Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1444
Price Guides August 2004: Video and Memory
by Kristopher Kubicki & Adam Rader on August 21, 2004 12:04 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Introduction
Welcome back for another edition of the Price Guides. Not much has changed in the memory arena as prices continue to slowly rise. On the opposite side we are seeing more competitive pricing from both ATI and NVIDIA when it comes to their second-to-last-generation video cards such as the Radeon 9800 series and the GeForceFX 5900's. Both seem to be pushing harder to get their new cores into the desktops of every gamer and enthusiast out there while bringing older yet full-capable products closer to the average user's budget.
Be certain to visit our RealTime Pricing Engine for stats on the prices for your next hardware purchase.
ATI Cards
ATI spawned a winner when they launched the Radeon 9800 Pro 18 months ago and this fact is apparent in how well this card still manages to stand up to new game releases. While it's true that you won't be seeing massive frame rates at high detail and resolution on titles like Doom 3, it still packs enough of a punch if you can drop the resolution or detail settings a notch or two which isn't as bad as some may think. As shown in our recent Doom 3 Graphics Deathmatch the 9800 Pro manages to produce sufficient frame rates at less than 'Ultra' settings and resolution. In short, unless you absolutely require all the details and pixels your eyes can handle, and then some, the Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro is still a solid choice for mid-to-high range gaming. At prices less than half of what X800's are going for this card is a good choice if you cannot wait a few more months to allow the newer products to come down in price a bit.
If gaming isn't of paramount importance or you aren't overly concerned with cracnking all the settings up on Doom 3 of the upcoming Half Life 2, the PowerColor Radeon 9600 Pro 256 shows some promise. While lacking some of the powerhouse attributes of a 9800 or X800, this card is more than enough to satisfy many gamers who are interested in titles such as Unreal Tournament 2003/2004, Battlefield 1942, and classics such as Counter-Strike. Moreover, if gaming isn't a concern at all, the 9600 will be more than enough for typical desktop applications, watching DVD's and other non-3D intensive applications.
NVIDIA Video Cards
New releases (read: Doom 3) have given NVIDIA a chance to truly show off an area where it has a distinct advantage: Open GL. While NVIDIA's solid Open GL performance is enough to recommend them over ATI if your primary gaming choices include Open GL titles, keep in mind that the playing field gets a bit more leveled out back in DX9-land when price is a more logical measure of which card to buy.
Since prices on NVIDIA's flagship 6800-series cards are still much higher than most have in their upgrade budget, we must default to the GeForceFX lineup for this week's recommendation. More specifically, the XFX GeForceFX 5900 128MB looks to be a solid option this week. This cards siblings (vanilla series 5900) fared quite well in our recent Doom 3 week coverage scoring a little bit above or near ATI's Radeon 9800 Pro card. If Doom 3 is your choice for gaming then this week's recommendation goes solidly to the XFX 5900.
For the non-gaming crowd, Gigabyte's GeForceFX 5700 128MB (*not* the LE edition) makes a good choice for the average desktop user and still sports a little extra juice to run the occasional game.
DDR Memory
It's been a long time since DDR memory prices have seen fit to cut us some slack, and this week is yet again, no exception. Browsing through our own RealTime Pricing Engine shows a lot more red items in the deltas column; red indicating price rises. Unfortunately, even DDR2 still has a distance to go until it becomes something that can offer an alternative to the high cost-per-megabyte DDR1 chips have been seeing. On that note, DDR2 acceptance and adoption has been a little faster than some of us initially predicted, but it is a good bit off from becoming the de facto standard among desktop PCs.
In the meantime PC3200 memory shows the best available cost to performance ratio among the popular choices. If you're not going to be overclocking and are satisfied running at stock specifications, then the choices available are pretty much unlimited. This week the spotlight is pointing at Corsair and their PC-3200 512MB Value product. It won't win any awards or break any records in the DDR world but it will certainly get the job done quite well on the cheap. Even when overclocking is not a factor in your purchasing choice, it is still important to stick to larger brands that can offer the best prices including Corsair and Kingston. Remember your memory hierarchy; buy on SIZE, SPEED then LATENCY!
Kingston's HyperX PC-3200 512MB is one product that is worth consideration if overclocking is something you intend to do, or may do later on down the road. This CL2, 400MHz stick should run stably in most overclocked systems and comes with Kingston's lifetime warranty service.