Shootouts

Q3 2006 Midrange GPU Shootout

By Vincent Chang - 4 Aug 2006

Conclusion

Conclusion

At the risk of sounding politically incorrect and more than a bit shallow, we would like to venture that appearances are everything. Or as we paraphrase it for this context, public perception is paramount for any business. Economists have always known that their 'science' is not grounded in immutable laws of nature. Instead, the world's economy works on a complex balance of trust and confidence. After all, it does seem rather foolhardy to trust a system where money and assets are exchanged invisibly through information flows and in our modern age, without any human intervention even. So how does that relate to the graphics industry as we understand it?

First, an interesting morsel of information – for the second quarter of this year, NVIDIA actually lost market share in the desktop graphics segment to ATI despite the seemingly successful launch of its GeForce 7600 and GeForce 7900 series. Surprising as it may sound, the reality is that OEMs are the big players in the market that sign huge volume deals with various vendors and that their impact is not only limited to integrated solutions. They extend to desktop graphics and they more than anything, decide the fate of total graphics sales. Hence, despite our observations that NVIDIA has accrued much mind share among consumers for its discrete graphics offerings, the bottom line turned out to be otherwise.

Therefore, this article serves to confirm if our usual midrange graphics recommendations (akin to our perceptions) have any basis in reality by testing the card's worthiness with benchmarks and taking in account the prevalent retail price now. So far, things seem to be going according to script, with NVIDIA scoring very well for in our price performance index, though the Radeon X1800 GTO was the best absolute performer in our benchmarks.

Before we declare the winners for each price category, we would like to reiterate that there are other factors that should influence your buying decision besides price and performance. Namely, temperature, noise output and power consumption. Luckily, for most of the chipsets that we have seen, there are so many variants, from overclocked ones to passive coolers that for any given chipset, you should be able to find the appropriate card to fit your needs. However, we do have to admit that NVIDIA has the edge here, as evident from the fact that all three of its chipsets highlighted here have silent, passively cooled versions and have been found to be running cooler than the ATI's passively cooled counterparts time and time again from our testing. Even the fanned versions of NVIDIA cards were found to be operating quieter and cooler than ATI's bunch. Power consumption too would seem to favor the green team due to the more efficient architecture of the GeForce 7 series. ATI does have its own merits, from qualitative aspects like perceived image quality to technological features not possible on the NVIDIA cards. Meanwhile, ATI is slated for one last push in October with the upcoming Radeon X1950 XT and X1650 XT that may turn the tide against NVIDIA, though we have to wonder if they are appearing too late in the game to have much impact.

So here are our winners for the various price categories. For the lower scale midrange segment, the outstanding GeForce 7300 GT beats all comers with its excellent price performance ratio (the best of the bunch) and the flexibility of the chipset means that consumers may have a wide choice of configurations to choose from. The Radeon X1600 PRO may find traction among OEMs however, but since we're dealing with the retail scene, it is only appropriate that our Winner for the US$80 – US$99 price category goes to the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT.

The Winner for the US$100 – US$150 price category was a closer affair, as these two chipsets are mostly similar in features and performance. In the end, price had to be the tie breaker between the two and based on its price performance ratio, we chose the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS as our winner. While pure performance swayed in favor of the Radeon X1600 XT, it was only at its best in synthetic benchmarks, but the less expensive GeForce 7600 GS showed that it's equivalently competitive in actual games, which is what matters most. Furthermore, the GeForce 7600 GS has a lower power envelope and is available with passive coolers by stock, meaning that it's silent. You can definitely get a Radeon X1600 XT in silent versions too, but they are going to be quite a bit more expensive that you would think if topping up to the next performance rung would be a better option. The choice is yours, but the GeForce 7600 GS is our logical winner.

Finally, for the cream of the midrange crop, the more expensive GeForce 7600 GT versus the Radeon X1800 GTO, NVIDIA's solution was once again our pick. The Radeon X1800 GTO had a slight lead against the GeForce 7600 GT in the performance stakes. But we felt that price was an equally important consideration in this segment, though as we had repeated before, if you value the VIVO functionality found on practically all Radeon X1800 GTO cards and other ATI-only features, then the Radeon X1800 GTO is your only choice within this price bracket. On the other hand, if you doubt that you will be playing your HDR games with anti-aliasing (which we tend to agree given the midrange GPU's caliber), then the better value for your dollar and our Winner for the US$151 – US$250 price category would undoubtedly be the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT.

Winners
Winner of the Midrange GPU price category US$80 - US$99. The NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB.
Winner of the Midrange GPU price category US$100 - US$150. The NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS 256MB.
Winner of the Midrange GPU price category US$151 - US$250. The NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB

 

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