Mainstream Graphics Cards

Unfortunately, designers of graphics cards do tend to change official retail price recommendations for mainstream and entry-level offerings quite often without announcing it. Thus, it is not easy to determine “official?competitors with equal recommended pricing.

The most indicative example of that is the RADEON X1300 PRO, which officially costs $149, but which sells for any price starting from approximately $100, which makes it a graphics card which demand totally depends on its cost. This is why we compare it across all segments that we cover ?about $150, about $120 and about $100. You should check pricing in a store near you to determine whether the board is a competitive offering or not.

When we talking about mainstream graphics cards at about $150 or so, then the RADEON X800 GT seems to be the preferable choice: it is faster in Age of Empires 3 , Battlefield 2 , F.E.A.R. , Quake 4 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory thanks to its highly-efficient architecture and 256-bit memory bus. The only game where the GeForce 6600 GT is superior is Serious Sam 2. The RADEON X1300 PRO does not seem to be competitive in this segment.

You should probably choose a $120 graphics card according to game preferences. Generally, ATI’s RADEON X700 PRO better handles full-scene antialiasing with anisotropic filtering and is faster in such games as Battlefield 2 and F.E.A.R. , whereas the GeForce 6600 GDDR2 is faster in the Serious Sam 2 game. While the RADEON X1300 PRO seems to be a better competitor here: it wins in some cases, it still cannot claim clear lead.