Shootouts

Q3 2006 Midrange GPU Shootout

By Vincent Chang - 4 Aug 2006

Price Performance Index

Price Performance Index

This section is where we finally answer the question of which midrange graphics card provides the best value. To get our results, we surveyed the prices of similarly configured models of each chipset from online price comparison websites to get an average retail price (which has been listed in the table of the very first page of this article). This means that it's possible to find even cheaper deals for your preferred chipset with some patience over the Internet. Then, we used our results from the composite performance index to derive this price performance index as illustrated below. Just note that higher figures mean more performance per dollar spent:-

Surprised at the result for the GeForce 7300 GT? The NVIDIA cards emerged as having the superior performance per dollar ratio for each distinct price category mentioned. This is mainly because of their more competitive pricing and performance that's not all that different from ATI's pedigree. Of course, there are exceptions when one could argue for the other side. For example, all ATI cards are capable of rendering HDR with anti-aliasing enabled, something that NVIDIA is unable to replicate easily without developer support. The only downside to that is for midrange cards, the likely severe performance hit for using HDR may render this issue academic. The Radeon X1800 GTO also comes with VIVO functionality and for some users that could justify the higher price tag. Also, we found that some of the 'lesser' cards (performance-wise) topped the table for this particular measurement. That too is also reasonable with hindsight that the much lower prices of these cards more than offset the performance gap. However, for those who need the frame rates, it may not be too useful to rely on this index to choose your graphics card because some games require a certain amount of competence to run properly. This index does however still serve its purpose when interpreted correctly by comparing the price performance index within the appropriate price category of graphics cards - which is our main reason for this page in the first place.

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