Entry Level Buyer's Guide, October 2005
by Jarred Walton on October 14, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Graphics Recommendations
All of the motherboards are PCI Express, so we don't need to worry about AGP cards anymore. The Office builds also include integrated graphics, further eliminating the need for graphics cards. You may need to add a DX9 capable GPU in the future to get the most out of Windows Vista, but by the time you're ready to install Vista, even a $100 graphics card will likely be trounced by the $50 cards of the future. For the Gaming configurations - depending on how much gaming you plan on doing - we recommend that you spend as much money as possible on a graphics card. We've allocated an extra $250 for the gaming builds in order to accommodate higher performance requirements, but we'll still offer two options for the graphics card: a lower cost card and an upgraded card. (The final system configurations will use the lower cost option.)
Price: $138 shipped (Retail)
We considered quite a few options for the base graphics choice. X700 Pro is the cheapest and still offers reasonable performance for the $100 price tag. We'd like a bit more performance, though, so we expanded the search to the 6600 GT, 6800, and X800 lines. X1300 and X1600 might become viable in the future, but they are not yet available for purchase. The X800 lineup starts at $130 for the Sapphire X800 GT and then quickly jumps to $160 or more. There's also a $30 rebate to get the X800 for $120, which might be worthwhile if you can wait for the rebate to come through. We looked at X800 GT Performance, and found it to be competitive with the 6600 GT. However, the 6600 GT is still available for less, particularly when you consider that the cheapest X800 GT is a 128MB DDR-700 offering (as opposed to the 256MB DDR-980 cards). GeForce 6800 cards are all $170 or more even with a rebate, so we passed them by and ended up with the venerable 6600 GT.
Offering acceptable performance at resolutions up to 1280x1024 when antialiasing is turned off, the 6600 GT is a good match for the budget gamer. It's getting a bit "slow" relative to the fastest cards on the market, but it still manages to put up a fight with the upcoming X1600 XT. Given the price of $130 vs. the $249 MSRP for a yet-to-be-shipped X1600 XT, there's little reason to consider the latter. XFX, Chaintech, and eVGA are all priced similarly when you count rebates, but we took the eVGA for $138 and bypassed the need for a rebate. XFX allows you to spend $10 more now and get a net savings of $10 once the rebate clears, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Price: $186 shipped (Retail)
For a bit more money, there are quite a few upgrade options. The X800 GT isn't really worth the added cost, but the GTO and GTO2 models pack in quite a few extras - extra pipelines, that is. The choice boils down to going with a GTO 256MB card or spending the extra $40 for the GTO2. GTO2 cards have 12 pixel pipelines but can usually be "unlocked" to 16 pipelines and X850 XT speeds. (To gain the extra performance from the GTO2, you have to flash the card with the X850 XT BIOS, but it always works - at least so far. The final clock speed varies, but most people have been getting good results. You can read more about the BIOS flashing process at TechPowerUp.) However, prices and availability are becoming difficult to gauge, so we'll opt for the standard GTO.
The GTO cards run at 400/980 speeds by default, but there's a decent chance of overclocking the core a bit. You'll want to get a card that has the 6-pin PCIe power connector for best results, which is why we've listed the Connect3D card instead of the Sapphire model. (Apparently, there's a very good chance that you can flash this card to an X850 XT BIOS as well.) What you end up with is close to X800/X850 Pro performance and $50 left over in your pocket. We won't list this component in the final list, but if you care enough about gaming to read the whole article, we think that this is the best price/performance option out there right now.
We really like the GTO2 for overclockers and others willing to flash the BIOS, but it might be gone by the time you read this, so we'll leave it as an honorable mention. (Some resellers have increased prices on the GTO2 cards by $50 to $90 in just the past week! It's still a bit cheaper than the real X850 XT, but you're only saving about $30 instead of $100+.) Sapphire apparently has one more shipment of GTO2 cores coming in, but it's going to be the last.
All of the motherboards are PCI Express, so we don't need to worry about AGP cards anymore. The Office builds also include integrated graphics, further eliminating the need for graphics cards. You may need to add a DX9 capable GPU in the future to get the most out of Windows Vista, but by the time you're ready to install Vista, even a $100 graphics card will likely be trounced by the $50 cards of the future. For the Gaming configurations - depending on how much gaming you plan on doing - we recommend that you spend as much money as possible on a graphics card. We've allocated an extra $250 for the gaming builds in order to accommodate higher performance requirements, but we'll still offer two options for the graphics card: a lower cost card and an upgraded card. (The final system configurations will use the lower cost option.)
Click to enlarge.
Price: $138 shipped (Retail)
We considered quite a few options for the base graphics choice. X700 Pro is the cheapest and still offers reasonable performance for the $100 price tag. We'd like a bit more performance, though, so we expanded the search to the 6600 GT, 6800, and X800 lines. X1300 and X1600 might become viable in the future, but they are not yet available for purchase. The X800 lineup starts at $130 for the Sapphire X800 GT and then quickly jumps to $160 or more. There's also a $30 rebate to get the X800 for $120, which might be worthwhile if you can wait for the rebate to come through. We looked at X800 GT Performance, and found it to be competitive with the 6600 GT. However, the 6600 GT is still available for less, particularly when you consider that the cheapest X800 GT is a 128MB DDR-700 offering (as opposed to the 256MB DDR-980 cards). GeForce 6800 cards are all $170 or more even with a rebate, so we passed them by and ended up with the venerable 6600 GT.
Offering acceptable performance at resolutions up to 1280x1024 when antialiasing is turned off, the 6600 GT is a good match for the budget gamer. It's getting a bit "slow" relative to the fastest cards on the market, but it still manages to put up a fight with the upcoming X1600 XT. Given the price of $130 vs. the $249 MSRP for a yet-to-be-shipped X1600 XT, there's little reason to consider the latter. XFX, Chaintech, and eVGA are all priced similarly when you count rebates, but we took the eVGA for $138 and bypassed the need for a rebate. XFX allows you to spend $10 more now and get a net savings of $10 once the rebate clears, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Click to enlarge.
Price: $186 shipped (Retail)
For a bit more money, there are quite a few upgrade options. The X800 GT isn't really worth the added cost, but the GTO and GTO2 models pack in quite a few extras - extra pipelines, that is. The choice boils down to going with a GTO 256MB card or spending the extra $40 for the GTO2. GTO2 cards have 12 pixel pipelines but can usually be "unlocked" to 16 pipelines and X850 XT speeds. (To gain the extra performance from the GTO2, you have to flash the card with the X850 XT BIOS, but it always works - at least so far. The final clock speed varies, but most people have been getting good results. You can read more about the BIOS flashing process at TechPowerUp.) However, prices and availability are becoming difficult to gauge, so we'll opt for the standard GTO.
The GTO cards run at 400/980 speeds by default, but there's a decent chance of overclocking the core a bit. You'll want to get a card that has the 6-pin PCIe power connector for best results, which is why we've listed the Connect3D card instead of the Sapphire model. (Apparently, there's a very good chance that you can flash this card to an X850 XT BIOS as well.) What you end up with is close to X800/X850 Pro performance and $50 left over in your pocket. We won't list this component in the final list, but if you care enough about gaming to read the whole article, we think that this is the best price/performance option out there right now.
We really like the GTO2 for overclockers and others willing to flash the BIOS, but it might be gone by the time you read this, so we'll leave it as an honorable mention. (Some resellers have increased prices on the GTO2 cards by $50 to $90 in just the past week! It's still a bit cheaper than the real X850 XT, but you're only saving about $30 instead of $100+.) Sapphire apparently has one more shipment of GTO2 cores coming in, but it's going to be the last.
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grimdeath - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
good choice on the samsung 997df monitor, i bought mine for the same price at best buy as well around 2 years ago. its still crips, clean and bright :) im not sure how i hear more ppl voting for other brands after looking at this compared to others(though NEC seems decent)JarredWalton - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
I also own an NEC FE991SB that I purchased for $260 or so 18 months back - maybe even two years ago? Overall, I prefer it to the Samsung, but the Samsung has a higher resolution. Both of them cost more now than they did a year ago, though, which pretty much sucks. Sadly, the new NEC CRT models aren't even equal to the old Samsung monitors.IntelUser2000 - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
An entry level gaming graphics card is Geforce 6600GT?? Sheesh. My friends who are "Hardcore Gamers" have Radeon 9800 Pro/XT.JarredWalton - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
I look at "Entry Level" gaming in terms of price, not performance. To me, that means $100 to $150 is ideal, and the 6600GT fits that requirement quite nicely. You can play many games on a slower graphics card, but usually with lower detail settings. Why not spend the extra $30 and get a decent performance boost?You can also think about it another way: how much does a current game cosole cost? $150 or so, right? Take a budget PC - because many people will want a PC in the home for other uses - and you can suddenly have a respectably gaming PC for the same amount as a console. The good news is that a 6600GT will play every game currently available at 1024x768 resolution without difficulty. Many games will even handle 1280x1024 or 1024x768+4xAA.
DrZoidberg - Friday, October 14, 2005 - link
I agree, if u play games regularly the minimum card a gamer should get now would be a 6600gt or 9800pro. A 6600gt is only slightly faster than 9800pro so they both similar cards. Most brand new 9800pro (not crappy se edition) on newegg is selling around $120, so its not much cheaper.