Value GFX Cards

The category that most people will fall into is the value cards. These Graphics cards are mainly based on the faster counterparts but with one or two minor reductions to help keep the cost down. These can range from less rendering pipelines to SDR memory instead of DDR. Needless to say these cards are slower but not incapable of playing today's best games. These really are value cards. I guess in most cases you wont be able to tell the difference between a Geforce 4 and a Geforce 4 MX without looking at an FPS counter. Other times you may notice it but its certainly well worth thinking about dropping down to this level of card. The extra £100 or so is not normally worth the extra you get out of it.

The only thing that should make you go above this level of card is as I always say, for future proofing. These cut down cards are not future proof. after a couple of years I think you will be wanting to upgrade. It al comes down to finances, if you need that little cut in the price then the "MX" version of the cards is probably your best bet for a good value buy.

The 3 cards I have chosen for this category are the Geforce 2 MX, the Geforce 4 MX and the Radeon 7500. They are based respectively on the Geforce 2, the Geforce 4 and the Radeon 7500 is the stage below the Radeon 8500. if we look at what makes these cards cheaper you will be able to decide whether you can save yourself that extra few quid and still be able to get the performance you require.

	Geforce 2	Geforce 2 MX (creative model)
Graphics Architecture	256-bit	256-bit
Memory	32Mb	32Mb
Memory Speed	333Mhz (DDR)	286Mhz (DDR)
Core Speed	200Mhz	175Mhz
RAMDAC	350Mhz	350Mhz
Peak Fill Rate (pixels/sec)	800 Million	350 Million
Triangle per second	25 Million	20 Million

	Geforce 4 MX 440	Geforce 4 Ti 4400
Graphics Architecture	256-bit	256-bit
Memory	64Mb	32Mb
Memory Speed	400Mhz (DDR)	550Mhz
Core Speed	270Mhz	275Mhz
RAMDAC	350Mhz	350Mhz
Peak Fill Rate (pixels/sec)	?	1.1 Billion
Memory bandwidth	6.4Gb/s	8.7Gb/s

	Radeon 7500	Radeon 8500
Graphics Architecture	128-bit	128-bit
Memory	64Mb (32Mb for each GPU)	32Mb
Memory Speed	460Mhz (DDR)	550Mhz (DDR)
Core Speed	290Mhz	275Mhz
RAMDAC	350Mhz	400Mhz
Peak Fill Rate (pixels/sec)	?	1.1Billion
Pixel Pipelines	2	4
Memory bandwidth	7.4Gb/s	8.8Gb/s

Added to this category is the Kyro II A chipset by Power VR technologies which has gave the market a bit of a hit. It is in the budget end of the market however it the right circumstances it has beaten the Geforce 2 GTS. The hype behind this card is the hidden surface removal which allows the card to decide whether an object will be seen before it renders it. This allows the card to be far more efficient than the others. As other card render useless texels that will never be seen, the Kyro II has moved on to the next set of instructions. The specs of the card however are not that that good, a 270Mhz RAMDAC for example is no where near top of the range, and hasn't been for some time. Don't discount it though. It is a big seller. Its main competitor is the Geforce 2 MX. The decision to make between those two cards is a tough one.