The Right Graphics Card for Your Need

Continued from page: 1

Monday, October 01, 2007

Price variation
Most often you'll find the same chipset from either NVIDIA or ATI sold at different prices by different vendors. That's primarily because of the packaging and not because of quality. Some vendors ship the card with DVD full version games, some improve the cooling solution, some over-clock the card, and hence the same chipset is sold at various prices by different vendors. So it's important to identify your need first before taking the buying decision. If you're an occasional gamer, then you won't really need an over-clocked card.

SLI or CrossFire?
If you are a pro-gamer, then you would be tempted to use two cards in tandem and leverage the maximum benefit out of it, that's the power of SLI or CrossFire. The use of such technology is very common among top end gamers and not meant for occasional gamers. Right from the budget range to the high end almost all cards have native SLI or CrossFire support these days. Many workstation class people prefer this technology for multitasking; they can connect several LCD monitors to the card and run various apps. Even gamers love this as they can connect multiple monitors via these cards and enhance their gaming experience. But then for this you need to dish out the cost of two cards.

How we tested
We tested the cards on a number of parameters: Performance, Features, and Price. All tests were performed at 1024x1028, 1280x1024, and 1350x768 resolutions. We kept the tests constant for all ranges, though in our final assessment we changed the scoring as per category. For example, in our calculation model for extreme and high end cards we gave more weightage to the scores for 3D Mark06, FEAR, Company of Heroes, BIOSHOCK, and Doom3, and less to Vista performance and its gaming scores. For entry level or budget range cards, the score weightage pattern was changed and complex games were given less weightage than the Vista score. The games used for the benchmark were FEAR, Company of Heroes, BIOSHOCK, Doom 3 along with 3D Mark06, with its features option turned 'on.'

Card categories
With prices varying heavily across cards, we had a tough time classifying them. However, based on our experience and user needs, we classified them as follows:
Sub 4,000- Entry Level
4,001–10,000-Budget range
10,001– 20,000-Mid range
20,001–30,000- High-end
30,001 & above-Extreme gaming

The test bed
Throughout the shootout we kept identical test beds for a particular category to maintain consistency. To test Extreme, High-end, and Mid-range gaming cards, we used a system with Intel Core 2 Extreme processor(x6800) running at 2.93 GHz with 2 GB DDR2 RAM, along with 120 GB Seagate SATA HDD (7200 rpm) on an Intel Desktop Board (D875XBX). For the entry level and budget gaming cards, we used an AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core 6400+ processor (Black Edition) running at 3.2 GHz having 1 GB DDR2 RAM and 120 GB Seagate SATA HDD (7200 rpm) on an ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard.

In the following pages we discuss the performance of each card and the winners for respective categories.

Rahul Sah and Saurangshu Kanunjna with help from Suman Guha

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