Madshrimps Forum Madness - Mid-Range PCIe Video Card Roundup

Since not everybody has the funds to get the latest and greatest video cards out there it might be interesting to know what alternatives are available. We will try to find the best bang for the buck among a series of different video card chips from different manufactures.

Club 3D X1800 GTO 256Mb
Asus X1300 Pro Silent 128Mb
Asus X1600 XT Silent 256Mb
Sparkle 6600 GT 128Mb (Two times - SLI)
Powercolor X800 GT 128Mb
e-VGA 7600GT OC SC 256Mb
e-VGA 7600GT OC 256Mb

While raw CPU speed does matter in games, currently we do see that most games are very much GPU (video card) dependant, a 3Ghz P4 or 2Ghz A64 will be fast enough to play the latest games fluently.

For our test we’re using an Athlon 64 3500+ seated on top an MSI K8N SLI Premium.

System memory can also greatly influence your gaming experience, while 512Mb is the minimum for new games, you’ll gain a lot from upgrading to 1Gb. The next step to 2Gb however (for the time being) has only a limited amount of influence on the game experience. Of course more is better.

We’re using 2x512Mb DDR600 A-DATA Vitesta memory modules – 1Gb kits are widely available and can be had for interesting prices. If you only have 512Mb in your system; upgrading your memory to 1Gb (or more) will pretty much go hand in hand with your video card purchase, otherwise you might not get the performance increase you were expecting.