Holiday 2006 Shopping Guide: GPUs
by Jarred Walton on December 13, 2006 5:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Entry Level GPUs
The next step up from the budget GPUs is going to be the Entry Level category, with prices ranging from $75-$125. You will also see more expensive versions of the Ultra Budget graphics cards, either due to extra features, factory overclocking, or even the manufacturer's name. We're going to focus primarily on the new GPUs that become available with the increased budget, rather than continuing to mention slightly faster clocked versions of the Ultra Budget offerings.
At the lower end of this price range, ATI has the X1300 XT, which is simply a renamed version of the X1600 Pro. Right now the X1600 Pro (128bit version) is slightly cheaper, but that will likely change in the future. Driver optimizations since the launch of the X1600 Pro have improved performance quite a bit, but in reality the card isn't a whole lot faster than the GeForce 6600 GT cards, which are really quite outdated these days. Certain titles will prefer ATI hardware, but in terms of value in we would definitely take the cheaper 7300 GT cards over the X1600 Pro/X1300 XT.
The X1600 XT is better, with clock speeds that are quite a bit higher - the X1650 Pro is practically the same, coming with a negligible 10/20 MHz increase on the GPU/memory - but despite the more impressive sounding specifications the X1600 XT is really only slightly faster than the GeForce 7600 GS. At the top of the price spectrum, the least expensive GeForce 7600 GT cards are definitely the best way to go. Prices currently start at about $130, but you can find $20 mail-in rebates on the EVGA cards that drop the final price down to $110. Even without the rebate, we would still recommend spending the extra money to get a 7600 GT over any of the other cards at the top of this price bracket - at least if graphics performance is important to you.
The AGP market continues to be relatively unimpressive, with prices that are typically $20 more than the equivalent PCI-E graphics cards - at least where cards are available on both platforms, which isn't all that common. GeForce 7600 GS cards might be worth a thought at the top end, along with the X1600 Pro and X1300 Pro ATI models. Perhaps because demand for AGP cards is really starting to diminish, there are currently a lot of mail-in rebates available that might make some of the AGP cards worth considering as a final upgrade. Keep in mind that everything short of a 7600 GT is usually going to be slower than something like a GeForce 6800 GT/GS card (or X800 Pro), so if you already have such a card it might not be worth upgrading to anything faster.
As we did with the Ultra Budget GPUs, here is a quick breakdown of the features and specifications of the various Entry Level GPUs we've mentioned. Again, we have sorted the table roughly in order of increasing performance. When you consider the clock speeds of the 7600 GS, it really is surprising that the much higher clocked X1600 XT isn't able to outperform it by a large margin - which is of course why ATI went back to the drawing board and created the X1650 XT, but more on that when we get to the Midrange GPUs on the next page.
The next step up from the budget GPUs is going to be the Entry Level category, with prices ranging from $75-$125. You will also see more expensive versions of the Ultra Budget graphics cards, either due to extra features, factory overclocking, or even the manufacturer's name. We're going to focus primarily on the new GPUs that become available with the increased budget, rather than continuing to mention slightly faster clocked versions of the Ultra Budget offerings.
At the lower end of this price range, ATI has the X1300 XT, which is simply a renamed version of the X1600 Pro. Right now the X1600 Pro (128bit version) is slightly cheaper, but that will likely change in the future. Driver optimizations since the launch of the X1600 Pro have improved performance quite a bit, but in reality the card isn't a whole lot faster than the GeForce 6600 GT cards, which are really quite outdated these days. Certain titles will prefer ATI hardware, but in terms of value in we would definitely take the cheaper 7300 GT cards over the X1600 Pro/X1300 XT.
The X1600 XT is better, with clock speeds that are quite a bit higher - the X1650 Pro is practically the same, coming with a negligible 10/20 MHz increase on the GPU/memory - but despite the more impressive sounding specifications the X1600 XT is really only slightly faster than the GeForce 7600 GS. At the top of the price spectrum, the least expensive GeForce 7600 GT cards are definitely the best way to go. Prices currently start at about $130, but you can find $20 mail-in rebates on the EVGA cards that drop the final price down to $110. Even without the rebate, we would still recommend spending the extra money to get a 7600 GT over any of the other cards at the top of this price bracket - at least if graphics performance is important to you.
The AGP market continues to be relatively unimpressive, with prices that are typically $20 more than the equivalent PCI-E graphics cards - at least where cards are available on both platforms, which isn't all that common. GeForce 7600 GS cards might be worth a thought at the top end, along with the X1600 Pro and X1300 Pro ATI models. Perhaps because demand for AGP cards is really starting to diminish, there are currently a lot of mail-in rebates available that might make some of the AGP cards worth considering as a final upgrade. Keep in mind that everything short of a 7600 GT is usually going to be slower than something like a GeForce 6800 GT/GS card (or X800 Pro), so if you already have such a card it might not be worth upgrading to anything faster.
As we did with the Ultra Budget GPUs, here is a quick breakdown of the features and specifications of the various Entry Level GPUs we've mentioned. Again, we have sorted the table roughly in order of increasing performance. When you consider the clock speeds of the 7600 GS, it really is surprising that the much higher clocked X1600 XT isn't able to outperform it by a large margin - which is of course why ATI went back to the drawing board and created the X1650 XT, but more on that when we get to the Midrange GPUs on the next page.
| Entry Level GPUs | |||||||
| GPU | Pixel Shaders |
Vertex Shaders |
ROPs | Core Speed |
RAM Speed |
Memory Interface |
Price |
| X1300 XT | 12 | 5 | 4 | 500 | 800 | 128bit | $108 |
| X1600 Pro | 12 | 5 | 4 | 500 | 800 | 128bit | $91 |
| 6600 GT | 8 | 3 | 4 | 500 | 1000 | 128bit | $85* |
| X1600 XT | 12 | 5 | 4 | 590 | 1380 | 128bit | $119 |
| X1650 Pro | 12 | 5 | 4 | 600 | 1400 | 128bit | $105 |
| 7600 GS | 12 | 5 | 8 | 400 | 700 | 128bit | $109 |
| 7600 GT | 12 | 5 | 8 | 560 | 1400 | 128bit | $135 |
* - Prices for these parts are prone to fluctuation, as these are discontinued products.
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Jodiuh - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
The FR bought release day from Fry's had a 39C transistor and hit 660/1000. The AR ordered online last week has a 40C transistor and hits 630/1000. It may not be quite as fast, but I'll be keeping the newer AR w/ the 40C transistor...comforts me at night. :DJodiuh - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
Reply from EVGA!Jod,
AR= Etail/Retail RoHS compliant
FR= Frys Retail RoHS compliant
All of our cards had the correct transistor value when shipped out.
Regards,
munky - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
Again, this is completely wrong. The major difference between the x1800 and x1900 cards is that the x1900's have 3 pixel shaders per "pipe", whereas the x1800's only have one. If anything, the x1900 pipes are more powerful.
evonitzer - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
Akin to my comment above, quads are the thing these days, so the 1900 series has 4 pixel shaders per pipe. And if you go back to the original article when the 1900 was released, you'll see that the whole architecture is closer to 4 x1600's than 3 x1800's, either of which would result in the 48 shaders that we see. I recommend you read the first few pages of the debut article, but I think we can agree that the shaders in the x1800 were probably more potent than the ones in the 1600, so the 1900 is probably a little wimpier per shader than the 1800. However, it has 3 times as many, so it's better.Also the comment was probably intended to dissuade people from assuming that the 1900 would be 3 times better than the 1800, and that there is a difference of architectures going on here.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
Ding! That was a main point of talking about the changes in architecture. In the case of the X1650 XT, however, double the number of pixel shaders really does end up being almost twice as fast as the X1600 XT.
I also added a note on the page talking about the G80 mentioning that they have apparently taken a similar route, using many more "less complex" shader units in order to provide better overall performance. I am quite sure that a single G80 pixel shader (which of course is a unified shader, but that's beside the point) is not anywhere near as powerful as a single G70 pixel shader. When you have 96/128 of them compared to 24, however, more definitely ends up being better. :-)
munky - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
The 7600gt is 12 pipes. The x1650xt is 8 pipes with 3 pixel shaders each. You may want to rethink the statement quoted above.
evonitzer - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
What he meant were "pixel shaders", which seem to be interchanged with pipelines quite often. If you look on the table you'll see that the x1650xt is listed as having 24 pixel pipelines, and the 7600gt has 12 pixel pipelines, when they should read shaders instead.Also quads seem to be the thing, so the 7600 gt probably has 3 quads of shaders, and the 1650 has twice that with 6 quads. Pixel shaders, to be more exact.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
I have changed references from "pixel pipelines" to "pixel shaders". While it may have been a slight error in semantics to call them pipelines before, the basic summary still stands. ATI needed more pixel shaders in order to keep up with the performance and video was offering, indicating that each pixel shader from ATI is less powerful (overall -- I'm sure there are instances where ATI performs much better). This goes for your comment about X1800 below as well.Spoelie - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
why does nvidia always gets replaced to "and video" in your texts? here and in the article :)JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - link
Speech recognition does odd things. I don't proof posts as well as I should. :)