Best PCI-E Cards for #£85 and ~£115
With its price recently lowered, the DDR3 version of the 8600 GT easily takes the cake for the best £50 card available in the UK right now. However, if you can afford the extra £35 or so for the Radeon 3850 256MB, we would heartily recommend it.
BEST PCI-E CARD FOR £85 (inc VAT):
| Codename: | RV670 |
| Process: | 55nm |
| Universal Shaders: | 320 |
| Texture Units: | 16 |
| ROPs: | 16 |
| Memory Bus: | 256-bit |
| Core Speed MHz: | 670 |
| Memory Speed MHz: | 833 (1666 effective) |
| DirectX / Shader Model: | DX 10.1 / SM 4.0 |
The Radeon 3850 brings us something we’ve been begging for ever since the DirectX 10 cards were introduced: a sub-£100 card with performance comparable to the high-end products. The Radeon 3850 delivers Geforce 8800 GTS 320mb performance for far less dough. If you’re looking to get the best bang for your buck this card should tickle your fancy.
BEST PCI-E CARD FOR £115 (inc VAT):
| Codename: | G92 |
| Process: | 65nm |
| Universal Shaders: | 64 |
| Texture Units: | 32 |
| ROPs: | 16 |
| Memory Bus: | 256-bit |
| Core Speed MHz: | 650 |
| Memory Speed MHz: | 900 (1800 effective) |
| DirectX / Shader Model: | DX 10 / SM 4.0 |
The new 9600 GT is Nvidia’s answer to the Radeon 3800 series: cheap, powerful, and efficient. The 9600 GT usually performs a bit below the 3870 with no antialiasing, and a bit faster than the 3870 when AA is enabled. Since the 9600 GT is about 15 pounds cheaper at the moment, it’s classier card that can make sub-£130 high-resolution gaming a reality.
I was really hoping you guys would wait until the release of the 9800GTX and 9800GX2 before doing something like this again but such is the nature of schedules and deadlines. At least there'll be some good in-depth reviews on these cards individually (or together) when they come out
It's a regular monthly round-up, and never long till the next one!
I really find the graphics hierarchy a really helpful thing, although it was easier to read when it was done in table format as previous ;-)
I cant wait until the Q3/Q4 or even early 2009 I'm holding out to see what AMD have instore (not much I'd suspect (compared to Intel), Intel have the next quad core batch lined up and a new stepping, but I'm really waiting for the new Nehalem CPU as that appears to be the next gen CPU.
Once that comes out I will think about what I'm going to upgrade to GPU and Mobo.
I suppose Tom's not being the extreme site it used to be, the huge overclocking potential of the GTS 512 is of little interest.
I've taken mine from 650/1625/972 (core/shader/memory) to 762/1900/1130, and the temperature under load with a waterblock never goes over 40C. People who have voltage modded their cards have seen completion of 3dmark06 at 918/2268/2250 on air.
With no competition Nvidia just aren't pushing G92 as far as it can go, which is way further than the Ultra that pushed G80 to the limit.
wow, i didn't expect that the rage 128 would be listed
to anyone who has one (i'd be surprised)
I think there's one in my iBook
Where do the ATI HD 3870, HD 3870 XT and 3870 X2 fit into this list? With their massive clocks and number of stream processors, don't these cards blow all current Nvidia cards out of the water?
sckoobs: You did read the article didn't you? The current Nvidia cards out perform the current ATI cards by a good margin. I just got my 8800GT this week and I'm loving it. great performance. I'm now able to run Crysis with x2 AA at all high settings getting about 45-50fps average. It'll be interesting to see how the 9800 GTX and GX2 compares to the ultra. I'll be looking forward to you reivew on them
Hmm just been looking and its actually cheaper to get the two 8800GT's than it is to get the two 9600 GT's if you're going for EVGA cards at least..