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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1721
Price Guides, June 2005: Video Cards
by Kristopher Kubicki on June 26, 2005 3:49 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Introduction
It looks like our June edition of the Price Guides came along at an extremely opportune moment. Wednesday's GeForce 7800GTX launch, we got our first taste of a major graphics card launch where retail shipments were available for purchase immediately. This is a huge step for the PC component market as typically Intel was the only manufacturer capable of doing this with their chipset launches (not CPU launches however). Of course, we have a lot of commentary on that this time around with the price guides. Not surprisingly, prices on other cards from ATI and NVIDIA have adjusted themselves to compete as well.
In case you've never read any of our price guides before, you may wish to check out our Real Time Price Engine and give us some feedback! We have New Products, RSS feeds, News, Warnings, Analysis, Graphs, Rebate Info... what more could you want?
GPU Ultra High End
The best of the best always grabs the most headlines, and the headlines this time around belong to a little company called NVIDIA. The GeForce 7800GTX series cards demonstrate a great boost in performance over current generation video cards, although the $600 price tag certainly doesn't flatter anyone. XFX GeForce 6800GT cards [RTPE: PVT45GUD] ring up just over $300 after rebate (and they should considering a single G70 performs about as well as two 6800GTs in SLI mode). Unfortunately, GeForce 6800 Ultras have a difficult time fitting into the price bracket, although there are some pretty large rebates on the AGP eVGA 6800 Ultra 256MB [RTPE: 256-A8-N345-AX]. PCIe, on the other hand, doesn't fare so well compared to G70.
Granted, we always recommend against buying the newest of the new, particularly when it comes to an NVIDIA launch. NVIDIA launched the GeForce 6800 Ultra just over $550 about a year ago, and vendors like eVGA were the first to have video cards. By the power of Castle Greyskull, let's see how those retail video cards fared over the past year.
![](http://labs.anandtech.com/img/plot/944_365.png)
eVGA GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB
Would it be too much to speculate the GeForce 7800GTX line could drop $50 by December? NVIDIA's product launches tend to follow very similar guidelines, but also consider the fact that this time around NVIDIA had shipping products the day of launch. Also recall that generally during a graphics launch for NVIDIA, instead of moving the current top end models into lower value segments, NVIDIA just keeps the existing cards in stock and releases a next generation on top of the old one, thus sticking merchants with the extra inventory (anyone check the prices on GeForce 5950 [RTPE: GeForce 5950] lately?). It seems as though the vendors probably talked some sense into NVIDIA this time around as the 6800 Ultra prices are adjusting, but just barely.
As always with the ultra high end, we don't recommend any of these cards. The Merriam-Webster word of the day on Saturday was Pyrrhic: achieved at excessive cost. The performance of these video cards is phenomenal, but they cost a month's rent. Considering the fact that NVIDIA is pretty good at making their current generation ~$200 video cards perform approximately as good as the previous generations best of breed card, you may have to do a little bit of cost-benefit analysis to determine how much a year's worth of technology is worth. I would much rather buy a $200 video card once every year for three years than to buy a top of the line card for $600 once every three years. Now let's look at ATI's rip-off segment.
Same story, different brand. Crossfire stuff (motherboards and master cards) are still not shipping yet and our optimistic estimates put shipping cards into August. They won't be cheap either, so don't expect ATI to start breaking any sales records either. Coupled with the rumor that R520 is delayed, it looks like ATI might have a real tough second half of 2005. X850 Pro cards are starting to show more reasonable pricings, but their NVIDIA counterparts are just barely undercutting retail prices. The GeForce 6800 Ultra is a slightly better buy, and if you feel the need to spend $600 on a video card any of the GeForce 7800GTX cards have ATI licked.
High End Graphics
In all fairness to ATI, NVIDIA doesn't have nearly as clear cut victory in the $200 to $300 segment. Most AGP GeForce 6800GT video cards are just barely breaking the $300 barrier with mail in rebates (if that even counts?). On the PCIe end, GeForce 6800GT cards are ridiculously expensive still, upwards of $350. If you don't care about SLI - and if you follow our price guides enough you probably shouldn't right now - X800XL cards are really competitive on PCIe. Derek has some excellent benchmarks demonstrating where the X800XL falls in relation to the GeForce 6800GT, but on any game with DX9 the results are very comparable. Below you can see how the price on the ASUS Radeon X800XL PCIe [RTPE: EAX800XL/2DTV/256] cards continues to plummet.
![](http://labs.anandtech.com/img/plot/1348_182.png)
ASUS Radeon X800XL 256MB
We really like PCIe - and the X800XL is another case where the better value goes to a PCIe card opposed to an AGP one. A particular favorite of ours, the Connect3D X800XL PCIe [RTPE: Connect3D Radeon X800XL 256MB], can be had for just under $250. However, if no-name brands are not your thing, ASUS has the X800XL for $30 more right now too.
With the Radeon X800XL, the other Radeon X800 lines seem almost foolish to buy. Sapphire's vanilla AGP Radeon X800 256MB [RTPE: 100117] may be the only exception to that, but for $10 more you can buy the Connect3D X800XL; the decision should be easy. For the PCIe camp, Sapphire's X800 256MB [RTPE: 100107] is the card to buy. MSI has a very tempting X800 128MB [RTPE: MS-8997-01S] version floating around for the PCIe bus but be wary of the memory size when buying. Below you can see how Radeon X800 prices have stabilized - even increased - over the last couple months.
![](http://labs.anandtech.com/img/plot/1366_182.png)
Sapphire X800 256MB
![](http://labs.anandtech.com/img/plot/1347_182.png)
Sapphire X800XL 256MB
As we mentioned earlier (and in the last couple price guides), the 6800GT cards really only make sense for the AGP market, even if you have your heart absolutely set on SLI. With the introduction of GeForce 7800GTX, buying a 6800GT for SLI configuration would be a really poor idea. You can buy a single GeForce 7800GTX for just under the cost of an XFX GeForce 6800GT [RTPE: PVT45GUD] (even after the rebate). So if you're going to buy two, the 7800GTX is the way to go. As for an AGP recommendation, the AGP equivalent of the card we just mentioned is the best way to go [RTPE: PVT40AUD]. It is more cost effective to buy an X800XL on PCIe, particularly if you play DX9 games, but some people just refuse to let go of their AGP bus.
Sometimes we can't help but feel bad for ATI in the $100-$200 price bracket. X700 Pro prices are terrible when compared to GeForce 6600GT cards (on PCIe), but there have been some mild price cuts in the last week or so. For $129, the Sapphire X700 Pro 128MB is still your best [RTPE: 100595], with an upgrade to the 256MB version [RTPE: 100596] costing an extra $20. The recent price cuts on the 256MB cards are welcomed, but considering the advantage of the GeForce 6600GT series over this card, there isn't much we can say in ATI's defense - even with the price cut. You can see last week's adjustment in the graph below:
![](http://labs.anandtech.com/img/plot/1228_182.png)
Sapphire Radeon X700 Pro 256MB
Radeon 9800 Pro cards have essentially bottomed out, with Sapphire leading the price war again (as usual). The Sapphire 9800 Pro 128MB [RTPE: 100556] is really almost identical to the X700 Pro 128MB we mentioned above but with an AGP bus. This really isn't a bad buy at all, particularly if you have something along the lines of a weak GeForce4 or lower. With anything higher than that, however, you're probably better off saving for a PCIe motherboard and then a current generation PCIe video card.
The gem of our video card price guides continues to be the PCIe version of the GeForce 6600GT. This week marks the first week that both the AGP and PCIe versions retail for about the same price, mostly due to some impressive price cuts by Chaintech. The Chaintech 6600GT 128MB PCIe [RTPE: SE6600G-128] and AGP [RTPE: SA6600G-128] both perform spectacularly for sub $150 video cards and take this week's overall recommendation. Our price engine is tracking some pretty interesting rebates on the GeForce 6600GT cards, but when Chaintech is throwing them out the door cheaper than XFX's best discount, we can't really recommend the mail in rebate option.
If you missed the HyperMemory launch last month, don't worry - you didn't miss much. Now that ATI and NVIDIA both have UMA-like video cards to take advantage of that wonderful PCIe bus, the real winner in the sub $100 range ends up being whoever gets the cost cheapest. In all likelihood, if you are considering a low end video card, it's time for a new rig, "upgrading" to a $50 video card wouldn't make a lot of sense. Even if you are a mild gamer, the $130 for an AGP Radeon 9800 Pro or $150 for a GeForce 6600GT should be an easy cost to absorb when upgrading or building a new rig.
Sapphire's X300SE [RTPE: 100120] for $48 is quite good. In our tests this model outperforms NVIDIA's lowest end solutions while still undercutting the cost. We were a little surprised ATI was able to one up NVIDIA in a market they traditionally dominate.
NVIDIA's Turbocache offerings were impressive a few months ago, but with ATI's (few) partners selling a very competitive product for as much as 20% less, the choice is very clear for us.
By the way, did anyone notice the launch of the GeForce 6200 512MB edition [RTPE: SA62A-512]? This certainly has our nomination for "Most Pointless Video Card Ever".
That's all for this week's Price Guide! Come back next week for more buyer analysis!