Budget Graphics Cards Compared

EconolineCrush writes "Tired of reading reviews of high-end graphics cards that cost several hundred dollars or more? The Tech Report has a round-up of three budget cards that cost $80 or less. ATI's Radeon X1300 Pro, NVIDIA's GeForce 7300 GS, and S3's Chrome S27 are compared in an array of gaming, video playback, power consumption, and noise level tests against not only each other, but also a typical integrated graphics solution. As one might expect, the budget cards offer significantly better 3D performance than integrated solutions. What's even more impressive is the fact that even with newer games, the sub-$80 cards still have enough punch to deliver respectable performance."

Documentation for 'Budget' models....

[Anonymous Coward]

But will ATI, nVideo, or S3 provide documentation so we can write drivers even for these much less than flagship models? When they release a card (even a *much* less than cutting edge card) and the documentation to write a 3D driver for it (so I can expect to use it to potention on whatever operating system), then I will be impressed and interested in the bargain.

Re:Impressive

[Lumpy]

Exactly! I use the horribly outdated and underpowered Geforce FX6600 card and I can play ANY game very nicely. Even the Quake 4 watermark is very VERY playable at 1024X768 at mid level quality settings.

and the point is playability. because you can play at 1280X1024 at full res does not make it feel any better when the 13 year old kid waxes you hard every time with his 640X480 and lowest quality settings.

if the game is smooth and fun then that is what matters.

Almost

[everphilski]

You are right, $500 card is way too much. But an $80 card is gimp. If you are going to make the upgrade do it right and get a mid-range card that has withstood the test of time, something like a nVidia 6600 or 6800 GTS. It'll set you back a few bucks more than these cards - 30-50$ more - but you will get a whole lot more value.

Re:Unanswered Question.

[strider44]

Is there a linux tech site that reviews hardware under different flavors of linux? That would be a useful site. Especially if they dived into driver compatibility issues on different distributions.

Try http://www.phoronix.com/ [phoronix.com]

Re:Unanswered Question.

[strider44]

Does anyone know if any of these have good open support (I'm going to presume patchy [at best] for ATI, closed fast drivers from nvidia & good drivers [but crappy hardware] for the s27)

You presume right. Nowadays I don't buy anything but nVidia graphics cards - I like my Doom 3 and co. and I can never be bothered rebooting to Windows. Hell I got Serious Sam 2 with my 7600GT and I can't even be bothered installing it and playing it.

Re:Unanswered Question.

[Anonymous Coward]

I will say more. Not only is the support of graphics cards oftentimes lacking for Linux and MacOs. But for older versions of Windows as well.

I run Windows 98 SE (suported until June by MS) and bought a new Geforce 6200. It is a low end AGP card I bought for $40 since my computer is not that hot anyway. After installing it (with the latest drivers from nvidias site) my machine crashes consistently on shutdown. It also crashes the OS (in NV..dll) on (older) games (eg. HL1) in certain cases. So it seems that if you have Windows XP, you are good to go, anything else and you can forget it.

So it seems that newer (even low end) hardware only works with XP now? I guess I will have to start to scavenge parts from the junkyard now to keep my PC running.

Re:onboard video and no dedicated memory

[andreyw]

Run glxinfo.

Is direct rendering enabled? Is the OpenGL vendor string "ATi Technologies Inc". Basically... can you tell from the glxinfo that you're indeed running hardware accelerated graphics, or if you're using software MESA OpenGL? I think it could be the second in your case, and that your graphics wasn't properly set up. What distribution is this on?

Power hungry and Noisy

[pjrc]

Ok, I thought, "hmm, maybe this is the time to upgrade that crappy but silent card I bought some time ago?". I believe it was a nvidia 6600LE... which as I understand is the graphics equiv of the low-end 6200, but has its own dedicated 256 meg memory.

Why would I buy that? Well, cost wasn't the concern. At the time, it was the best card on the market that was passively cooled. No fan = no extra noise!

So I clicked the link to TFA, and jumped right to the end, and it turns out the quietest card is 44 dBA. No thanks! Not after the low noise power supply, an after-market super-quiet chipset heatsink/fan, and installing 120 mm low-rpm fans (20 dBA), and the quiet Seagate drive. Even worse, from TFA:

Unfortunately, none of our budget cards are intelligent enough to lower fan speeds at idle, and none offer silent, passive cooling

So does anyone know of better cards that ARE passively cooled, and will work inside a case with scant airflow due to using large but very low speed fans.

Re:Are they bloody serious?!

[Ihlosi]

But hey!! Check out power consumption figures! They state 85 watts in idle and 145.6 watts under load for their "winner" card (Radeon X1300). W.T.F.?! That's like three times more than my 90nm AMD64 CPU, right?

Yes. Doing a simple sanity check should reveal that the power consumption figures probably include the rest of the system, since this is much easier to measure than the power consumption of the graphics card alone.

Re:Are they bloody serious?!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no "probably" about it. It states right there that the power figures are for the whole system. RTFA, idiot! (Not you, the GP)

Re:Just one question...

[Morrigu]

Here's what I found w/ my setup. Base system is a P4 3.0E Prescott + Soyo SY-P4VTE mobo (VIA PT-800 chipset) + 2x Kingmax 512MB PC3200.

  * Rosewill Radeon 9600Pro/256MB AGP = hah. Whatever. Oblivion takes off its hat and laughs, then asks if I'd like to upgrade to something that gives me more than 4FPS @ 800x600.

  * Sapphire Radeon X800GTO/256MB AGP = pretty decent performance, Oblivion suggests "High" graphics settings @ 1024x768. Can bump up the resolution to 1280x1024, doesn't impact the performance too much. Consistently around 30FPS, and drops to 15-20FPS during the bigger battle scenes like "Breaking Siege of Kvatch".

I wouldn't call the X800GTO a budget card ($170ish at Newegg now), but it seems to be the best bang-for-your-buck if you're still using an AGP system and don't feel like upgrading your entire system.

Re:Unanswered Question.

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be pretty cool - that's what I was hoping someone would reply to my comment with a link to! :-) [Phoronix] GNU/Linux Hardware Reviews, Articles, & Gaming [phoronix.com]

Re:Impressive

[default luser]

Exactly. There is a pricepoint for every budget, and thankfully ATI is starting to improve their pricing so they can actually offer a competitive product. S3 has also helped kick the chair out from under the bottom-end cards, bringing prices even lower.

Here are some current-generation cards worth considering for excellent price to performance ratios in their price class:

x1300, 7300 GS ($60)

s27, x1300 Pro ($80)

x1600 Pro, 7600 GS ($110)

7600 GT ($160)

x1800 XT 256MB, 7900 GT 256MB ($250-300)

Unfortunately, there are some cards to avoid:

x1600 XT: at $150, this card is beaten by the 7600 GS in many games (a $110 card!), and is completely toasted by the 7600 GT, which is only a few dollars more.

x1800 GTO: this card perfoms similarly to the 7600 GT, but costs more ($200). Enthusiasts like it because there is a possibility of unlocking 4 extra pipes and turning the card into an x1800 XL (while voiding the warranty). Most people, however, don't want to mess with such things.

Just like last time around, ATI is unwilling to compete with Nvidia in the midrange, so the 7600 GS and 7600 GT have no real competition...unless features like HDR + AA and Avivo interest you.

Re:Does "half resolution" fix interpolation proble

[Petrushka]

It's weird, but I find some resolutions look much better than others on my 1280x1024 monitor. 1280x1024 looks good, of course; 800x600 also looks good. However, 1024x768 and 960x600 look abominably awful. Strangely, 1152x864 looks very nice indeed. Is it just me?

Re:Does "half resolution" fix interpolation proble

[toddestan]

A lot depends on your monitor's ability to scale the output from the video card. Some monitors have algorithms that are good at this, and some do very poorly. One monitor I have (20.1" Sony) seems to do very well at non-native resolutions, while another (19" Gateway) looks like crap. I have also used a 19" Viewsonic which seemed to do a decent job, and a 17" NEC which was kind of in the middle. I have also found that overall, most laptops look terrible at non-native resolutions. Some monitors (like the Sony) have multiple scaling algorithms and let the user choose which one works best for them, though I haven't messed around too much with it since the default seems to work good enough.