[Mars]

With this this card?

I.e. why is it so cheap?

[Shade]

Well, it's a budget card. They are throttled back and have fewer rendering pipelines. Not that good for gaming, in other words.

[Mars]

Hmm... in that case... anyone know where there are good deals on cards better than x1300? Preferabley Nvidia. Newegg seems overpriced as far as video cards go,

[BloodEagle]

Geeks
Tiger Direct

[Davros]

it actually has the same amount of pipelines + shaders as the 7600gt
they are probably ditching old stock as a lower midrange card from the last generation isnt too saleable now

[Mars]

Thank you much

[CP5670]

it actually has the same amount of pipelines + shaders as the 7600gt
they are probably ditching old stock as a lower midrange card from the last generation isnt too saleable now

The 7600GT is clocked far higher though. You can't get anywhere near the GT speeds with it, especially on the memory.

Hmm... in that case... anyone know where there are good deals on cards better than x1300? Preferabley Nvidia. Newegg seems overpriced as far as video cards go,

Newegg actually does tend to have the best video card prices. That and memory are the two areas where they have remained a cut above the rest.

The 7600GT is a good budget card, and the 8600GT has fallen a lot in price and is not a bad choice either (with the rebates taken into account in both cases). It depends on what games you want to play. I don't think either of these would be quite acceptable for the upcoming slew of games, but they should run most existing stuff okay at medium settings.

[Mars]

Thanks much... theoretically I only need enough power to play Doom 3 and Quake 4 at reasonable framerates (which my X1300 doesn't do). I do have my eye on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and UT3 both look pretty sexy

[CP5670]

They will be fine in the older D3 based games at medium (12x9/12x10) resolutions, as long as you don't mind the frameskipping issue with that engine. ETQW is supposed to be somewhat more demanding, but should be okay if you turn down some settings.

UT3 will probably make them struggle unless you turn down everything close to the minimum. However, this is not such a bad thing in a multiplayer game. I'll have a new card by the time UT3 is out (and am highly looking forward to that game), but I often do that in multiplayer games to keep the framerate sky high and don't pay much attention to graphics when playing online anyway (if anything, they're actually distracting).

If you don't like that idea, I think the cheapest card that will give you a reasonable amount of future-proofing is the X1950XT at $170.

[Nuke]

its blue

[Mars]

Yeah it clashes with my mobo.

Thanks much CP