View Single Post

**Praetor** · 02-26-2006, 02:59 PM

Category A - "I'm Building a machine that does not have any gaming requirements, I just want a basic videocard"
For people falling into this category the options are pretty straight forwards and the considerations few: there is no point in pumping several hundred dollars into a top-notch high performance gaming videocard as all that graphical horsepower will never be realized; it will however be benificial to look for a videocard that is inexpensive, provides the basic functionality required, low maintanence and does not compromise any other functionality of the system. As such, suggestions in this section will be subject to the following constraints

Not cost more than $60. For users wanting a basic card, there's no point in shelling out the big bucks for high end videocards packing features that wont be utilized
Not have HyperMemory or TurboCache. These technologies might sound neato but their premise is to use some system memory as their own... which reduces the of memory available to the system.
Will have a preference for passively cooled solutions: being lowpowered cards, often the heat output is more than readily handled by passive coolers thus removing the possibility of having a cheap active cooling solution fail

[AGP][ATi] Powercolor RV6DE-NA3 Radeon7000 32MB ($21.00), Sapphire 100949L Radeon 7000 32MB ($23.99), Connect3D Radeon7000 32MB ($24.99). With these three cards, performance is tossed right out of the window in favor of low-cost, zero frills. If you need a videocard that puts an image on the screen, this is the card for you. These cards are the absolute bottom of the barrel but also come with the absolute lowest price tags
[AGP][nVidia] MSI MX4000-T64 64MB ($22.99) , ASUS V9400-X/TD/64 GeForce MX4000 64MB ($23.99). Like the ATi cards in the previous point, these two cards are also targeted at buyers who just want a videocard that puts images up on the screen and arent looking for all the bells and whistles.
[AGP][ATi] JetWay R9MX-AD-064C Radon 9000 64MB ($25.99) The Radeon 9000 lineup is a generational jump up from the primative Radeon7000s suggested above and for users who may want to explore DirectX8 options, this is the cheapest DX8 card of it's class. For all intents and purposes, this is the lowest model ATi-AGP card that should be considered unless you are building a system and you want to squeeze as much performance out of it as possible in other areas and are down to counting pennies.
[AGP][ATi] MSI RX9250-T128 Radeon 9250 128MB ($29.99), Sapphire 100583-GN-H Radeon 9250 128MB ($32.50), ASUS A9250/TD/128 Radeon 9250 128MB ($33.00) Offering more performance and functionality without a noticeable increase in price nor thermal/noise output, the Radeon 9250 based cards are a superior choice to all the previously suggested cards.
[AGP][nVidia] ASUS V9250-X/TD/64 GeForce FX5200 64MB ($33.00), ASUS V9520-X/TD/128 GeForce FX5200 128MB ($34.99), XFX PC-T34A-NT GeForce FX5200 128MB ($39.00). The cheapest cards packing DirectX9 hardware support, these cards offer the most functionality per buck of all the cards currently listed. Of these three cards, the last one has a 128bit memory interface which doubles it's memory bandwidth compared to the other two cards making it an ideal candidate for a uber-low performance gaming card
[AGP][ATi] Sapphire 100576 Radeon 9550SE 128MB ($47.00), ASUS A9550/TD/128 Radeon 9550 128MB ($48.50). These are ATi's cheapest DirectX9 capable cards. Unless your selection is ATi-limited there's no reason to consider these cards: the XFX card mentioned previously is better performing as a whole and 20% cheaper.
[PCIE][nVidia] ASUS EN6200TC128/TD/16M GeForce 6200TC supporting 128MB ($42.00), MSI NX6200TC-TD128ELF GeForce 6200TC supporting 128MB ($42.00). Both of these cards are included in the event that users need the absolute cheapest PCI-Express based discrete videocard options available. As cards, they should be avoided if possible as they will leech of system memory (i.e., the cards physically come with 16MB of memory onboard but will leach up to 112MB of your system memory to provided "128MB" of memory). While this may seem like a cheap way of getting the video performance of a 128MB card (and for all intents and purposes, it is), for systems featuring a card such as this will get better overall performance by spending the extra few dollars and avoiding a TurboCach based card.
[PCIE][ATi] MSI RX300HM-TD128ELF Radeon X300SE HyperMemory supporting 256MB ($45.00), Sapphire 100140L Radeon X300SE supporting 256MB ($46.00). Like the TurboCache based cards in the previous point, these are ATI's absolute cheapest PCI-Express solutions and are included for that very reason. The difference between these cards and the nVidia solutions previous are that this card will present a significantly reduced memory footprint since they feature 64MB of onboard memory (thus for a "128MB card" they will only chew up 64MB of your system memory); furthermore, if more graphics performance is needed these cards can use up to 192MB of your system memory to provide a "256MB card"
[PCIE][ATi] Sapphire 1024-2C50-04-SA Radeon X300SE 128MB ($47.99), ASUS EAX300SE-X/TD/128 Radeon X300SE 128MB ($48.00). These are the cheapest no-compromise PCI-Epxress videocards. They feature of 128MB of real physical memory and use none of your system memory
[PCIE][nVidia] ASUS N6200/TD/128 GeForce 6200 128MB ($48.99). This is the cheapest no-compromise nVidia based PCI-Express solution: this card features 128MB of physical memory on board and will not use any of your system memory.
[AGP][ATi] JetWay 96MX-AT-128C Mobility Radeon 9600 128MB ($39.00 after $10.00 MIR) After the rebate this card offers the best performance of all the AGP cards listed here. Nothing else listed so far holds a candle to this option. Even without the rebate, this card is very competitively priced still.
[AGP][nVidia] eVGA 256-A8-N313-LX GeForce FX5500 256MB ($39.00 after $15.00 MIR) This is the best nVidia AGP-based solution presented so far and although a few things eliminate this card from being the best AGP solution so far: the JetWay Mobility 9600 listed above offers superior performance (and at a better pre-rebate price) and secondly, this card features active cooling. While initially this may seem like a neat idea (i.e., keep your card nice and cool), a GPU like the GeForce FX5500 wont generate enough heat to warrant the need for active cooling ... the inclusion of active cooling just presents another device that can mechanically fail.
[AGP][nVidia] Apollo GeForce AGP6200AL GeForce 6200 128MB ($54.00), MSI NX6200AX-TD128LF GeForce 6200 128MB ($54.50) These are the cheapest AGP card featuring DirectX 9.0c support
[PCIE][ATi] Connect3D 3032 Radeon X550 128MB ($54.99). For all intents and purposes this is a X300SE with a higher clock and is the best PCI-Express based solution listed so far
[AGP][ATi] Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9600 128MB ($57.99). Featuring a full Radeon 9600 (as opposed to the Mobility 9600 as in the Jayton card above) this card offers the best AGP performance of all the cards listed so far and does not require an active cooling solution
[AGP][nVidia] eVGA 256-A8-N341-LX GeForce 6200 256MB ($49.00 after $10.00 MIR) With the rebate this card is worth considering if your selections are nVidia-limited (if not the Radeon9600 solutions presented above are superior). Without taking the rebate into consideration, this card can probably be looked over as overpriced

Praetor's Picks - Category A
[PCIE][nVidia]
Not a hard choice here, the ASUS N6200/TD/128 GeForce 6200 128MB ($48.99) is the only PCIE-nVidia based card here that does not require the user to compromise.
Make ASUS
Model Name/# N6200/TD/128
Interface PCI-Express x16
GPU nVidia GeForce 6200
GPU Clock 350MHz
Memory 128MB DDR
Memory Clock 250MHz (DDR500)
Memory Interface 64bit (4GB/s bandwidth)
Pipelines 4x2
Cooling Passive cool
Shader Models 3.0
Connectivity VGA+DVI
Product Link http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l...84&modelmenu=1
[AGP][nVidia]
The MSI NX6200AX-TD128LF GeForce 6200 128MB ($54.50) gets the pick here because this card packs the broadest featureset without being excessively overpriced. In particular this card is capable of HDTV output.
Make MSI
Model Name/# NX6200AX-TD128LF
Interface AGP 4x/8x
GPU nVidia GeForce 6200
GPU Clock 350MHz
Memory 128MB DDR
Memory Clock 250MHz (DDR500)
Memory Interface 64bit (4GB/s bandwidth)
Pipelines 4x2
Cooling Passive cool
Shader Models 3.0
Connectivity VGA+DVI, + HDTV/SVideo
Product Link http://www.msi.com.tw/program/produc...il.php?UID=707
[PCIE][ATi]
I was going to originally pick the X550 however the performance improvement does not warrant the extra 12% price jump. Thus, the pick for this category is the ASUS EAX300SE-X/TD/128 Radeon X300SE 128MB ($48.00). The ASUS model here has the same performance profile as the Sapphire except this model has a wider connectivity base.
Make ASUS
Model Name/# EAX300SE-X/TD/128M
Interface PCI-Express x16
GPU ATi X300SE
GPU Clock 325MHz
Memory 128MB DDR
Memory Clock 200MHz (DDR400)
Memory Interface 64bit (3.2GB/s bandwidth)
Pipelines 4x2
Cooling Passive cool
Shader Models 2.x
Connectivity VGA+DVI+Composite
Product Link http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l...99&modelmenu=1
[AGP][ATi]
With the Sapphire 9600 being extremely close pick, I eventually chose the JetWay 96MX-AT-128C Mobility Radeon 9600 128MB ($39.00 after $10.00 MIR) due to it's significantly lower price. The sticking points were that while the this card packs the same performance profile as the Sapphire model, being a Mobility Radeon 9600, you will have to use ATi's mobility drivers which are, compared to the mainstream drivers, outdated. The saving grace is that this entire category is not focused on squeezing the absolute best out of every single card but rather emphasizes low cost over performance.
Make JetWay
Model Name/# R9MX-AD-064C
Interface AGP 4x/8x
GPU ATi Mobility Radeon 9600
GPU Clock 325MHz
Memory 128MB DDR
Memory Clock 300MHz (DDR600)
Memory Interface 128bit (9.6GB/s bandwidth)
Pipelines 4x2
Cooling Passive cool
Shader Models 2.x
Connectivity VGA+SVideo
Product Link http://www.jetway.com.tw/jetway/syst...MX%2DAT%2D128C

02-26-2006, 02:59 PM	#4 (permalink)
Praetor Administrator Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Canada Age: 26 Posts: 19,953	*Category A - "I'm Building a machine that does not have any gaming requirements, I just want a basic videocard"* For people falling into this category the options are pretty straight forwards and the considerations few: there is no point in pumping several hundred dollars into a top-notch high performance gaming videocard as all that graphical horsepower will never be realized; it will however be benificial to look for a videocard that is inexpensive, provides the basic functionality required, low maintanence and does not compromise any other functionality of the system. As such, suggestions in this section will be subject to the following constraints Not cost more than $60. For users wanting a basic card, there's no point in shelling out the big bucks for high end videocards packing features that wont be utilized Not have HyperMemory or TurboCache. These technologies might sound neato but their premise is to use some system memory as their own... which reduces the of memory available to the system. Will have a preference for passively cooled solutions: being lowpowered cards, often the heat output is more than readily handled by passive coolers thus removing the possibility of having a cheap active cooling solution fail [AGP][ATi] Powercolor RV6DE-NA3 Radeon7000 32MB ($21.00), Sapphire 100949L Radeon 7000 32MB ($23.99), Connect3D Radeon7000 32MB ($24.99). With these three cards, performance is tossed right out of the window in favor of low-cost, zero frills. If you need a videocard that puts an image on the screen, this is the card for you. These cards are the absolute bottom of the barrel but also come with the absolute lowest price tags [AGP][nVidia] MSI MX4000-T64 64MB ($22.99) , ASUS V9400-X/TD/64 GeForce MX4000 64MB ($23.99). Like the ATi cards in the previous point, these two cards are also targeted at buyers who just want a videocard that puts images up on the screen and arent looking for all the bells and whistles. [AGP][ATi] JetWay R9MX-AD-064C Radon 9000 64MB ($25.99) The Radeon 9000 lineup is a generational jump up from the primative Radeon7000s suggested above and for users who may want to explore DirectX8 options, this is the cheapest DX8 card of it's class. For all intents and purposes, this is the lowest model ATi-AGP card that should be considered unless you are building a system and you want to squeeze as much performance out of it as possible in other areas and are down to counting pennies. [AGP][ATi] MSI RX9250-T128 Radeon 9250 128MB ($29.99), Sapphire 100583-GN-H Radeon 9250 128MB ($32.50), ASUS A9250/TD/128 Radeon 9250 128MB ($33.00) Offering more performance and functionality without a noticeable increase in price nor thermal/noise output, the Radeon 9250 based cards are a superior choice to all the previously suggested cards. [AGP][nVidia] ASUS V9250-X/TD/64 GeForce FX5200 64MB ($33.00), ASUS V9520-X/TD/128 GeForce FX5200 128MB ($34.99), XFX PC-T34A-NT GeForce FX5200 128MB ($39.00). The cheapest cards packing DirectX9 hardware support, these cards offer the most functionality per buck of all the cards currently listed. Of these three cards, the last one has a 128bit memory interface which doubles it's memory bandwidth compared to the other two cards making it an ideal candidate for a uber-low performance gaming card [AGP][ATi] Sapphire 100576 Radeon 9550SE 128MB ($47.00), ASUS A9550/TD/128 Radeon 9550 128MB ($48.50). These are ATi's cheapest DirectX9 capable cards. Unless your selection is ATi-limited there's no reason to consider these cards: the XFX card mentioned previously is better performing as a whole and 20% cheaper. [PCIE][nVidia] ASUS EN6200TC128/TD/16M GeForce 6200TC supporting 128MB ($42.00), MSI NX6200TC-TD128ELF GeForce 6200TC supporting 128MB ($42.00). Both of these cards are included in the event that users need the absolute cheapest PCI-Express based discrete videocard options available. As cards, they should be avoided if possible as they will leech of system memory (i.e., the cards physically come with 16MB of memory onboard but will leach up to 112MB of your system memory to provided "128MB" of memory). While this may seem like a cheap way of getting the video performance of a 128MB card (and for all intents and purposes, it is), for systems featuring a card such as this will get better overall performance by spending the extra few dollars and avoiding a TurboCach based card. [PCIE][ATi] MSI RX300HM-TD128ELF Radeon X300SE HyperMemory supporting 256MB ($45.00), Sapphire 100140L Radeon X300SE supporting 256MB ($46.00). Like the TurboCache based cards in the previous point, these are ATI's absolute cheapest PCI-Express solutions and are included for that very reason. The difference between these cards and the nVidia solutions previous are that this card will present a significantly reduced memory footprint since they feature 64MB of onboard memory (thus for a "128MB card" they will only chew up 64MB of your system memory); furthermore, if more graphics performance is needed these cards can use up to 192MB of your system memory to provide a "256MB card" [PCIE][ATi] Sapphire 1024-2C50-04-SA Radeon X300SE 128MB ($47.99), ASUS EAX300SE-X/TD/128 Radeon X300SE 128MB ($48.00). These are the cheapest no-compromise PCI-Epxress videocards. They feature of 128MB of real physical memory and use none of your system memory [PCIE][nVidia] ASUS N6200/TD/128 GeForce 6200 128MB ($48.99). This is the cheapest no-compromise nVidia based PCI-Express solution: this card features 128MB of physical memory on board and will not use any of your system memory. [AGP][ATi] JetWay 96MX-AT-128C Mobility Radeon 9600 128MB ($39.00 after $10.00 MIR) After the rebate this card offers the best performance of all the AGP cards listed here. Nothing else listed so far holds a candle to this option. Even without the rebate, this card is very competitively priced still. [AGP][nVidia] eVGA 256-A8-N313-LX GeForce FX5500 256MB ($39.00 after $15.00 MIR) This is the best nVidia AGP-based solution presented so far and although a few things eliminate this card from being the best AGP solution so far: the JetWay Mobility 9600 listed above offers superior performance (and at a better pre-rebate price) and secondly, this card features active cooling. While initially this may seem like a neat idea (i.e., keep your card nice and cool), a GPU like the GeForce FX5500 wont generate enough heat to warrant the need for active cooling ... the inclusion of active cooling just presents another device that can mechanically fail. [AGP][nVidia] Apollo GeForce AGP6200AL GeForce 6200 128MB ($54.00), MSI NX6200AX-TD128LF GeForce 6200 128MB ($54.50) These are the cheapest AGP card featuring DirectX 9.0c support [PCIE][ATi] Connect3D 3032 Radeon X550 128MB ($54.99). For all intents and purposes this is a X300SE with a higher clock and is the best PCI-Express based solution listed so far [AGP][ATi] Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9600 128MB ($57.99). Featuring a full Radeon 9600 (as opposed to the Mobility 9600 as in the Jayton card above) this card offers the best AGP performance of all the cards listed so far and does not require an active cooling solution [AGP][nVidia] eVGA 256-A8-N341-LX GeForce 6200 256MB ($49.00 after $10.00 MIR) With the rebate this card is worth considering if your selections are nVidia-limited (if not the Radeon9600 solutions presented above are superior). Without taking the rebate into consideration, this card can probably be looked over as overpriced *Praetor's Picks - Category A* [PCIE][nVidia] Not a hard choice here, the ASUS N6200/TD/128 GeForce 6200 128MB ($48.99) is the only PCIE-nVidia based card here that does not require the user to compromise. Make ASUS Model Name/# N6200/TD/128 Interface PCI-Express x16 GPU nVidia GeForce 6200 GPU Clock 350MHz Memory 128MB DDR Memory Clock 250MHz (DDR500) Memory Interface 64bit (4GB/s bandwidth) Pipelines 4x2 Cooling Passive cool Shader Models 3.0 Connectivity VGA+DVI Product Link http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l...84&modelmenu=1 [AGP][nVidia] The MSI NX6200AX-TD128LF GeForce 6200 128MB ($54.50) gets the pick here because this card packs the broadest featureset without being excessively overpriced. In particular this card is capable of HDTV output. Make MSI Model Name/# NX6200AX-TD128LF Interface AGP 4x/8x GPU nVidia GeForce 6200 GPU Clock 350MHz Memory 128MB DDR Memory Clock 250MHz (DDR500) Memory Interface 64bit (4GB/s bandwidth) Pipelines 4x2 Cooling Passive cool Shader Models 3.0 Connectivity VGA+DVI, + HDTV/SVideo Product Link http://www.msi.com.tw/program/produc...il.php?UID=707 [PCIE][ATi] I was going to originally pick the X550 however the performance improvement does not warrant the extra 12% price jump. Thus, the pick for this category is the ASUS EAX300SE-X/TD/128 Radeon X300SE 128MB ($48.00). The ASUS model here has the same performance profile as the Sapphire except this model has a wider connectivity base. Make ASUS Model Name/# EAX300SE-X/TD/128M Interface PCI-Express x16 GPU ATi X300SE GPU Clock 325MHz Memory 128MB DDR Memory Clock 200MHz (DDR400) Memory Interface 64bit (3.2GB/s bandwidth) Pipelines 4x2 Cooling Passive cool Shader Models 2.x Connectivity VGA+DVI+Composite Product Link http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l...99&modelmenu=1 [AGP][ATi] With the Sapphire 9600 being extremely close pick, I eventually chose the JetWay 96MX-AT-128C Mobility Radeon 9600 128MB ($39.00 after $10.00 MIR) due to it's significantly lower price. The sticking points were that while the this card packs the same performance profile as the Sapphire model, being a Mobility Radeon 9600, you will have to use ATi's mobility drivers which are, compared to the mainstream drivers, outdated. The saving grace is that this entire category is not focused on squeezing the absolute best out of every single card but rather emphasizes low cost over performance. Make JetWay Model Name/# R9MX-AD-064C Interface AGP 4x/8x GPU ATi Mobility Radeon 9600 GPU Clock 325MHz Memory 128MB DDR Memory Clock 300MHz (DDR600) Memory Interface 128bit (9.6GB/s bandwidth) Pipelines 4x2 Cooling Passive cool Shader Models 2.x Connectivity VGA+SVideo Product Link http://www.jetway.com.tw/jetway/syst...MX%2DAT%2D128C __________________ ASUS P5K Premium WiFi-AP, Q6600@3.7 / ASUS P5ND, E6400@3.8 4GB OCz Platinum XTC 8500 / 4GB CorsairXMS2 6400 5x500GB Seagate 7200.10 / 2x500 Seagate 7200.10 OCz 8800GTX 768MB @ 630/800 / 2x Galaxy 8800GT SLI