Best Video Card for your Money : August 2008
By Mathieu • Aug 14th, 2008 • Category: Best ofThis post has been updated: See Best video card for your money: October 2008 for the updated version, thanks!
Full video card reviews and specs are great to read, that is, if you have the time to read them all and do the research. In the end, what you want to know is what is the best video card within your budget.
So if you don’t have the time to do the research, or just don’t care to do it, don’t worry. I’ll come to your help with this guide of the best video card for your money.
August update: In July and August, Nvidia introduced new video cards (9500GT, 9800GT, 9800 GTX+) and ATI just introduced their new Radeon 4870 X2, whose performance whoops out the competition. I also saw many cards whose prices dropped down.
Expect prices in the mainstream - high-end to drop some more with the new flagship card from AMD that just arrived on the market. Let me remind you that the prices you see here are accurate on August 14th and I’m suggesting to you that you keep an eye on prices fluctuations, as you’re letting yourself down if you don’t look for deals when you decide to buy.
Things have tapered off a little by now, but we’ll use this opportunity to remind our readers that this article is only a guideline for the prices we’ve seen at the beginning of the month! You’re letting yourself down if you’re not looking for deals when you decide to purchase.
Here’s a few things to keep in mind when you read this list:
- This list is for gamers who want the best bang for the buck. If you don’t play videos games, the cards in this list are way overkill.
- Prices and availability change everyday. I can’t keep up with accurate pricing everyday, but I can suggest to you great cards that you won’t regret buying at the price ranges that I list.
- This list is based on the best U.S. prices from NewEgg. In other countries or in a retail stores, things might be different. All prices are based on new card prices, no used or open box cards are listed; they might be a good deal, but they come with trade offs, such as limited return policy, limited warranty, etc.
Under $70: 9500GT
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Just released a few weeks ago, it definately offers the best performance in the low-end market right now. This card will allow you to play a lot of games with medium or high details and its 512MB won’t limit you with higher resolution, AA and AF! Definately the best card in the sub-$70 market. The only reason not to buy it? Save up an additional $50 and go with the next choice, a vastly more powerful video card!
Detailed specs
Under $120: Geforce 8800 GT
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Now, this come as a huge surprise to me! Its price dropped by $30 in a month and I strongly believe that this is the best card ever that I ever saw at this price! At $119.99, it offers incredible performance for such a low price tag. It simply cannot be beaten at this price.
Detailed specs
Under $170: Radeon 4850
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Now, if you thought that the previous suggestion was a powerful card, wait to see this one! It is simply an amazing card, which caused quite a surprise in the community when it was released, by offering performance unheard of before, at this mainstream price of only 169.99$! If you want to play pretty much any games at full details, for a decent price, this is the card you want!
Detailed specs
Under $280: Radeon 4870
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Yes, this is probably the most popular card right now. Certainly a card that gets my personnal recommendation. AMD’s masterpiece, at only 279.99$, this offers to you very serious high-end performance. It’s performance/price ratio is simply amazing, it’s by far more powerful than a 8800GT/GTX/Ultra/Nvidia’s GTX 260 and it also gets very close to the GTX 280, yet for 140$ less than it! This is the card you want if you want the best bang for the buck!
Detailed specs
Under $350: 4850 Crossfire
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If you thought the performance from one of them was amazing, wait until you see two of them together! That’s what you’ll get for 349.98$! Two Radeon HD 4850 in Crossfire.
Detailed specs
Under $420: GTX 280
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If what you want is the absolutely best performance for a single gpu card, without CF/SLI, then the Geforce GTX 280 is your answer.
Detailed specs
Under $550: 4870 X2
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This is it. It just got on the market and it destroyed the GTX 280 in the vast majority of benchmark. Its main con is that it uses 2 gpu, which mean that in certain games for which drivers are not optimized, its performance may fall behind the Nvidia’s card. From what I’ve seen so far though, the support is good and it should get better with the next drivers releases.
Detailed specs
Under $840: GTX 280 SLI
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If money is no problem for you and you want the best performance available from Nvidia, without the problems of Quad SLI/CrossfireX, then the Geforce GTX 280 in SLI is your answer.
Detailed specs
Under $1120: 4870 X2 Crossfire
To acheive the best performance currently possible, take two of the most powerful video card available on the market and team them up in Crossfire X, to get 4 gpus to work for you.
Detailed specs
To conclude this, I have to say that I’m really surprised by how much things changed within the last month! Nvidia price cuts and new products really improved their low-end offerings. On the flipside, ATI’s strategy of combining two smaller cores to create the most powerful video card is paying off. In the end, we are all winners from this competition.
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Mathieu is a young man, who's passionate about everything related to computers. He enjoys overclocking, water-cooling, modding and getting the most performance from any computer. He's the man to ask if you have any hardware related question!Email this author | All posts by Mathieu | Receive all his posts via RSS
Ranging from $70 all the way to $1120, the author suggests to you the best video card that you can buy based on your budget. Excellent guide, a must if you plan on buying a video card soon.
OMG i wish I saw this review 6 hours ago, I’ve been racking my brain to find a decent $ to performance ration within the 200$ bracket. thank you for this review
Where is the 8800GTS? or the 3870?
@EvenSteven: No problem. The 3870 goes fo $130+, at which price the 8800 GT is clearly superior. As for the 8800 GTS, it starts at $160, in which case you better add $10 and get a 4850, which offers way better performance.
Do you think the Radeon 4870 will drop in price anytime soon? I just had an 8800 gtx that died out after about 9 months of use… and the company whom I purchased it from refuses to replace it… I’m looking to the future basically, and asking if you know of any cards coming out in the future that are expected to offer amazing performance for a similar price? I’d hate to buy the 4870 and then have a new card come out a month or two later that costs the same and trumps it. Thanks alot!
the Sapphire has been discontinued over at Newegg, so you might want to look for another one to update this list with, mostly because i’m making a build with that card in mind, based from your $1K computer on another page, and I’m really not sure what to get.
While I agree with most of the list, it does seem like you’ve deliberately set the price points in order to coincide with certain nice cards. After all, the idea of “bang for your buck” at a $1120 price point is ridiculous. Not only is that beyond the budgets of money-conscious buyers anyways, but there simply aren’t any cards at that point outside of the Quadro and FireGL series. The $50 gap between the 8800GT and HD 4n850 is too small to really aid in buying decisions, as both are VERY appealing cards with strong points that go beyond a simple price bump. Perhaps $100 per tier (so sub-$100, 100-200, 200-300, etc.) would be more effective in helping people make decisions on budget.
Also, I would note that there are many manufacturer overclocked versions of the cards available at little extra cost.
PS. The link for the 4870 X2 seems to be broken.
I think the Radeon HD4670’s the best for the sub $70 section now.