Holiday 2006 Shopping Guide: GPUs
by Jarred Walton on December 13, 2006 5:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
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.
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 |
* - Prices for these parts are prone to fluctuation, as these are discontinued products.
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justly - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
I apoligize for straying from the video topic, but I really get annoyed at the all to often trash talk about VIA and SiS chipsets.I understand that this is a GPU article so I can see Anandtech not recommending SiS or VIA integrated graphics based on their lack luster video capabilities. My question (or maybe I should call it a complaint) is how can Anandtech claim SiS and VIA boards are not stable or reliable? The last reviw (that I can remember) of a SiS based board was over a year ago, even then I dont think it was a production board. Coverage of VIA based boards isn't much better but at least Anandtech does give VIA some budget coverage.
I can fully understand if Anandtech doesn't want to recommend VIA or SiS to their enthusiast crowd due to poor overclocking, or being "a bit more quirky" as your article states.
I'm not going to read all the way through old articles just to try and figure out what these stability and reliability issues mighy be (mainly because most of the articles are so old that a BIOS update could easily have made any stability issues invalid). Well I lied a little, I did briefly look through the VIA board articles within the last year and found no stability issues at stock settings. In fact, the only stability issues I saw mentioned in an article happened when "we tried to exceed the SPD settings of our DDR memory modules" but the next line reads "We did not experience these same issues with our DDR2 memory modules" (and that article is 1 week shy of 9 months old).
I hope Anandtech decides to either stop repeating these claims of unstable, unreliable and quirky boards based on VIA & SiS or start reviewing these boards and show its readers why they deserve these remarks.
Then again if the only thing we as readers get from reviews of these chipsets/boards is complaints about how budget boards are not able to overclock, or the lack of a tweakable BIOS in a sub $60 board then blame the board not the chipset as most people are already aware that budget boards are like this reguardless of what chipset they use.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
I know of at least one attempted SiS board review in the past year that was canned because our reviewer could not get the board to function properly (after several BIOS updates and two boards, IIRC). Motherboards (and chipsets) are such an integral part of any computer that I would never skimp in that area. Then again, maybe I'm just too demanding of my computers?If you read user reviews of VIA/SiS boards you typically see a pattern that indicates the boards are overall "less reliable" - periodic instabilities and far higher failure rates. Some people report no problems and love the low prices, while others try to do a bit more with their systems and encounter difficulties.
If you just want to use a computer for office tasks, just about any system will be fine... but then again, if you're doing office work and your computer crashes, you probably won't be too happy. Anyone planning on running a higher-spec GPU should avoid cheaper motherboards IMO, as running a $300+ GPU in a <$75 board is just asking for problems. (For the same reason, I recommend $75+ PSUs for anyone running a CPU+GPU that cost more than $400 combined.)
Basically, I just can't recommend a questionable motherboard that saves a person $10-$20. The fact that the companies aren't out there promoting their products says something. If they're not proud enough of their work to try hard to get reviews at reputable sites, perhaps it's because they know their boards won't pass muster.
I actually had a company representative complain to me once about my stress tests being "unrealistic". He asked, "How many people actually try to run Folding@Home and a bunch of gaming benchmarks in sequence?" Basically, the system would crash if I used my script to benchmark games at various resolutions without rebooting in between each run. It's true that a lot of people might never stress a system to that level, but when I've looked at dozens of computers that handle that workload without problems, a system that crashes/locks in the same situation is clearly not as "stable or reliable" as competing solutions. All things being equal, I would recommend a different PC at the same price.
That's basically how I see the VIA/SiS situation. $10 is about 100 miles of driving, a trip to most restaurants, a two hour movie.... It's not worth the risk just to save $10. If it is, maybe a new computer isn't what you really need; a used PC would probably be just as good and likely a lot cheaper (and possibly faster as well).
justly - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
I agree with most of what you say, no one wants a system that crashs.One thing I do notice though, is that most of your arguments can be atributed to low priced boards, yet the comments I find annoying are the generalizations about chipsets. Do you actually believe a $50 nvidia based board is significantly more stable or reliable than any other chipset? and if you do, couldn't this just be a side effect of being a more popular chipset thus less work programming a bios? I'm sure this isn't what you meant, but going by your comments about motherboard pricing, if I found a $100 SiS based board it should be more stable and reliable than a $50 nvidia board.
You also want me to read "user reviews"? this doesn't sound like a good way to judge reliability to me. Most user reviews are either in enthusiast fourms like the ones you have here, these usually only rewiew overclocking abilities, or on retail sites like Newegg, and to be honest most of the bad reviews I see there look more like PEBKAC.
You really haven't cleared up why VIA or SiS chipsets should be considered unreliable or unstable, although your dislike of budget boards is quite evedent.
I'm not trying to deny you your opinion, I'm just asking that you refrain from singling out specific chipsets if what you are really having a problem with is all budget boards, if there actually is a chipset specific problem please try to get a review published indicating what the problem is.
BTW if the board that wouldn't function, and had the review canned was a production board I feel sorry for the person that bought it without a proper warning from a review site that knew it was flawed (you don't want to know what I think of the review site that would let this happen).
Knowing what to expect from a product can help a budget builder as much as it can help an overclocker.
Sunrise089 - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
I tend to view guids like these through the eyes of my own system, and having a 7900GT at 500/1500, there is little reason to upgrade if I'm going to continue to play games at 1280x1024. However, 22" (widescreen) LCDs have also become a lot cheaper, and with my poor eyes, the 1650x1050 or so resolution will probably work pretty well. That leads me to the great situation I'm apparently in - it looks like my card will fetch around $200 if I sell it, and I have the option of either a perhaps slightly faster X1950pro for $199, basically making it a free change but only slightly faster, or a X1950XT 256meg for only $249. That's a lot of additional card for only $50, and pretty tempting. I cannot see why the $249 part doesn't get the nod for your pick over the 7950GT though.JarredWalton - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
Despite the fact that they are separated by quite a few cards in the table, the X1950 XT 256MB and the 7950 GT give relatively similar performance. The XT is probably 10-15% faster depending on game, but that's not really enough to mean the difference between one resolution and another in my opinion. You also get 512MB of RAM with the 7950GT, and it tends to overclock better than the XT resulting in performance that is basically equal.However, you're right that it is still worth considering, and so I added it to the final table. This is particularly true for people that don't like NVIDIA hardware for whatever reason - just as the 7950GT is worth considering for people that don't like ATI's drivers. Honestly, I'm still unhappy with ATI's drivers overall; they NEED TO DITCH .NET! What's next, writing low level drivers in C# or Jaba (that's big, fat, slow Java for the uninformed)? I know the .NET stuff is just for the UI, but it still blows, and I get about a 45 second delay after Windows loads while the ATI driver starts up. If I weren't running CrossFire, I might not have as many issues with ATI's drivers, though.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
As a side note, Neverwinter Nights 2 appears to require/use .NET 2.0, and for those who have played the game that probably explains a lot of the performance issues. I'm not sure if CrossFire/SLI support is working yet, but I do know that my CrossFire X1900 XT config can't handle running with antialiasing, and/or water reflections/refractions at resolutions above 1280x1024. Seems decent without the AA and water stuff at 1920x1200 with the latest drivers and patch, though.PrinceGaz - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
Something seems to be missing from this part of the last paragraph on page 8.JarredWalton - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
Weird speech recognition there, I guess. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be "they are" instead of "fair so"... but I can't honestly remember if that's what I said or not. LOLgerf - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
On the second page, were should be "where."BTW, good article. Laptop integrated's good enough for me though (ex-gamer).
Noya - Thursday, December 14, 2006 - link
Chart of best values jumps from about $100 w/rebate to $200+, while a highly overclockable 7900gs can be had for $145 after rebate (about $35 over a 7600GT).