Holiday 2006 Shopping Guide: GPUs

Midrange GPUs

With Midrange GPUs, we're looking to keep the price under about $225, although there are a couple cards in this group that are there more because of performance than because of price. With a budget of over $200, it also becomes feasible to begin discussing SLI and CrossFire as potential solutions. Let's put that discussion to rest really quickly: don't bother! Sure, a few people might like the idea of getting one GPU now and adding a second GPU later, and that is certainly a viable path to take. If you already have one graphics card and you're looking to add a second one midrange multi-GPU configurations are also feasible. However, if you are looking at spending less than about $400, there's really no reason to consider getting two GPUs instead of one faster GPU. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, in many instances, a single high-end GPU will actually be faster than two midrange GPUs working together - not always, but it will be close enough that we would call it a draw. The bigger problem is that CrossFire and SLI still don't work properly with all titles, especially newer titles where it might take a game patch or an updated graphics driver before multi-GPU support functions correctly. It is possible that renaming executables or scouring the web for tweaks that will enable SLI/CrossFire support can help you to avoid such problems, but most users would just as soon steer clear of such tasks, and we agree: ideally, all of the potential performance in your system will be utilized without the need to jump through any hoops. All you have to do is look at a couple relatively high-profile games that have been released in the last month to see the problem: Neverwinter Nights 2 and Splinter Cell: Double Agent both have issues if you try to run them on multiple graphics cards, and there are probably many other games that get released with similar initial difficulties. When you also factor in the typically higher power costs associated with running two graphics cards, we would strongly recommend running a single fast GPU over two slower GPUs - and that includes solutions like the GeForce 7950 GX2. If you want maximum performance, by all means look at investing in a couple of graphics cards, but for everything short of Extreme Performance configurations you are best off avoiding the hassles associated with SLI/CrossFire. (You get to save money on the motherboard as well, as an added bonus.)


Having taken care of the multi-GPU issue, what midrange GPUs become available with our new budget? Near the bottom of the price range, we have the GeForce 7600 GT that straddles the line between Entry Level and Midrange with a price of around $130 and a $20 mail-in rebate. These cards definitely offer a lot of bang for the buck, and they can overclock pretty well for added performance. Still, you will never manage to overclock a 7600 GT to the point where you get 7900 GT performance. Priced slightly higher than the 7600 GT but with slightly higher performance, ATI's new Radeon X1650 XT is the midrange card that we wish ATI could have launched in place of the original X1600 cards. It is interesting to note that ATI needed a lot more pixel shaders in order to match the performance of the 7600 GT, indicating that each shader is less powerful than the GeForce 7 series shader, but they are also less complex allowing ATI to fit more of them within a similarly sized package.

We should also take a moment here to talk about where previous high-end graphics cards fit into the mix. ATI's X800/X850 line matched up pretty well against NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 cards, although the ATI chips lack SM3.0 support so we would give the edge to GeForce 6800 chips now. The fastest of these offerings is going to be roughly equal to the 7600 GT/X1650 XT, so if you are one of the many people still running a 6800 GT, X800 XT, or a similar GPU, you probably won't see much of a performance increase unless you spend closer to $300 or more. Most games are still very playable on 6800 GT level hardware, but the latest titles definitely require turning down some of the advanced effects and/or resolution in order to get acceptable frame rates. Our best advice in regards to upgrading from one of these older graphics cards is that you should do so only when you find you are unhappy with the level of detail/performance you are able to get.

Looking at the more expensive Midrange GPUs, we included some of the more powerful discontinued products from ATI and NVIDIA in our list below. The GeForce 7800 GT/GTX line competed pretty well with ATI's X1800 line, and the NVIDIA cards definitely had the edge in multi-GPU setups. They also came out several months ahead of ATI's cards, helping them to sell much better. GeForce 7800 parts are basically the same in terms of performance as equivalently clocked GeForce 7900 parts, with the primary difference being that the 7900 series uses a 90 nm process. ATI's X1800 line on the other hand is quite different from the X1900 parts, with the latter parts having far more pixel shaders, although in terms of performance each pixel shader on an X1900 chip appears to be less powerful than an X1800 pixel shader.

Out of the currently shipping upper-midrange GPUs, the X1900 GT and X1950 Pro are both reasonable options, as are the 7900 GS and 7950 GT. If you are interested in getting an X1900 GT card, you would be better off getting the earlier version with higher clock speeds. If you can't find that, we would recommend going with the X1950 Pro instead; it costs a bit more but it performs better, and the use of an 80 nm process does help to reduce heat and power requirements slightly. The GeForce 7900/7950 GT are really priced more in the high-end market, but in terms of performance they are closer to the upper-midrange cards. While these cards still perform pretty well, they could use a price update for us to truly recommend them. With its lower price, 7900 GS is probably the best of the upper NVIDIA offerings here, and it can typically achieve good overclocks for additional performance.


For AGP users, the Midrange GPUs are basically as fast as you can get these days. You might be able to find a 7900 GS or 7900 GT for AGP if you look around hard enough, but the prices on such cards tend to be too high to warrant such a purchase. The 7800 GS AGP is readily available, but with only 16 pixel shaders and lower clock speeds than the PCI-E 7800 GT/GTX parts, they are only moderately faster than 6800 GT/X850 XT cards. Some of the overclocked models do better, though, and there's always end-user overclocking. For around $225, the BFG Tech BFGR78256GSOC GeForce 7800 GS AGP is probably the best price/performance high-end AGP card on the market.

Hopefully, ATI's recent launch of the X1950 Pro will help out, as it offers similar performance to the 7900 GT and it is available for both AGP and PCI-E platforms. Unfortunately, the AGP models currently carry a price premium of a round $75 ($300 total) and they are in limited supply, but they are the fastest stock AGP cards on the market - and they may also be the last higher-end AGP models that we will see, as most of the manufacturers are ready to abandon AGP for good.

Midrange GPUs
GPU	Pixel Shaders	Vertex Shaders	ROPs	Core Speed	RAM Speed	Memory Interface	Price
7600 GT	12	5	8	560	1400	128bit	$135
X1650 XT	24	8	8	575	1400	128bit	$156
7800 GS	16	6	8	375	1200	256bit	$230
X1800 GTO	12	8	12	500	1000	256bit	$145
X1800 XL	16	8	16	500	1000	256bit	$240*
X1900 AIW	48	8	16	500	960	256bit	$220
7800 GT	20	7	16	400	1000	256bit	$185*
7900 GS	20	7	16	450	1320	256bit	$186
7800 GTX	24	8	16	430	1200	256bit	$250*
X1800 XT	16	8	16	625	1500	256bit	$300*
X1900 GT v2.0	36	8	12	512	1320	256bit	$176
7900 GT	24	8	16	450	1320	256bit	$246
X1900 GT	36	8	12	575	1200	256bit	$176
X1950 Pro	36	8	12	575	1380	256bit	$206