Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1300



Recent insight into the NV40 (GeForce 6800) and R420 (Radeon X800) offerings from NVIDIA and ATI show promise, but only if you have the money to burn.  These cores promise to bring top performance to the marketplace with equally high prices, and our recent review of the new GeForce 6800 Ultra certainly attests with its $500 price tag.  If you have been saving up and must own the latest and greatest you are best off to await ATI's early May answer to the 6800.  While these cards are highly anticipated, they are not expected to impact current hardware prices for at least a month or two.

With the imminent release of R420 and NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 Ultra, it makes sense to wait for new cards to hit shelves before deciding where to send your hard-earned cash.  Until then, however, there are alternatives that will suit your budget and needs.  Our sources say that even though NV40's NDA has lifted, retail products from ATI and NVIDIA will hit stores are the same time.

ATI's Radeon 9800 Pro is currently the top pick for video cards in general.  With ample performance and prices hovering right around $200, the price-point where 9600XT's stood only six months ago, you can't go wrong if you intend to build a beefy gaming PC.  The 9800 Pro should also be able to handle any game currently on the market, and new releases for the foreseeable future, making it a sound investment.  As well, the 9800XT still does not offer enough performance over the Pro version to warrant its $400 cost.

If a tighter budget is an issue, the Sapphire 9600 Pro and XT provide good price-performance ratios.  Ranging from around $130 to $160 you can save some money without losing your investment immediately.  A Radeon 9550 is also on the horizon and should suffice for most any non-gaming application and even some current DX9 games.

With prices continuing the stability trend which ATI cards commonly follow, it is unlikely that these prices will noticeably drop lower in the upcoming 4-6 weeks.  For the early technology adopters it is also important to note the introduction of PCI Express motherboards and graphics cards which will undoubtedly have some bearing on new purchases, albeit distant.  Unless you plan on waiting until the fall to upgrade, do not balk at good deals on ATI cards today.



NVIDIA is not taking the onslaught from ATI sitting down. While prices have lately been somewhat stagnant, their lineup does offer some comfort in the interim. With the GeForce 6800 Ultra trouncing heavily on ATI's 9800XT, NVIDIA is showing that they do not intend to go quietly the way of Matrox.

Top pick from NVIDIA, in the meantime, goes to the XFX GeForceFX 5900 128MB. At $194 it's right around the cost of a Radeon 9800 Pro, and comparable in performance. Much like the 9800, however, this card is only recommended if you anticipate purchasing a card now. Also similar to ATI's offerings, the GeForceFX 5900 Ultra and 5950 Ultra simply aren't worth the extra cash for the meager performance boost associated with them. The 5900 Non-Ultra (and Non-XT) NVIDIA cards offer the best performance to cost ratio on the high end.

On the value side, the Gigabyte GeForceFX 5700 will get you through your day-to-day PC activity and still have some power to spare for games like Unreal Tournament 2004 and Battlefield: Vietnam for the price of $129; All while giving you performance similar to that of the Radeon 9600; (ATI still has the better midrange option right now). Of course, if that price is still a bit much, NVIDIA recently released the GeForceFX 5500 lineup. Models such as the eVGA GeForceFX 5500 256MB can be had for a paltry $99, although their performance is only slightly better than GeForceFX 5200's.



On a less gleeful note, memory prices have continued to rise substantially over the past few months. This trend is showing price increases in the neighborhood of 20-30%. Only a few manufacturers have been able to keep costs in line, and they too are showing increases within the last couple weeks. These price increases appear to be undercutting the eventual release of DDR2 modules to the market. It would seem that memory manufacturers are intentionally tiering prices for DDR1-533 to be less appealing and competitive than DDR2-533 (although that is all just speculation).

Since the world will still keep spinning regardless of memory price hikes, we might as well enjoy the best the industry has to offer. If history is any teacher, we do not see memory prices decreasing anytime soon. With prices as difficult as they are, we will have to go back to our older method of recommendation; size over timings. If you overclock, timings are crucial to achieving high speeds, but for those of us who merely bump the clock a few MHz (or not at all), you are better off getting 1GB of slower timed memory than 512MB of low latency modules.

This week Kingston and PMI seem to have the best price/performance/size choices; 1GB (2x512) of value performance memory costs less than $200. You won't get much overclocking out of it, but 1GB is an ample amount to keep memory hogs like UT2K4 in their place. Prices are moving up very quickly; things are only going to get worse!

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now