Top of the Range

You've now seen what's available on the market and you now have to decide which section of the market you will be looking at. I have split it into two sections. This one is the top of the range cards meant for the people who are looking for the peak performance that today's cards can offer. The second section will be about what I would class as the good value cards. These are the cards that offer great performance at a very reasonable price. 

So what is top of the Range. Well at the moment the 2 cards that stand out are the Geforce 4 Ti and the Radeon 8500. In terms of Price the Radeon 8500 is cheaper but its a slightly older card and has less raw power than the Geforce. Lets match up the 2 cards to see how they fair against each other on paper. The table below shows some common statistics normally used by people when directly comparing GFX cards. Of course the only true way to tell is to use them in your system which is a "real world test". This however is not always possible and so these theoretical benchmarks are the next best thing.

 

Type Geforce 4 Ti 4600 (4400) Radeon 8500
Graphics Architecture 256 Bit 256 Bit
Memory 128Mb DDR RAM 64Mb DDR RAM
Memory Clock speed 600Mhz (550) 550Mhz
Clock speed 300Mhz (275) 275Mhz
Memory Bandwidth 10.4GB/s (8.7) 8.8GB/s
Peak Fill rate (Pixels/sec) 1.2 Billion (1.1 Billion) 1.364Billion
Triangles per second 136 Million (125 Million) 62.5 Million
RAMDAC Dual 350Mhz 400Mhz

Other

 NfiniteFX II engine.
Lightspeed Memory - Architecture II.
NView Display.		 Truform
SmoothVision
Hyper Z II
Charisma Engine II
Pixel Tapestry II
Price

PNY Ti 4600
PNY Ti 4400

 Compare

You can see that since the release of the Geforce 4 Ti range the Radeon 8500 isn't quite in the same class anymore. However it is still cheaper and is still a very worthy buy. I have to point out that ATI claim because of the Hyper Z II technology the memory bandwidth is actually higher than stated above. However for the purpose of the comparison we had to take the same calculation for both cards.

What else is about

Well if the cards above are just a little bit too expensive for you then you can knock down a grade to the Geforce 3 Ti 500. This was not top cards not so long ago and still delivers quite a bit of power. The price of this card has come down a lot though due to the release of the Geforce 4 range. The next step down from the Radeon 8500 is the 7500 but I cant say that it has the capability of being a top of the range card anymore.

Summery

You want the best then you have no choice other than the Geforce 4 Ti 4600. If your looking for slightly cheaper then its either the Radeon 8500 or the Geforce 4 Ti 4400. You have to be a true hardcore gamer though as these cards don't come cheap and don't offer anything extra for the mainstream user over the budget cards.

Next - Value Cards

 

 

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Nvidia's Top Range

The Geforce 4 Ti from Nvidia are the latest power cards. The boast massive core and clock speeds Check it here.

www.nvidia.co.uk

ATI Top Range

The Radeon 8500 is the latest from ATI. It features everything needed to rival the rest at the point of its release. Featuring a 275Mhz Core and 550 DDR memory clocks. Add to that a list of features as long as your arm.

www.ati.co.uk

You can buy everything you need for your PC at Black Thunder Systems

 

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