The Right Graphics Card for Your Need

Continued from page: 2

Monday, October 01, 2007

Budget cards

This segment of cards is targeted at those who want to have some features to enhance their graphics experience and be able to play some games. So, these cards suit the needs of occasional gamers and gaming enthusiasts. In our shootout, this segment had the highest number of cards (34) and most of them were from nVidia (a total of 23). Price of these cards range between 4-10k, but ASUS 2600XT despite being priced higher than 10k was placed in this segment as its main competition is with nVidia 8600GT series cards.

3D Mark06 and Vista score
These budget range cards provide a better experience of both Vista and gaming than normal. Obviously, the 3D Mark scores were not as impressive as high-end cards, but were much better than the entry-level cards. In this segment, Palit 8600GT Sonic+ was the leader with a 3D Marks score of 5438. While ASUS 2600XT and ATI 2600XT followed with scores of 5160 and 5090, respectively. For Vista, the leaders were the 2600XT series cards. They gave a score of 5. Surprisingly though nVidia's 7900GS series cards from MSI and Zebronics also managed an
overall Vista experience score of 5. For Vista gaming score the leaders again were 7900GS cards, as they clocked a score of 5.7.

F.E.A.R
The cards in this segment are not capable of rendering graphics for a game like FEAR. So, we tested them on a relatively lower resolution of 1024 x 768. Zebronics 7900GS scored 85, which is decent for a card in this series. The 512 MB RAM that this card has, might be the reason of this. Palit 860GT Sonic+ with a score of 80 closely followed it up.

ATI 2600XT 512 MB

Company Of Heroes
The game's in-built benchmark stresses the card to a good limit and the performers that emerged after this test were again from the 7900GS series of cards from MSI and Zebronics. They scored 54 and 55, respectively. Cards like MSI 1650XT EZ having given a decent performance score of 60 fps in F.E.A.R went down here in Company of Heroes to give a moderate score of 33.

Doom 3
Here, Palit 8600GT Sonic+ made a come back with a score of 60.1 fps. The cards supporting DirectX 9 got a chance here to show their performance potential. MSI's 7600GS and 7900GS scored 57 and 58, respectively. The 2600XT series cards also clocked a frame rate of about 59 fps. Whereas 8500GT series cards scored low for Doom 3, despite being DirectX 10 supporting card.

BioShock
In this DirectX 10 game, the ASUS 8600GT showed its supremacy with a score of 56.2 fps and was closely followed by another ASUS 8600GT Silent, that showed a frame rate of 54.8 fps. Whereas 2600XT series cards from ATI and ASUS gave a score of 52. Other cards in this segment showed varied results and were not in contention with these high scoring cards.

Palit Geforce 8500GT Sonic 256 MB

The winner
This segment had a wide variety of cards and all gave different performance. In some tests the DirectX 9 cards excelled ahead of the DirectX 10 cards. While considering features DirectX 10 support and SLI/Crossfire readiness were also looked at besides HDCP and HDMI support. HDCP and HDMI are important to experience HD movies. DirectX 10 is the next 'in' thing and most games are moving toward that. Therefore, the card proving support for that scored extra.

Editor's choice
On the basis of overall score ATI 2600XT came out as a clear winner. It scored the maximum in features, where it was met only by ASUS 2600XT. Palit 8600GT Sonic+ scored slightly better in performance against this ATI 2600XT and was equaled by Asus 2600XT. But ATI 2600XT won because ASUS was priced higher.

Palit 8600GT sonic+ 256MB

Lab's recommended
This segment again showed a tie for the second position. Palit 8600GT Sonic+ and Palit 8500GT Sonic both managed to score equally. While Palit 8600GT Sonic+ topped the budget segment with its performance score, the other one scored in price.

Best priced
In this segment, performance is not that crucial and you can trade it for price. If you have a tight budget and still want a feature-rich card, then better opt for Palit 8500GT, as it's the lowest priced, yet workable. Unlike Palit 8600GT Sonic+, which is based on nVidia 8600GT chipset, this one is based on 8500GT chipset. The difference is well reflected in the performance. Anyway, choice is yours.

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