Best Graphics Cards For The Money: August '09

[cleeve]

Welcome to the August 2009 issue of Best Graphics Cards for the Money. This month we have a look at the new integrated Radeon HD 4200, part of AMD's 785G chipset, and keep an eye on falling prices across the board. Read on for our latest recommendations!

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: August '09 : Read more

 

[frozenlead]

Bunch of old cards bumped down to lower price brackets.

Bring on the new cards, ATI & Nvidia!

 

[MiamiU]

the review states the HD 4870 X2 has exceptional 1920x1200 but 2 HD 4890's in crossfire only have good 1920x1200?? if this is true why would anyone pay more for less?

 

[masterjaw]

Nothing new. Almost the same as the previous article last month. I hope it would differ next month with the intro of dx11 cards.

 

[Windaria]

For me, AMD's discontinuing Linux support for cards as recent as 1 year old as being "antiquated" has caused me to lose all respect for them. After all, you can't just upgrade a laptop card, if you could, I would. But since not, I'm sorry, I have lost all confidence in them. After all, you could buy a card from them now, and have them cease support for it in a mere year. They screwed us once, what is supposed to make me believe they may not do it again, with my x1700?

 

[bucifer]

[citation][nom]Windaria[/nom]For me, AMD's discontinuing Linux support for cards as recent as 1 year old as being "antiquated" has caused me to lose all respect for them. After all, you can't just upgrade a laptop card, if you could, I would. But since not, I'm sorry, I have lost all confidence in them. After all, you could buy a card from them now, and have them cease support for it in a mere year. They screwed us once, what is supposed to make me believe they may not do it again, with my x1700?[/citation]

LoL, you sir are an idiot! You don't need the latest drivers for your card to work! Even if they would support your card they won't bring any performance gains after a year. Drivers are generally focused to fix and improve performance on new models with no effect on the old ones.
So stop crying like a baby and use the drivers that worked best for you. Be informed next time you start to state such childish whines and stay on topic!

About the article, indeed pretty much the same thing as last month with some price drops. It has been stated on Tom's that ATI would launch its new generation on Sept 11th. No mention of that in the article?

 

[barmaley]

Anyone knows when Nvidia is going to announce their cards to counter ATI's launch in near future?

 

[Guest]

OT: I have been hanging around this site for the last few days, trying to get some info to make various hardware decisions. I've read a lot of articles, and a lot of comments, and find the comments to be of at least as much value as the articles. I just figured out, though, why some comments are in the barely-readable light gray color: they are anonymous.

Grow the f*** up, Tom's sitemasters/designers/administration! Just because someone doesn't want to waste time signing up for your data-mining/brand-building operation just to say some pithy words about a subject doesn't mean you should treat their opinions as second-class. (And when you understand that, your site will be that much closer to serving users' interests as effectively as possible, instead of serving your own at users' expense.)

Say what you will about the relative merits of anon vs. registered comments. All I know is that I just figured out the root cause of something that has been annoying the s*** out of me for the last several days, and it's YOU and you're doing it ON PURPOSE! Not cool.

 

[haplo602]

[citation][nom]bucifer[/nom]LoL, you sir are an idiot! You don't need the latest drivers for your card to work! Even if they would support your card they won't bring any performance gains after a year. Drivers are generally focused to fix and improve performance on new models with no effect on the old ones. So stop crying like a baby and use the drivers that worked best for you. Be informed next time you start to state such childish whines and stay on topic! About the article, indeed pretty much the same thing as last month with some price drops. It has been stated on Tom's that ATI would launch its new generation on Sept 11th. No mention of that in the article?[/citation]

way to shoot yourself in the foot ... using old ati linux drivers means you are stuck with old linux kernels and old X versions. the OSS drivers do realy not provide enough 3D support to be viable for other than X compositing.

next time try to learn a bit about linux before commenting ...

 

[KT_WASP]

HD 4870.. best buy, hands down. But, that said, I would wait if you were buying, at least until the next gen DX11 cards come out.


OT... Toms.. Please, oh please, get rid of that God forsaken Gate.com ad. That thing is the most annoying ad I have yet to come across on this site, it drops down into every article and page I'm trying to read.. gets old real quick.

 

[doomtomb]

I can't believe the prices some of these cards have dropped to. 4870 1GB for $150?? Was $300 not too long ago.

We've been waiting for new cards from Nvidia and ATI for ages......

 

[RazberyBandit]

[citation][nom]KT_Wasp[/nom]HD 4870.. best buy, hands down. But, that said, I would wait if you were buying, at least until the next gen DX11 cards come out.OT... Toms.. Please, oh please, get rid of that God forsaken Gate.com ad. That thing is the most annoying ad I have yet to come across on this site, it drops down into every article and page I'm trying to read.. gets old real quick.[/citation]

Firefox + Adblock Plus add-on would solve your problem.

Having recently purchased 3 video cards for different systems (4670, 4850, and 4890), I didn't truly need this article to tell me they were the "bang-for-buck" cards in their price bracket, but it's a great resource none the less. For me, the list at the end of the article is the true gem within it.

 

[thearm]

[citation][nom]bucifer[/nom]LoL, you sir are an idiot! You don't need the latest drivers for your card to work! Even if they would support your card they won't bring any performance gains after a year. Drivers are generally focused to fix and improve performance on new models with no effect on the old ones. So stop crying like a baby and use the drivers that worked best for you. Be informed next time you start to state such childish whines and stay on topic!About the article, indeed pretty much the same thing as last month with some price drops. It has been stated on Tom's that ATI would launch its new generation on Sept 11th. No mention of that in the article?[/citation]

YOU sir, are an idiot for calling someone an idiot. Your ingnorant for your way of thinking. Most of the time, a new version of a driver is specifically released to address flaws in new games. There are many many reasons to upgrade your video card driver to the latest version and that is just one of them.

 

[esquire468]

[citation][nom]KT_Wasp[/nom]OT... Toms.. Please, oh please, get rid of that God forsaken Gate.com ad. That thing is the most annoying ad I have yet to come across on this site, it drops down into every article and page I'm trying to read.. gets old real quick.[/citation]

+1

Please get rid of that crap.

 

[meatwad53186]

@ Don Woligroski, author of the article:

I feel that the wording in these articles needs to be defined, and/or redone. First of all, what do you mean when you say that a single HD 4850 gets good performance on 1920X1200 in most games? From looking at the benchmarks, I was looking for good 1920x1200 performance, so I bought an HD 4890 and would not have even considered a 4850. Also why does it say that two HD 4870 1GB cards in Crossfire gives exceptional 1920x1200 performance, and two HD 4890's in Crossfire only offer good performance at 1920x1200?

 

[saint19]

Always the same conclusion...with the same words...exactly the same words...

 

[Shadow703793]

For the $50 bracket, wouldn't the 9600GSO be a better choice than 4650?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121320
$40 after MIR.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]miamiu[/nom]the review states the HD 4870 X2 has exceptional 1920x1200 but 2 HD 4890's in crossfire only have good 1920x1200?? if this is true why would anyone pay more for less?[/citation]

Thanks, fixed!

Remember, those resolution recommendations are general guidelines, not perfect rules that apply to every game out there.
I put them in so that folks with a 1280x1024 monitor would know that it was a waste to go and buy an ubercard like a 4870 X2 or GTX 295.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]Shadow703793[/nom]For the $50 bracket, wouldn't the 9600GSO be a better choice than 4650?http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814121320$40 after MIR.[/citation]

Absolutely! From the article:

"Prices and availability change on a daily basis. We can’t base our decisions on always-changing pricing information, but we can list some good cards that you probably won’t regret buying at the price ranges we suggest, along with real-time prices from our PriceGrabber engine, for your reference."

 

[doomtomb]

[citation][nom]KT_Wasp[/nom]HD 4870.. best buy, hands down. But, that said, I would wait if you were buying, at least until the next gen DX11 cards come out.OT... Toms.. Please, oh please, get rid of that God forsaken Gate.com ad. That thing is the most annoying ad I have yet to come across on this site, it drops down into every article and page I'm trying to read.. gets old real quick.[/citation]
That thing is annoying as hell.

 

[caamsa]

In your "Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart" you should add crossfire and SLI configurations it would make for a nice quick reference.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I was at a major retailer's store yesterday in Phoenix, AZ. The store finally received a shipment of XFX HD 4770 video cards. The never had any 4770 cards in the past Store inventories have been low for quite some time now. The price actually went up $20.00. That's not a very good deal.

I also saw a brand new AOC 19 inch LED slimline monitor. The sales person told me they were expecting a shipment of LG 25 inch LED monitors by the end of the week. I wonder how that will affect video card design and production.

 

[Windaria]

[citation][nom]bucifer[/nom]LoL, you sir are an idiot! You don't need the latest drivers for your card to work! Even if they would support your card they won't bring any performance gains after a year. Drivers are generally focused to fix and improve performance on new models with no effect on the old ones. So stop crying like a baby and use the drivers that worked best for you. Be informed next time you start to state such childish whines and stay on topic! About the article, indeed pretty much the same thing as last month with some price drops. It has been stated on Tom's that ATI would launch its new generation on Sept 11th. No mention of that in the article?[/citation]

Actually, the latest x-server is now shipping in most recent Linux releases, and due to an exposed flaw in the older ATI drivers, it requires the newer ones, that have dropped the support for "older" cards that were being shipped as recently as a year ago. This means that, say, I can use Ubuntu 8.10, but 9.04? No, not without a round-about hack that is being used, and for how long? Or, without the open-source drivers, which, say, Regnum does not work with, because they aren't yet up to par.

So, no, what ATI did was simply not acceptable. When people buy hardware, there is a reasonable expectation of having working drivers for about, what, 3 years? Cutting it off after 1 year of a product being sold is, again, simply not acceptable.

 

[bucifer]

[citation][nom]thearm[/nom]YOU sir, are an idiot for calling someone an idiot. Your ingnorant for your way of thinking. Most of the time, a new version of a driver is specifically released to address flaws in new games. There are many many reasons to upgrade your video card driver to the latest version and that is just one of them.[/citation]

As if you use linux to play games, right.. go take a hike. Stop trolling around!

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]caamsa[/nom]In your "Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart" you should add crossfire and SLI configurations it would make for a nice quick reference.[/citation]

It's difficult to peg them because SLI and Crossfire aren't as consistent as single cards.