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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1666
Price Guides, April 2005: Video Cards
by Kristopher Kubicki on April 23, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
What a week it has been for the price guides! Did you get a chance to see the redesigned beta webpage? NewEgg wasn’t the only one to scrap their original beta web design at the last second, apparently! Our working beta was nearing completion until we learned that the price engine code was just a few pixels shy of fitting in the AnandTech standard borders. We played around with some ideas and twisted some graphics around and finally settled on a layout similar to the one that you can see here. After we wade through some of the more cosmetic changes and updates, our guide engine will be finally ready to sit on the main site (we promise this time!).
Speaking of redesigns, NewEgg’s redesign launched just a few days ago. The new design is a little easier on wide screen displays and focuses more on user reviews. In any case, we like the new design, although it is definitely a large change from the old design and an adjustment if you were accustomed to it.
In video card news, X800 XL and X800 video cards are now in the mainstream AGP market and like so many things AGP, our disappointment can hardly be contained. After months of waiting, it looks like our friends at Sapphire were the only ones capable of bringing the AGP X800 XL cards into any sort of competitive pricing with their PCIe counterparts, but with inexpensive nForce4 motherboards and current Intel PCIe motherboards hitting their second iteration, it feels really difficult to give AGP much worth while praise.
We have received word from several motherboard manufacturers that GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache cards are going to start shipping with low end PCIe motherboards. Supposedly, this should help keep production costs down on low end boards as IGP motherboards will not need separate designs for end users. On the other hand, the end user might pay more for the additional packaging/production of the GPU on an external card. We will be following this very closely over the next few quarters.
GPU High End
Last month, we were excited to announce that the X800, X850XT and X800XL were showing on store shelves. Of course, we were originally promised a December/January ship date instead of a February/March ship date, but this is just business as usual for those of us accustomed to the hardware world. This month, the same cards from last month are on retail shelves, but now, in easy-to-upgrade AGP form. However, recommending a third generation Radeon X series repackaged into an AGP form is a difficult proposition for us. Although you may have upgraded your motherboard and CPU in the past, an AGP Radeon X800 only makes sense for those who have spent a lot of money on a relatively recent nForce3 or K8T800 setup, but only need to upgrade the graphics card now. A socket 462 based solution really would benefit more from a CPU/motherboard upgrade than from a high end GPU upgrade, although some overclockers among the crowd will always beg to differ. Further, considering that the X800 AGP cards carry a $30 premium over their PCIe brethren, we can't justify the extra cost. nForce4 boards are very easy to get under $100 for Socket 754 and Socket 939 [RTPE: nForce4]. By the way, if you really want an AGP video card, an ASUS 6800 GT might be the better way to go, but more on that in a second.Since March, the Sapphire X800 256MB [RTPE: 100107] fell almost $50, certainly impressive considering that we were promised an actual $250 MSRP on this product. Sapphire's X800XL 256MB [RTPE: 100105] also fell to the $299 MSRP, which was certainly welcomed as well. Take a look at how both of these products have behaved over the last three months.
Sapphire X800 256MB
Sapphire X800XL 256MB
We alluded to an LeadTek GeForce 6800 GT [RTPE: A400 GT TDH] earlier, and if you fall in that specific high-end AGP market, there really aren't many effective options. For those looking for the benchmark numbers, take a quick look at our benchmark summary from a few months ago. When talking about AGP video cards, these aren't apples-to-apples comparisons because of the bridge chips, but for all intents and purposes, there will not be much difference between those benchmarks and the AGP variants. Going the 6800GT route saves you $20 or so if you go with the 128MB version on AGP.
A bit of competition in this field would be nice. As we mentioned earlier, the bout for PCIe high end cards certainly go to ATI.
GPU Ultra High End
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?). However, we do concede that the trends on pricing that these products exhibit are important, since a dip in the ultra enthusiast line will usually correlate with a dip in the high end line.X850 cards still have not taken off, and for whatever reason, our manufacturers decided that it was better to increase the price on many of the cards over the last few weeks. Whatever the logic, the consumer certainly doesn't win here.
The ultra high end cards have completely stabilized. Like the ATI ultra high end, the better priced GeForce 6800 Ultras increased in price since our last guide. The lowest priced ultra high end, the eVGA GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB [RTPE: 256-A8-N345-AX], stopped all movement around the first of this month and shows no sign of letting up. The graph below illustrates this card's price trends over the last six months.
eVGA GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB
GPU Mid-range
Moving into the mid-range sector puts the ball back in NVIDIA's court, particularly for a certain ever addicting online MMORPG. While you lose the next 8 weeks of your life killing dragons until you hit level 60, you might as well do it in style. Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro [RTPE: 100596] prices have fallen slightly since last month, but nothing to really get excited about. Below is a graph of X700 Pro prices over the last three months:We were very excited this week to see the price difference between AGP and PCIe 6600GT video cards disappear. While we shun AGP video cards on the high end, mid-range AGP video cards are extremely reasonable right now. Below, you can see the behavior of the XFX GeForce 6600GT AGP [RTPE: PVT43AND] over the last few weeks.
Aside from the fact that GeForce 6600GTs are priced the same as X700 Pros, ATI has a lot of work to do to catch up in the $150 to $200 market. ATI regains a little bit of ground at the $100 mark, pairing the Radeon X600 Pro against the GeForce 6600 vanilla edition. For a $100 video card, Gigabyte has a very solid offering, although the other video cards for the same price point don't advertise nearly the same prices.
Before we completely jump off the mid-range and into low end cards, we wanted to point out a deal that we spotted on Radeon 9800 Pro AGP video cards. Check out the week's prices on the Sapphire 9800 Pro [RTPE: 100556] cards!
The Low End
We are still waiting for ATI’s HyperMemory video cards, unfortunately. While we do have samples in the lab, it seems that a ship date for these cards is still several weeks (months?) away – longer than what we expected. We are also very confused by the message sent by NVIDIA regarding their TurboCache video cards. We saw very good availability on TurboCache video cards in March, but now it seems that those same video cards are much drier. We still recommend the $60 TurboCache cards over the ATI offerings right now, but that could all change if HyperMemory turns out to hold its own.You’ll notice that we don’t have many recommendations for low end AGP video cards. To be honest, there really aren’t any. At this point, a low end AMD VIA motherboard with rudimentary integrated graphics are probably best if you decide to go the Sempron route. As most AGP video cards have increased in price over the last few weeks, it would be cheaper to get a low end nForce4 Socket 754 [RTPE: nForce4 754] motherboard and a TurboCache video card instead of an nForce3 motherboard and a Radeon 9550.
Let’s hope by this time next month, we will have more options to go with on the low end spectrum (particularly from ATI)!