a reasonably priced GeForce 5900. The Ultra versions now run over $400 and that is a ridiculous price to pay for yesterday's 'just capable' hardware. The 5900 non-Ultra versions still pack a punch for $200, but stock is mostly limited to PCI-Express versions. GeForce 6600GT's go for $200 on the PCI-Express bus and will be available for about the same price on the AGP bus shortly. Since the PCIe GeForce 6600GT's swiftly outperform every 5xxx model on the block (as we saw back in September) any reason to buy the 5xxx midrange cards over the 6xxx midrange cards seem ridiculous - and thus putting the nail in the 5900's coffin.
Prices continue to rise on the older GeForce cards while more capable cards eat the 5xxx lineup for breakfast. Don't put yourself in a difficult position by ever buying a GeForceFX.
Video Cards GeForce 6xxx
As we mentioned on the previous page, you would have to be insane to buy a 5xxx GeForce over a 6xxx right now. Derek's recent X850 analysis gave a pretty clean breakdown of the high end Radeon and NVIDIA cards earlier this week and the results were pretty interesting.
Only the XFX GeForce 6600GT can be readily had for the AGP bus right now, and it still carries a premium at this point. However, within the next couple weeks we project the price of this card to flatten out just over $200. With the X700XT just starting to hit shelves, it's a little too close to call whether or not NVIDIA has the better buy on the AGP bus right now, and performance is so close in most instances that buying the cheaper one of the two won't be a huge deal.
On the PCIe platform, however, the choice is clearly the GeForce 6600GT. With the added incentive of future SLI upgrades, the 6600GT produces some awesome performance with a very nice price tag. To briefly paraphrase Anand concerning SLI - performance of SLI on two of today's $200 cards today is great, but performance on today's $200 card now combined with performance of tomorrow's $50 card tomorrow is better. In fact, the thought of not getting stuck in the perpetual upgrade cycle appeals to even the most conservative buyers out there - but unfortunately right now we have to pay a large premium on PCIe capable motherboards just to get there. If you're buying a new rig or you have a newer Intel machine right now, run, don't walk, to the nearest establishment of NVIDIA video cards and get a 6600GT PCIe. If you wait much longer, the X800 non-pro, non-xt, non-percolator scheduled for release in the next few weeks might begin to edge out the 6600GT's advantage.
Not surprisingly, the 6600 Non-GT does pretty well for itself also. A more traditional "mid range" card, the 6600 non-GT goes for about $150 right now, but doesn't have an AGP counterpart yet. As the tests show, you pay about 25% less for the non-GT version, but you get about 25% less performance as well. The vanilla 6600 doesn't have any SLI support, which is disappointing. Although a great card for the price, you won't get that small future-resistant buffer like with the 6600GT.
Video Cards Radeon 9xxx
If there is one thing that some of our recent tests have proven, its that the 9800 Pro can still pull it's weight around here when put against the AGP crowd; particularly considering it hovers around that magic $200 number. Unfortunately, if you got a chance to see the GeForce 6600GT AGP review, the $200 Radeon 9800 Pro got trounced by the 6600GT in every benchmark (Anand put it nicely here). Even though you'll pay a little bit more for the 6600GT AGP, the enormous gains you see in games like Halo, CounterStrike and Doom3 are clearly worth the investment.
Our midrange AGP card pick this week is the 9600XT, without a doubt. Even though it is getting long in the tooth, the 9600XT is the most well rounded Radeon 9xxx around, and it's extremely cheap right now too. If you plan on playing a bit of Half Life 2, you might want to check out these numbers here
Video Cards Radeon Xxxx
With the launch earlier this week, Derek put the current state of things best in the conclusion of his X850 introduction article:
- - Radeon X850 XT and X850 XT PE are the extreme gamers cards. They lead in performance and if there's no budget, put this up there with the 6800 Ultra. Of course, ATI says we'll be able to find these on shelves in time to put them in gift boxes for the holiday season, which would tip the scales in ATI's favor, especially if 6800 Ultra cards are still going for extremely high prices and the new X850 XT and XT PE debut at MSRP.
- - Radeon X800 XL is an interesting price point. It hits a spot between the current X800 Pro and the 6800 GT. ATI really needs a $400 price point offering, but dropping something between 300 and 400 may help out consumers who don't have the budget for anything more.
- - Radeon X800 will take the place of the X700 XT and really negates the need for anything else at a $250 price point. This is a good answer to NVIDIA's 6800 non-ultra product, if they ever make it into the same platform space.
Unfortunately, the "if" clauses are going to plague us a bit right now. The X700XT GPU is definitely ATI's $240 gem right now as far as price/performance go right now, albeit availability is very weak. ATI's next available tier, the X800 Pro, sells for $400. It wasn't surprising that ATI put out five cards to fill in the leaking holes in the greater-than-$250 video card market. To us what is surprising is that all of those cards target the 1% of extreme enthusiasts take a no holds barred approach to computer shopping. Although everyone likes to have the newest and fastest, paying $400 for a video card only became vogue a year ago, and yet now the ceiling for video cards is well above $500. Since the price guides exist to help people buy smart instead of buying the extreme, we won't even consider the X800 cards an option this time around.
In fact, for those who follow some of our other reviews, things look fairly favorable for the X700XT on anything test that isn't Doom3, but it essentially ties the GeForce 6600GT in most benchmarks we have seen. Unfortunately, the lack of an fully available X700XT AGP component right now puts it at a disadvantage. As we mentioned earlier, X700XT looks great if you can find it, but on PCIe don't sell yourself short of a 6600GT.
The winner on ATI's hands is the X800 without a doubt. The problem is that there are no cards. Even though we were told to wait a few more days for availability to start showing up, the fact that most merchants don't even have pre-orders does not bode well. As we always say here at AnandTech, but the best hardware available today; constantly waiting for the next best thing will only force you to perpetually wait.
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