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A follow-up to last year's video card guide, GameSpot's Video Card Roundup for 2007 will show you what cards are widely available in your price range and how they stack up against one another. We've divided the video cards by price into four categories: high-end, performance, mainstream, and budget. Our budget list includes all the current-generation video cards available for $100 or less. The mainstream group includes cards that retail for up to $200. Bump the price range up to $200-$400 to get to our performance cards. Finally, we have our extremely broad high-end category that includes everything over $400, which covers both single cards and dual-card setups. We've focused on current-generation GeForce 8 series and Radeon 2000 series video cards in this roundup. Check out last year's guide to see how the older cards perform. We start off with the high-end cards this week.
High-End Video Cards
High-end video card setups encompass the $400 and over category. These video cards will allow you to play games at very high resolutions and with maximum image quality settings. Feel free to keep antialiasing (which helps to smooth out jagged lines) and anisotropic filtering (keeps textures looking good at all distances and angles) settings enabled on just about every single game at resolutions as high as 2560x1600. You can easily get away with less expensive cards if you have a smaller monitor or don't need extremely high image quality settings.
You can find plenty of options in the high-end category, and with the advent of SLI and CrossFire, it's very easy to double the amount you pay. SLI and CrossFire refer to technologies, respectively created by Nvidia and ATI, that allow you to operate two matching video cards in the same computer. Dual-card setups will give you access to higher image quality settings, but you won't get double the performance due to the overhead involved in getting two cards to work together. A dual-card setup will also require a beefy power supply, a specialized SLI or CrossFire motherboard capable of running two video cards, and possibly even a new computer case.
There are only a few individual cards in the high-end category. Once we remove the SLI and CrossFire combinations, we're left with the GeForce 8800 Ultra, the GeForce 8800 GTX, the Radeon HD 2900 XT, and some versions of the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB. The GeForce 8800 Ultra and GTX have the same number of shaders, but the Ultra has slightly faster clock speeds. The GeForce 8800 GTX originally debuted late last year before the launch of Windows Vista, and ruled the roost for many months before being displaced by the Ultra. Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB product comes with three-fourths as many shaders as the GTX, and has less memory and slower clock speeds. The GTS is currently available for as low as $380 online, but we included it in the high-end category because many variants of the card come very close to the $400 mark and we needed to give the Radeon HD 2900 XT some fair competition.
The Radeon HD 2900 XT's $400 price point places it between the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB and the GeForce 8800 GTX. The ATI and Nvidia solutions have very different architectures, which makes direct shader-count comparisons difficult. Shader numbers can be used to compare cards within the same family (for instance, the 8800 GTX to the 8800 GTS, and the 2900 XT to the 2600XT), but not between cards with dramatically different GPU designs. Note that ATI doesn't have a true answer for the GeForce 8800 GTX or 8800 Ultra cards. If you're considering only the highest of the high-end, you're going to get a GeForce.
| Price | Processors / Speed | RAM / Speed | Additional Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $1350 | 128 648MHz | 2 x 768MB 384-bit 2.2GHz | The GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI configuration is the most powerful graphics setup currently available. These enormous cards will require a large case for cooling, an SLI motherboard, and at least a 900W power supply to feed them. | |
| $1140 | 128 575MHz | 2 x 768MB 384-bit 1.8GHz | Two GeForce 8800 GTXs have all the same requirements as the Ultra SLI combo, but you can get away with a mere 750W power supply. | |
| $780 | 96 500MHz | 2 x 640MB 320-bit 1.6GHz | The GeForce 8800 GTS card requires only one external power connector, but a matching set can still put out a decent amount of performance. | |
| $580 | 96 500MHz | 2 x 320MB 320-bit 1.6GHz | With half the RAM of its 640MB sibling, these 320MB GeForce 8800 GTS cards might begin to falter when you crank the resolution beyond 1600x1200. | |
| $675 | 128 648MHz | 768MB 384-bit 2.2GHz | The most powerful single-card solution on the market requires a 500W power supply and enough clearance to fit inside your case. | |
| $570 | 128 575MHz | 768MB 384-bit 1.8GHz | The GeForce 8800 GTX was the first DirectX10 card to arrive on the market and remains a powerful solution today. | |
| $380 | 96 500MHz | 640MB 320-bit 1.6GHz | A single GeForce 8800 640MB GTS has fewer shaders and a lower clock speed than the GTX, but it's a lot more affordable. | |
| $800 | 320 742MHz | 2 x 512MB 512-bit 1.65GHz | Note that dual-video card SLI and CrossFire configurations have added costs beyond the price of the cards. | |
| $400 | 320 742MHz | 512MB 512-bit 1.65GHz | The Radeon HD 2900 XT works fine with two 6-pin power connectors, but you'll need a new power supply capable of providing a 6- and 8-pin power configuration to provide extra juice for overclocking. |
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The Results
In the high-end category we have to judge by two criteria: cost and performance. We have to acknowledge that some of us simply want the fastest hardware on the planet without regard to cost. For those people, the GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI provides the ultimate in performance. As expected, the GeForce 8800 GTX SLI setup comes in slightly behind the Ultras. Both the GeForce GTS 640MB SLI and 320MB SLI setups lagged significantly behind their higher-end brethren. ATI's HD 2900XT CrossFire configuration was competitive with the GTS setups but never came close to displacing the more costly Ultra and GTX SLI rigs.
If you're looking to squeeze the most frames out of your budget in the high-end category, look no further than the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB. It sailed through our benchmarks with ease, and you can easily find overclocked variants of the card selling for marginally more than stock versions. The GeForce 8800 GTX and Ultra offer excellent performance, but the premium pricing kills the value angle. ATI's Radeon HD 2900 XT comes close to the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB, but the GTS still maintains a slight edge in price and frame rates.
We graphed the average dollar per frame for each card and dual-card setup we tested. We calculated individual dollar-per-frame amount for each game for each graphics setup we tested, then averaged the results for presentation in this graph. It's not a definitive chart due to weighting issues--some games have higher frame rates than others--but it serves well enough to show which cards give the most frames for your money. A lower cost per frame results in better performance for every dollar spent. If you're looking for more details behind our testing, on the following pages you can find the individual results for each game, as well as price/performance comparisons.
Price/Performance
(Shorter bars indicate better value)
345 Comments
Hello People. Im Thinking of buying a new system to play some of the cool directX 10 games like Crysis. Im trying to find the best graphics for the money and for directX 10 games. I saw some more recent benchmarks because ATI released a update for the cards and now their 2900 is beating the 640MB Nvidia and competing with the GTX. And like someone stated down their \/ ATI now has a 1Gb 2900XTX. This 2900XTX has more stream processors and better clocking then even a 8800 ULTRA so based on specs the 2900XTX will be at the top. If your wondering I take no prefrence to brand just how good the product is. Based on most of the specs even the 2900XT 512 will continue to improve with new driver releases especially in crossfire. So in other words 3D Mark 06 is accurate.
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is a E-geforce 8800 gts OC 320 mb video card good
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Wow. What about the other tabs?
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after e3 i guess
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When will gamespot finish this?
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when is this round-up gonna be finished???????????????
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damn i love video cards....and i like disccussin about them hahahaha.....but i think its to early yet to buy a DX10 card give it a year and a halfe for them to make a fully compatible DX10 card but for the tiem being i think the middled range cards from NVIDIA are the way to go, they are expensive, but the facts that the ATI HD is still new dosent make one whant to pay for it cuz its basically as espensive as a mid-range NVIDIA......
P.S. im not an ATI fan nor a NVIDIA fan but im thinking that the coming generation of card is gona be a good one specially for NVIDIA with Sony and IBM backing it up (i hope they are cuz of the work they did togethere do think about it Cell-units on a GPU? hahahahaha)
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@ Zhonginator: Thanks for the information, I'll defintely keep my eye out on this card.
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NVIDIA have insane prices for their products. I'll happily buy one of the GPU's in ATi's HD series.
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ati is coming out with the 1 GB hd 2900 xt to compete w/ the 8800 gtx. it costs $500+ (slightly cheaper than an 8800 gtx) and its differences with the 512 mb version are:
-1gb of ram istead of 512 mb
-2 ghz effective memory clock istead of 1.65 ghz, giving a 128 gb/sec (!) memory bandwidth
-uses gddr4 instead of gddr3
-has a 825 mhz core clock instead of 740 mhz
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it looks like ati is going to lose out on the directx10 because it is just to slow
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what about all the other cheaper cards?
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I wanna see how my 7600gt did in some of these tests!
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When is the preformance section goging to be here? Gamespot staff are all probably at e3...
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COOOOLLLLL !!!!
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Damn, looks like we'll be hooking our PC's upto a car engine to run some of these cards in SLi!
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What I really want to see is how the old Geforce 7 and Radeon 1K series stand up to these. This would let me know if it's worth upgrading from my 7900GS.
Also on the power requirement I noticed they sometimes differ among different manufacturers.
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Someones gonna have a huge electricity bill!
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@ PSP360Gamr83, I'll help you add on to your list.
According to ATI's website...
The 2900XT *550 Watt (750 for CrossFire) or greater power supply with two 2x3-pin
Also says *For enhanced performance with ATI Overdrive, a power supply with one 2x3-pin and one 2x4-pin PCIe power connector is required* If you don't know what ATI Overdrive is its the built-in overclocking tool.
The 2600 XT *400 Watt (550 Watt for CrossFire) or greater power supply recommended*
The 2600 PRO *400 Watt or greater power supply recommended* (Doesn't say anything about CF)
The 2400 PRO *300 Watt or greater power supply recommended* (Doesn't say anything about CF)
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For those asking for power requirements I'll give you the ones I know.
The 8800 Ultra needs a minimum of 500W
The 8800 GTX needs a minimum of 450W
The 8800 GTS needs a minimum of 400W
The 8600 GTS needs a minimum of 350W
The 8600 GT needs a minimum of 300W (350 for overclocking)
Edit: The 2900XT needs a minimum of 550W
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@Jerian I'm running vista. Games are awesome after you go through all the crap of toying around with drivers. So, you heard wrong about the games, but you heard right about the crappy drivers.
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I think Gamespot jumped the gun a little here. It looks like they used XP as OS to get the frames they got on the DX9 games. Thats fine & dandy if the article said "Best cards for XP and last gen games" but the cards are DX10. They should have tested the cards on Vista as this is only platform that will play DX10 games right? From what I have read & seen Vista is a nightmare for gaming as drivers are horrible on both cards. I read a review that said that both an GTS 640 Sli & a 2900XT Crossfire setup barely put out playable frames on Company of Heroes running on Vista!I dont want to sound like an ATI fanboy but I dont think any of this is valid until they are tested on more demanding software running on Vista with mature drivers.
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@Kfoss Most of the newer PSU's are 900-1,500 Watts now.
EDIT: And there very cheap aswell.
Also @ tank8090 Um, since when was the x800's discontinued? They still support the 9800's lol... in fact the update for the x850 (along with all the other cards) is 7.6 (June 25, 2007)
+ @ nerd_rock_riot the 2900XT's (At least my 1GB GDDR4 one I posted specs about below) is PCI-E 2.0 supported. Thats why theres different connectors+more power needed.
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Definitely the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB it's the best option between price and performance D:
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tank8090...hmmmmmmmmm.....i never knew ur card can play new games,...last time i checked most new games require shader model 3. Obviously ur stretching the truth cause i cannot even play all my games at max @1680x1050 on a 8800gts 640mb KO.
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900WATTS! WTF to the max thats INSANE! who makes a 900watt PS anyway...damn
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am waitin on the performance and mainstream sections.these cards are a waste of money
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This omits a very important fact about the Radeon HD 2900 XT... It sucks power like a baby on a bottle... Much more than its nVidia counter parts (it requires both a six pin and an eight pin connector in addition to the PCI-Express pus power consumption)
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The new generation always has the same statistics. These results are to be expected- ho hum...
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really people you don't need a high end card to play all there games out the i have a radeon x850 which was discontinued my ati but kicks ass. I can play every game on the market with high to medium settings. I can play oblivion, halo 2 , shallow run , and company of heroes, battlefield 2142, and any game out there. My card cost 220 when i got it back in 2004 so really when i do upgrade like 6 months from now i am going to end up getting a card from the 200-300 range and like always it can play every game on the market as been said before the high end cards are only for people with the money to spare and to show who's better. really though ati is better because they made directx 10 card cheap the ranges are from 50-400 and i think the is dawn good.
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It would've been good if you guys mentioned the power needed by each of those configurations
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i hope ATi sort out the drivers becuase its a fast card ATi (amd) jsut rushed it out and i love the DVI to HDMI connector hopefully getting a new TV soon gonna hook my PC through HDMI to it
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I am more than happy with my Dell XPS M1710 with a Nvidia 7950 GTX, that will last me more than enough time before any game truly utilizes these DX 10 cards.
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Yeah, so damn expensive, How I WISH that there will be a new breed of "competent" GPU manufacturers to compete with these 2 monopolizing companies...
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Hmm... they should have used newegg.
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What is the Diference between these two High End Mobile GPU'S ?????
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT Apple Mac Book Pro
NVidia® GeForce™ Go 7950 GTX AlienWare Area-51 m9750
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SLI and Crossfire setups are completely overpriced and overrated.
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"I say; too expensive. With 1350$ you can buy two laptops I think. Video Cards are getting so damn expensive..."
You're exactly right. For the price of an SLI setup, you can buy two laptops that has enough beef to play most games decently. This is exactly why PC gaming is dying. It's not affordable like it used to be. Back in 2000 PC gaming was dominating consoles beacuse it was easier accessable. That's not the case anymore. Consoles are easier accessable, they look better, and they're cheaper.
You can buy an Xbox 360 and a high quality HDTV for the price of a SLI or CrossFire video card setup for a PC. When they fix that, then PC gaming will come back alive, but not until then. If it wasn't for MMORPG's, PC gaming would have already been dead, instead of just "dying off".
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All these cards look absolutely sexy. It's just a shame that even after several years, SLI and CrossFire still isn't worth the price tag, not to mention, it's still too early to buy a next-gen video card. It's going to be another 6 months at the very least before it's worth upgrading.
"I said it before and I'll say it now.... I'm GLAD I got my 8800GTS 640mb 4 months ago... It was, and still is, one of the best if not the best for the money, and offers better performance than ATI in games that most people care about.
Although I think that this card was truly a best buy when I bought it. Right now, I don't know if it would be a smart choice to buy any high end card since the competition is heating up, and a customer who will wait 4-6 more months will only win in the long run."
You spent $600, if not more, on a card that doesn't take advantage of the extra features since there are only a couple DX10 games available, when you will be able to buy one of these cards in another 6 months when there will be DX10 games worth playing (maybe, and then again, the consoles may still be crushing PC's in the next-gen competition), and the price will be half that.
GeForce 7900 or equivalent is still all you need to play the latest and greatest games. At this rate, you will never need a DX10 video card, since all the hot games are switching to consoles only.
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I said it before and I'll say it now.... I'm GLAD I got my 8800GTS 640mb 4 months ago... It was, and still is, one of the best if not the best for the money, and offers better performance than ATI in games that most people care about.
Although I think that this card was truly a best buy when I bought it. Right now, I don't know if it would be a smart choice to buy any high end card since the competition is heating up, and a customer who will wait 4-6 more months will only win in the long run.
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If you have a big enough screen to run 2048x1536, yea you'll see a difference in the video cards strength. But running 1600x1050 or 1280x1024 (max resolution for 17-22" screens, which most gamers have) you won't see a "major" difference in having dual 768's in SLI or just a single 320. So don't be thinking you need to spend major cash just to play todays games. A single 320MB or 640MB (640's are like $50 more now) for now is sufficient. With a SLI compatible motherboard just pop another one in there in the future and you'll still be fine. Right now my single 320MB is playing everything on max and I don't experience any bad frame rates and no sluggish performance.
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I say; too expensive. With 1350$ you can buy two laptops I think. Video Cards are getting so damn expensive...
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go with the gtx !!!!!! or even better ultra..
man jst overclock that gtx and beat the ultra lol
if u dnt got the money...dnt be lazy and get a job..its easy =)
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lol.
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They will add the other cards maybe today or tomorrow, its a lot of work to do benchmarks for everygame.
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Wow, they go to some crappy place to buy there cards.
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They will probably add it on tomorrow, or once they finish benchmarking them all.
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what about the performance,mainstream and budget cards???I dont think more than half of the people in this world will be able to afford these cards.......
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Nice so the GTS is better than Ultra and GTX in terms of cost/value
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any Idea about what GS will use in the $200-300 gap?
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